[HN Gopher] Justice Dept. plans to file antitrust charges agains...
___________________________________________________________________
Justice Dept. plans to file antitrust charges against Google in
coming weeks
Author : mitchbob
Score : 194 points
Date : 2020-09-03 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| ideals wrote:
| It's going to make the next Bilderberg meeting a little awkward
| for a few people after they do this.
| hiram112 wrote:
| Funny how the tone of the comments, so far, is negative. I wonder
| why.
|
| If the exact same investigation were ramping up in 6 months,
| under a Biden controlled DOJ, I'd imagine it'd be one comment
| after another praising the decision.
|
| Regardless, this should be an easy case if they want to win. I
| can't think of a company in modern times which has obtained so
| much power and has behaved so poorly in the past few years.
| tobsmagoats wrote:
| "The attorney general is said to have set a deadline over the
| objections of career lawyers who say they need more time to build
| the case."
|
| all you need to know
| bleepblorp wrote:
| Rushed filings are much less likely to survive the court
| system.
|
| This would suggest a prosecution that is designed to fail once
| it reaches the courts. In other words, something designed to
| make noise without changing Google's behavior.
| neonate wrote:
| All? One would at least like to know how common this is. In a
| corporate environment, it would hardly be unusual for a manager
| to insist on a faster schedule than developers would prefer.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| There's no "rush to market" for filing charges like these.
| It's not like the competing US governments are pressing ahead
| with their own charges.
| kn0where wrote:
| Well, there _is_ competition for the executive branch this
| November...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Right. But in this case I was replying to a comparison
| with a corporate environment, which is not actually
| comparable to the government's situation. The motive is
| clearly not any true urgency (Alphabet is not changing
| their corporate behavior enough to avoid these charges if
| it takes 1 month to finish getting ready or 3).
| eropple wrote:
| It isn't at all common for the AG to override his
| department's attorneys' investigative schedules, let alone
| for political reasons related to his boss's reelection
| campaign for reasons and stemming from his crew's inability
| to Stop Lying All Of The Time.
| EricE wrote:
| Really? So the AG's position is more of figurehead rather
| than supervisor?
|
| Fascinating.
| xibalba wrote:
| I am surprised Google is the highest priority. I would've assumed
| Amazon or Apple would top the list of antitrust targets.
| Pandabob wrote:
| I know antitrust covers more than just the classic case of
| monopolies driving up consumer prices. But looking at it just
| from the anti-consumer lens, the case against Amazon really is
| kind of funny, when they're at the same time blamed for pushing
| prices down so low that that the fed uses them as a possible
| explanation for low inflation [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/01/new-fed-chairman-says-
| amazon...
| pwinnski wrote:
| This seems topsy-turvy to me. _Of course_ Google is at the top
| of the list! Amazon and Apple don't own YouTube, as well as
| both the supply and demand sides of the vast majority of the
| advertising market.
|
| There's plenty of reasons to go after all of the big tech
| companies, but Google seems like an obvious candidate for
| first.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Amazon can easily point to Walmart, Apple can easily point to..
| Every other phone that's not an iPhone.
|
| Google is the only one who doesn't have anybody realistic to
| point to, and no, Bing does not count.
| adrr wrote:
| Google can point to FB, TikTok and other social networks that
| also utilizes UGC video consumption to deliver ads.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Isn't this more about their search engine than it is about
| youtube? Unless youtube also has >90% market.
| actuator wrote:
| Do Alexa, Siri and all the new ways of searching count as
| search engines?
| D2187645 wrote:
| You ever herd someone say "just siri/alexa/bing/yahoo/ddg
| it"?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This is a poltical play. All of these _should_ be targets but
| the WH is looking for a pre-election "win", more symbolic than
| anything.
|
| Google is ~80% of search in the US. Large percentage of online
| advertising. Lots of anti-competitive stuff to point to.
|
| Apple is 50% at best of the smartphone market and their major
| competitors are South Korean and Chinese. Targeting Apple, with
| no major US competitor, is NOT a win. Not a good thing to be
| bringing up in an election year.
|
| Amazon would also be a complicated anti-trust target, you need
| to specifically focus on online retail effects while not
| allowing Amazon to switch the conversation to talking about
| general retail and Walmart/Target. So, too complicated for any
| kind of quick traction.
| pbourke wrote:
| > the WH is looking for a pre-election "win", more symbolic
| than anything.
|
| The "win" being the announcement of a case and ensuing press
| coverage or whatnot? I'm assuming it would take years for
| such a case to be concluded.
| nickff wrote:
| Every administration uses the announcement of proceedings
| (in various fields) as an achievement in and of itself.
| Similarly, passing laws and regulations is regarded as an
| achievement, regardless of whether the laws achieve their
| stated aims.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Pick more fights to distract people from all the existing
| losing fights! How's that wall looking?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Going great!
