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Posted by donohoe 16 hours ago

Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business(www.nytimes.com)
https://archive.ph/rlAbY

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-defeats-us-b...

336 points | 247 commentspage 3
DarmokTanagra 5 hours ago|
[dead]
colincowardly 11 hours ago||
[flagged]
krunck 11 hours ago||
> a great US institution

So, too big to fail, but to small to be a monopoly that abuses it's power?

johndhi 11 hours ago|||
I'm more on your side than most but surely you don't think zero antitrust enforcement is best for our country?
mpalczewski 9 hours ago|||
who is to say that it is great. what makes it so, why is that valuable. Is doing more good than harm. that there is even some inherent