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/politics/border-
| wall-c...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/nyregion/steve-bannon-
| arr...
| [deleted]
| deadmik3 wrote:
| so the easiest, biggest, and most blatant antitrust target
| out of your own examples is just a political play?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| When it is executed haphazardly and before it's ready such
| that career prosecutors threaten to quit in protest? Yes.
| cryptica wrote:
| Google has complete control over all internet search traffic in
| most of the world. They get to decide which websites are
| popular and which are not. This affects every person who owns a
| website or blog; a LOT of people. This is too much power for
| one company.
|
| Amazon is just an online retailer, their monopoly only affects
| people who have shops on Amazon; this is not as harmful because
| it does not affect as many people and businesses (currently).
|
| Same with Apple, their monopoly only affects people and
| businesses who want to sell apps on the Apple App store; this
| is a small number of people and businesses compared to the
| number affected by Google's search monopoly.
|
| If you own a website, your life is being affected by Google. At
| a society level, Google can control the narrative of any social
| issue by tweaking its ranking algorithms to serve its own
| interests.
|
| From first hand experience as an open source author who runs an
| open source project website, it certainly seems that Google has
| been treating me progressively worse over time.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > If you own a website, your life is being affected by
| Google.
|
| Once chrome removes the url bar, life is going to get a lot
| tougher for any company that wants to avoid Alphabet.
| zo1 wrote:
| I don't think people realize how much of an effect google has
| had on shaping the internet over the past decade. I get the
| impression that most people think Google is just following-
| along with the trends/changes occurring on the internet,
| rather than being the driving/molding force. And the fact
| that Google is politically biased internally should also be
| equally worrying.
| [deleted]
| ideals wrote:
| Amazon has huge warehouses in lots of states which means they
| have political power to threaten pulling jobs from districts or
| states. Google is a much softer target.
| sangnoir wrote:
| If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say YouTube's value to a
| certain political campaign might have played at part in bumping
| up Google's priority. Apple and Amazon do not have a similar
| propaganda^w free speech platform that has to be kept on a
| short leash with similar urgency.
|
| Obviously that wouldn't never happen in the U.S.A. - the DoJ's
| dealings have been entirely professional, non-partisan and
| above-board.
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| Or like the ISPs
| badwolf wrote:
| The ISP's are probably who are pushing for this
| paxys wrote:
| Or credit reporting agencies. Or credit card companies. Or
| banks. Or defense contractors.
|
| Tech is always the soft target for governments worldwide.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Tech is always the soft target for governments worldwide.
|
| lol. Take a look at credit card regulation in Europe and
| the amount of regulation passed on banks in the last 20
| years alone (for good reasons).
|
| The only thing that's soft about tech is the industry's
| constant whinging because they're finally recognizing that
| the good old days of getting away with everything might be
| over.
|
| Credit cards are actually a good example. Let's slap the
| 0.2% interchange cap that is the legal limit in the EU on
| the Apple store and see what happens then.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Let's slap the 0.2% interchange cap that is the legal
| limit in the EU on the Apple store and see what happens
| then.
|
| That's exactly the wrong solution, because it implies
| within it that they get to continue holding a monopoly as
| long as they're a regulated one. And then the regulations
| address the most visible seven of the two hundred
| thousand problems that are caused by monopolies and leave
| all of the other ones.
|
| What's needed is to reintroduce meaningful competition.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >That's exactly the wrong solution, because it implies
| within it that they get to continue holding a monopoly as
| long as they're a regulated one.
|
| That's a pretty common solution when infrastructure is
| concerned, which platforms basically are. Having 20
| stores on your phone to me makes about as much sense as
| having 50 postal services driving on the streets.
|
| Not really sure what's wrong with basically making two
| regulations. Apple/Google get to charge ~1% or whatever
| for running the store, and they don't get to ban stuff
| other than content that's unlawful. To me it seems like
| that solves 99% of the issues we've been hearing about.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > That's a pretty common solution when infrastructure is
| concerned, which platforms basically are.
|
| It's pretty common for _physical_ infrastructure because
| it has high fixed costs. Building a water distribution
| network is billion dollar enterprise. App stores are the
| complete opposite of that -- if it weren 't for the
| platforms purposely interfering with competing stores, an
| individual would be able to set one up in a weekend.
|
| > Having 20 stores on your phone to me makes about as
| much sense as having 50 postal services driving on the
| streets.
|
| But we do have 50 postal services driving on the streets.
| Or at least five anyway -- USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, Amazon,
| plus private couriers, trucking companies and so on.
|
| You might as well ask why we have multiple retailers.
| "Wouldn't it be more efficient if everybody had to buy
| everything at Walmart and we just regulated them as a
| monopoly?" Some theoretical increase in efficiency is not
| worth the crushing oppression that would inevitably
| bring.
|
| > Not really sure what's wrong with basically making two
| regulations. Apple/Google get to charge ~1% or whatever
| for running the store, and they don't get to ban stuff
| other than content that's unlawful. To me it seems like
| that solves 99% of the issues we've been hearing about.
|
| Which means you're putting the role of vetting apps onto
| some other third parties -- good, now there will be
| competition and you won't be screwed if the monopoly
| store rejects something they shouldn't. But then what is
| the Google or Apple store even supposed to be doing?
| Hosting the app? Anybody can do that. Payment processing?
| There are a dozen companies that already do that.
|
| The only reason they have a monopoly is that they
| purposely put barriers in front of competitors. It's not
| a _natural_ monopoly whatsoever.
|
| And you're just proving the point about how the
| regulations only solve the most obvious problems and
| leave all the other ones. For example, if you let them
| exclude app store competitors, even if they can't charge
| high fees or exclude apps they don't like, they could
| still bury them in an unfindable hole by eliminating
| direct links and putting it on page 5000 of any search
| results, or cover anything they don't like in arbitrarily
| scary warning prompts, or find a hundred other ways to
| make your life hard unless you bend the knee. Whereas if
| their being unreasonable could be remedied by just going
| to another store, it actually puts a check on
| unreasonable behavior in general by way of competitive
| pressure, without you having to predict and explicitly
| prohibit it ahead of time.
| creddit wrote:
| Banks aren't really concentrated, though. Lots of
| competition in the area.
| qppo wrote:
| Because tech has monopolies over specific markets (or
| duopolies) engaged in anti-competitive practices that harm
| business and consumers while being comically unregulated.
|
| Banking, credit, and defense all have a pretty good balance
| of competition and regulation. That's not to say there
| aren't areas that should be targeted by governments, but
| tech is hardly a "soft target." It's never been hit!
| thebradbain wrote:
| Well, except for all the 90s/00s Microsoft + Internet
| Explorer antitrust drama -- though admittedly Microsoft
| came out of it mostly unscathed, if a bit humbled.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Amazon sells stuff - Google shapes opinions. They are much more
| dangerous.
| creddit wrote:
| Wait until I tell you about the major media corps!
| xibalba wrote:
| By this logic, would not Facebook and it's market leadership
| in social media be a better target?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Better? No. Equally valid? Certainly.
| jjcon wrote:
| Not that antitrust has to be based on market share but - it
| is kinda hard to claim Facebook has a monopoly on much of
| anything. Facebook is a big player but there are dozens of
| big alternatives. That is not at all the case for Google.
| Search, YouTube, browsers, Android all have a dominant
| market position.
| xibalba wrote:
| Fair, but, conversely, Facebook has a well documented
| history of growth through acquiring or cloning
| competitors.
| cmauniada wrote:
| It would be interesting to see how much amazon and apple spend
| vs. how much google spends on lobbying - might answer your q.
| jjcon wrote:
| Google has spent by far the most over the past 10 years.
|
| https://si-wsj-
| net.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w820/s/si.wsj.net/p...
| cmauniada wrote:
| Interesting. So its just a different admin that wants to
| get a point across. Right before elections too - simply
| political imo.
| oflannabhra wrote:
| Seems like you'd be the one surprised: Even though they have
| cut their lobbying budget in the past two years, Alphabet has
| spent more on lobbying Congress over the past decade than any
| other tech firm, except maybe Amazon.
|
| [0] - https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-
| lobbying/clients/summary...
| marta_morena_25 wrote:
| Did you read the article?
|
| ""Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the
| viewing/reporting of Fake News Media," he said on Twitter. "In
| other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others." He also
| said Google had potentially violated the law."
|
| Any more questions why it's neither Amazon, nor Apple. Trump
| doesn't give a shit about computers or warehouses. He also
| doesn't give a shit about anti-trust, or consumers. He cares
| about re-election and his own interests. And that puts Google
| and Facebook in the cross-hair. At least for now. Trumps
| decisions are easy to understand, once you keep in mind that he
| does nothing that isn't for his own benefit. Everything makes
| sense then.
| js2 wrote:
| It's politically motivated.
|
| https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11587977354888888...
| zo1 wrote:
| Good - that's what people voted him into office for, I would
| assume. Specifically his "Fake News" focused platform.
| averysmallbird wrote:
| There are reportedly investigations against Google, Apple,
| Amazon, and Facebook; with DOJ taking the first two and the FTC
| taking the latter. Google was likely the easiest because there
| was a prior FTC investigation and EU enforcement actions taken
| against Google. Additionally, more state AGs rallied to the
| Google case.
| marta_morena_25 wrote:
| It's funny to watch (and also lucky for us), how Trump in his
| attempt to utilize everything at his disposal in his own favor
| and solely in his own favor, manages to self-sabotage himself at
| every turn through stupidity.
| nlh wrote:
| I read this story just now and I found it incredibly frustrating
| -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details about who wants
| to do what and when and who objects, but incredibly light on
| actual details.
|
| What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague hand-
| waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your life"
| doesn't cut it for me.
|
| Does anyone have a source or a hunch of what specific anti-trust
| laws Google is violating with what specific actions?
| skymt wrote:
| Not a gossip column, political reporting. This is appropriate
| because this is a political story. The subject isn't the case
| against Google but the internal conflicts in building the case.
| ardy42 wrote:
| >> Justice Dept. plans to file antitrust charges against Google
| in coming weeks (nytimes.com)
|
| > I read this story just now and I found it incredibly
| frustrating -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details
| about who wants to do what and when and who objects, but
| incredibly light on actual details.
|
| That's the actual story here, which doesn't appear to be the
| story you want to read.
|
| > What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague
| hand-waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your
| life" doesn't cut it for me.
|
| You will find out when the DOJ files the charges in a month (if
| the deadline reported here is accurate). _They probably haven
| 't even finalized the details you want to know yet_ (otherwise
| they probably would have have filed already).
| stale2002 wrote:
| > what specific anti-trust laws
|
| The specific anti trust law would almost certainly be section 2
| of the Sherman anti trust act.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| Whenever the case is made you will see what they argue.
| paxys wrote:
| That info doesn't exist publicly because the charges haven't
| been filed yet.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Tend to agree, with particular attention to the peeve that hit
| me in the very first sentence: the phrase "career lawyers."
| Like I'm supposed to think "Ohh, THESE lawyers are experienced
| and smart, not like all those hobbyist amateur lawyers the
| Attorney General of the United States usually consults with!
| How dare he countermand these particular infallible and always-
| correct lawyers!!"
| ls612 wrote:
| No, career lawyers is to say they are civil servants, not
| political appointees.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Google controls advertising on both the supply side and demand
| side. It's not hard to think ways in which this is
| anticompetitive. A ton of stuff is black boxes. E.g. are
| adsense chargebacks real? Are keyword bids fair?
| donor20 wrote:
| Do billboard work? Does a fox ad work?
|
| Come on - the company spending the money has MORE visability
| into what their google ad spend buys them then in almost any
| other area.
|
| I don't even care if I overpay on a "bid" for a spot - the
| metric I'm using is return on spend. And trust me, the
| mainline media companies driving this do not promise
| advertisers "fair" bidding. They have sales people trying to
| extract every nickle they can (through sometimes horrible
| accounting practices where they pay different divisions to
| drive up various "costs").
| bergstromm466 wrote:
| > Come on
|
| No you come on. Do you really live in a fairytale dream
| world where corporate crimes are non-existent?
|
| Yes it's of course not all Google's fault, and many of the
| underlying governance systems are fucked up (money system,
| how new laws are created, IP & property laws, etc.), but
| where does your instant forgiveness come from towards these
| massive corporate monopolies? It is all a black box, and we
| have no idea what's going on. Platform monopolies have
| started to decide elections. In your perspective, when is
| the threshold met when we start to admit we have a problem,
| and we invite social change?
|
| What do you get out of campaigning for Google and other
| corporations? Are you that well paid?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Maybe for you ad price is not an issue. That's like saying
| the price of steak is not an issue for you. There are a ton
| of billboard companies and TV channels, so competition is
| presumed to lead to price discovery and low prices. Google
| has no competition.
| donor20 wrote:
| Google has no competition in marketing? Are these serious
| statements? I can advertise on Instagram, pay social
| media influencers and the ways to market to folks are
| literally endless, from postcards, to delivery route
| saturation campaigns to annoying popups on Hulu videos to
| microtargeted facebook ads. I hate facebook, don't have
| the app, but campaigns on facebook at least historically
| could do amazingly well if you had the targeting down.
|
| Historically one paper in town basically got most
| advertising. Those folks printed money. Classifieds etc.
|
| There has been an explosion of marketing opportunities
| now. I can market on amazon if I think that would yield
| more (it does sometimes).
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Why are you conflating google with all of marketing and
| TV ads etc? That's like claimingn that airlines and
| sealines are the same market. Google's competitors are
| not billboards, they are the (now extinct) other online
| ad marketplaces. Their problem is that they control the
| search and display ad marketplace absolutely, they can
| ask advertisers to pay $100, pay the publisher $1 and
| nobody will know if they are being scammed because there
| is no competiting marketplace to compare.
|
| https://archive.vn/G8cgI
| withinboredom wrote:
| Google has every incentive to find you the least expensive
| lead, which is not good for you. The least expensive lead
| is the one that would buy from you even if they didn't see
| the ad. This means you wasted money, and a lot of it.
| donor20 wrote:
| But I can judge whether I'm wasting money with google ads
| vs using TV ads or billboards. Do NPR promise me my
| sponsorship will result in increased sales or that it's
| the "lowest" possible price?
|
| Maybe some people hearing an NPR sponsorship would have
| bought from me anyways - is this now a crime?
| mrkramer wrote:
| Google's algorithms are trade secrets just like Coca-Cola
| recipe formula is. You can not expect somebody making
| billions and revealing their secret "know-how".
| cblconfederate wrote:
| if coca-cola controlled all the fridges, i d expect them to
| be broken up though
|
| the point of antitrust is not to force companies to give up
| trade secrets, it's to ensure that there is competition and
| market alternatives
| themgt wrote:
| My guess is there will be multiple lines of attack, but this
| paper[0] which was also at least implicitly referenced in the
| recent Congressional hearing seems very likely to be one of
| them:
|
| _Approximately 86% of online display advertising space in the
| U.S. is bought and sold in real-time on electronic trading
| venues, which the industry calls "advertising exchanges." With
| intermediaries that route buy and sell orders, the structure of
| the ad market is similar to the structure of electronically
| traded financial markets. In advertising, a single company,
| Alphabet ("Google"), simultaneously operates the leading
| trading venue, as well as the leading intermediaries that
| buyers and sellers go through to trade. At the same time,
| Google itself is one of the largest sellers of ad space
| globally. This Paper explains how Google dominates advertising
| markets by engaging in conduct that lawmakers prohibit in other
| electronic trading markets: Google's exchange shares superior
| trading information and speed with the Google-owned
| intermediaries, Google steers buy and sell orders to its
| exchange and websites (Search & YouTube), and Google abuses its
| access to inside information. In the market for electronically
| traded equities, we require exchanges to provide traders with
| fair access to data and speed, we identify and manage
| intermediary conflicts of interest, and we require trading
| disclosures to help police the market. Because ads now trade on
| electronic trading venues too, should we borrow these three
| competition principles to protect the integrity of
| advertising?_
|
| [0]:
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919
| tynpeddler wrote:
| Do the electronic exchanges mentioned in this paper include
| adds sold on Facebook and product recommendations from
| Amazon? It's hard to believe that Facebook's add space is
| that much smaller than Alphabet, and if Facebook is not
| included in the definition of "online display advertising
| space", then that seems like a pretty large omission.
| benologist wrote:
| Nobody's saying Facebook and Amazon won't get charges too.
| They and Apple were all part of the same investigation. The
| investigators say all four companies are abusing their
| positions but they haven't given a lot of detail yet.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-26/house-
| ant...
| gen220 wrote:
| The deep question:
|
| > In the market for electronically traded equities, we
| require exchanges to provide traders with fair access to data
| and speed, we identify and manage intermediary conflicts of
| interest, and we require trading disclosures to help police
| the market. Because ads now trade on electronic trading
| venues too, should we borrow these three competition
| principles to protect the integrity of advertising?
|
| It boils down to: should we regulate ad exchanges like we
| regulate equity exchanges, such that the exchange operator
| (e.g. Alphabet, NYSE) cannot also be a participant in the
| traded assets.
|
| If you believe the answer is yes, alphabet's ad exchange
| should not be in the same parent company as youtube and
| google.
|
| Unbundling the ad exchange from alphabet's other services
| sounds like it would be a herculean technical nightmare!
| Might be easier to start from scratch (:
| jeffbee wrote:
| Of all the crazy stuff that has been proposed on HN under
| the umbrella of "breaking up Google", excising the ad
| exchange might be the least technically challenging, and
| also one of the few that are economically practical.
| victor106 wrote:
| This is an awesome paper.
|
| What other resources exist to learn in detailed about how the
| online ad industry works?
| actuator wrote:
| I am a bit confused, is this not applicable on FB? FB's ad
| revenue is now probably > 0.5 * Google's.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| A vaccine and this.. what else needs to make it through before
| the elections?
| ardy42 wrote:
| > A vaccine and this.. what else needs to make it through
| before the elections?
|
| Terrifyingly, the census:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/us/census-bureau.html:
|
| > The count faces two crushing deadlines -- to compile an
| accurate tally by Sept. 30, and to process and double-check the
| numbers in time to deliver population totals to the president
| by Dec. 31. The Census Bureau earlier had told Congress it
| needed to push the delivery of population totals to April 2021
| because of the pandemic.
|
| > The Trump administration ordered the speedup, critics say,
| because it wants to subtract undocumented immigrants from the
| totals before sending them in January to Congress to
| reapportion the House. That plan -- which faces multiple court
| challenges -- would reshuffle House seats to give a modest
| advantage to the Republican Party.
|
| > It comes as the administration has installed political
| appointees in the Census Bureau's top ranks -- two in June and
| a third named last week to a new post: deputy director for
| data. Critics say the administration wants to change crucial
| statistical methodologies to give Republicans an even greater
| edge.
| tathougies wrote:
| The Vaccine that has already gone through normal stage 2 trials
| ensuring safety? All this talk about a vaccine being 'rushed'
| is so anti-science, it's a joke. The vaccine may certainly be
| ineffective or undereffective if rushed through phase 3 trials,
| but the idea it'll be unsafe is hogwash.
| bleepblorp wrote:
| Stage 1 and 2 trials establish safety in generally healthy
| people. Stage 3 is primarily to establish efficacy, but is
| also vital to establish safety in the broader population,
| including among people with existing diseases.
|
| For their own safety, unhealthy people are not generally
| admitted into stage 1 and 2 trials.
|
| Curtailing stage 3 testing for political gain is dangerous.
| zapita wrote:
| Other comments have pointed out that he is pushing the timeline
| against the advice of career lawyers. Everything this Attorney
| General does should be scrutinized for underlying partisan
| motivation.
|
| My guess is that he has ulterior political motives linked to the
| 2020 presidential election, and he wants to build leverage with
| Google in relation to those motives.
| EricE wrote:
| Career lawyers can't have underlying partisan motivations
| either?
|
| This article is scant on real facts, instead it's just more
| rumor and innuendo from "anonymous sources". Which apparently
| is just fine even though in the majority of these stories once
| the bombastic claims are dropped and more facts come out later,
| revealing thatthe claims are either grossly overstated or
| outright lies it doesn't matter because everyone has moved on
| to the next "ooh shiny".
|
| People used to ostracize organizations that take such continual
| gaslighting to performance art levels, but apparently its the
| new normal because "orange man bad" or something.
| zapita wrote:
| Sure any lawyer can have ulterior motives. It just so happens
| that this particular AG has a well established track record
| of politicizing his work in public office, dating back to the
| Nixon and Reagan years. It doesn't seem like a stretch to
| take that track record into consideration when analyzing his
| move against Google.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the man, but if you're trying to make a
| case against him you should make it accurate. He did not
| hold any public office position under the Nixon
| administration, he was in college during it. He then became
| a civil servant in the CIA starting in 1973.
| zapita wrote:
| You are correct. It's Roger Stone who was a Nixon
| advisor. Stone is the federal felon which AG Barr
| recently freed from prison by overriding his sentencing
| guideline, for purely political reasons. I had my
| criminals mixed up.
| rat87 wrote:
| > Career lawyers can't have underlying partisan motivations
| either?
|
| They can, we know that the current Attorney General is a hack
| that eagerly ignores betrays his duties to play politics,
| doing offense/defense for Trump
|
| Anonymously sources are standards procedure and the majority
| of these stories are verified. And yes it is an undeniable
| fact that Trump is terrible, putting it in baby language
| (orang man bad)doesn't change it one bit. And it's a fact
| that he has abused the law and his office to go after his
| perceived opponents, even if regulatory action is needed if
| it comes from corrupt motives it's much more likely to be
| overturned in court.
| vharuck wrote:
| Barr is a political appointee who replaced Sessions, who was
| dismissed by Trump for being "disloyal." Barr plays the
| public political game well.
|
| Career workers in Federal agencies can be partisan, but it's
| harder to think they're more influenced by politics than the
| politician. Secret conspiracies are really hard to believe,
| because they're really hard to pull off.
|
| I'm more willing to believe investigators always want more
| time, and this is a case where our hunger for political
| reasoning colors our interpretation. Not saying this is the
| case, just my Occam's Razor.
| beervirus wrote:
| Career workers in federal agencies have routinely worked
| toward anti-Trump ends.
| rat87 wrote:
| A more accurate way to phrase it is that they have aimed
| to do their jobs and their duty to their country.
|
| This frequently pushes them into conflict with Trump
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I don't like the timing of this, obvious political motivation.
|
| That said, I think it would be a good thing for Google, Apple,
| Amazon, and maybe Microsoft to go through this process. When the
| process works well, the companies may make needed adjustments to
| the way they do business, and get this all over with in a few
| years.
|
| I am a very happy paying customer of Google, Amazon, Apple, and
| Microsoft. I would still like them all to be investigated and
| adjustments made. Capitalism and free markets work very well with
| the appropriate amount of government oversite - set guardrails
| for allowed behavior.
| [deleted]
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This is so grossly political that it's disgusting. Clearly the
| administration sees Google through the lens of an adversary,
| which is astonishing enough.
|
| When reading something like this, _" according to five people
| briefed on internal department conversations."_ is the first
| clue. You have mass leakage of internal discussions, with career
| ending consequences. You can't have any greater signal that
| something is very wrong, and that people believe the chain of
| reporting is compromised.
|
| The question of whether Google represents a monopoly is critical
| for every software professional in this forum, and it is a
| trillion dollar US company that represents most people's
| discovery platform for information. It has has nuance, and there
| are gray areas that are going to have generational impact when
| they are litigated. It an _important legal question_ and not well
| served by a thin case served out two months from an election.
| hiram112 wrote:
| > Clearly the administration sees Google through the lens of an
| adversary, which is astonishing enough.
|
| How is that astonishing? Google has made it more than clear
| that they will use their vast resources to help Trump's
| opponents. It's almost a meme at this point that if you want to
| search for something politically incorrect - or anything that
| doesn't align with the left - you need to use Bing or DDG.
|
| * Google: [The
| donald](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+donald) - not on
| the first page
|
| * Bing: [The Donald](https://www.bing.com/search?q=the+donald)
| - 1st result
|
| * https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/09/10/silent-
| donatio...
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. All you
| example proves is that Google and Bing follow different
| metrics for relevance -- Google's being more relevant for
| someone looking for the former subreddit that was widely
| discussed in other media outlets, Bing's being more relevant
| for someone looking for the current incarnation i.e.
| dedicated Trump supporters. The idea that there is some
| conspiracy within Google to promote Trump's opponents needs
| more proof than that.
| paganel wrote:
| > This is so grossly political that it's disgusting
|
| A one-trillion dollars company can only be tackled politically,
| let's not fool ourselves here. In other words I find nothing
| "disgusting" about this, if anything the US authorities should
| have been more open in their approach, i.e. pointing out that
| letting a few tech behemoths take control of our society (a
| highly technological one) it's not in the best interest of the
| populace. Again, you cannot tackle (very) big stuff like this
| in a non-political matter.
| tathougies wrote:
| Hacker news is so bipolar on this. I've seen calls on this site
| for immediate antitrust law cases against google, and now that
| the Trump DOJ is doing it, immediately, there's a rush to
| defend Google. It's getting nauseating really.
|
| Something being 'political' is not bad, especially when it
| being 'political' enforces the will of the people against those
| who ought to be subject to the will of the people. In
| particular, many Americans believe Google to be engaging in
| anti-competitive practices, so being political by following
| what the American populace wants cannot and should not be used
| as an insult.
| AJ007 wrote:
| These comments are bizarre. This topic has been discussed ad
| nauseam in hacker news for many years. The discussion on here
| was justifiably more extensive and explained more deeply than
| anywhere else. People on hacker news have used Google
| services for 15+ years. They've built businesses around
| Google's platform. They've built businesses which compete
| with Google. They've seen Google do things which dismantled
| other businesses so that Google could earn some incremental
| revenue in order to continue to pay their executives and
| employees wildly bloated salaries (e.g. Anthony Levandowski
| paid over $100m; that's insane.)
|
| Google has a lot of deep problems. They managed to kick the
| US regulatory can down the road over and over again. Now they
| have to deal with it. All but 1 state AG was on board for
| this. They were very cozy with the Obama White House so there
| is _very_ good justification for this to happen now.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| HN isn't an entity. You see discussions here praising Haskell
| or Lisp as the second coming, and then discussions about how
| awful they are and how they'll never amount to anything
| because they don't match the underlying machine as well as C.
|
| It's different people with different opinions, experiences,
| and views expressing them at different times.
| geofft wrote:
| > _I 've seen calls on this site for immediate antitrust law
| cases against google, and now that the Trump DOJ is doing it,
| immediately, there's a rush to defend Google._
|
| Well, that's my actual position. "The last temptation is the
| greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
|
| I think it's important to enforce the laws we have fairly.
| However, going after political opponents because they are
| political opponents, and retroactively figuring out what laws
| you can use against them, is very different from enforcing
| the laws fairly. I think we should be going after many more
| companies than we do on antitrust grounds (and I think
| society would be better if we had even more stringent
| antitrust laws). Going after a single company and saying
| "Hmmm, antitrust" does not actually succeed at maintaining
| the rule of law.
|
| (I do, for what it's worth, agree that "political" is not an
| insult. It's a descriptor, and it applies to just about
| anything involving the government or the shape of society. In
| this case, I think it happens to be a descriptor for
| something bad. It is entirely good and proper for politics to
| influence what laws we have; it is improper for politics to
| influence against whom we choose to enforce them.)
| topspin wrote:
| "You have mass leakage of internal discussions, with career
| ending consequences. You can't have any greater signal that
| something is very wrong, and that people believe the chain of
| reporting is compromised."
|
| Leaks from DOJ is SOP; Trump or not the place is a hot bed of
| political grifters posing as law enforcement officials and
| playing footsies with their media contacts.
|
| And I don't share your alarm over the potential consequences.
| The political class won't hurt Alphabet. At _worst_ there will
| be a shakedown, some new toothless minders will emerge
| (captured on inception,) and then they 'll throw the fish back,
| just like they did with Microsoft.
| donor20 wrote:
| The article reveals the real concern - google has impacted
| "telecoms and media companies".
|
| These groups are VERY powerful. They don't want things like net
| neutrality, they want to hoover up broadband subsidies without
| actually delivering service (and often faking coverage maps etc).
| And despite all their claims, they are enormous monopoly like
| groups, now under republican administrations with much GREATER
| concentrations across both content libraries and internet access
| (time warner etc).
|
| Under this administration, massive anti-competitive consolidation
| has been permitted and encouraged in areas with much much greater
| consumer harm, by companies who IMMEDIATELY go back on their
| promises.
|
| "How Trump's Department of Justice Just Gave Hollywood
| Megacorporations Unlimited Power"
| https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/hollywood-paramount-decre...
|
| "On August 7, US district judge Analisa Torres granted the
| Department of Justice's request to terminate the Paramount
| Consent Decrees"
|
| The absolute ridiculous irony here is the govt is hand over fist
| screwing consumers, and now is going after... google!? ... has
| having ripped folks off?
|
| Do I believe my cable co was both selling my data for profit and
| jacking up my prices because I had no choice? Sure, even when
| their service was terrible I was stuck. Any enforcement? Bare
| minimum (I had to call monthly to get them to remove their modem
| rental fee - I wasn't using their modem, but a year after I
| started they added the charge and insisted I had their modem but
| wouldn't tell me the device ID).
|
| Australia / New Zealand are going to be some good examples here.
| Very arbitrarily (vs principles based) rulemaking coming.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/Jlixq
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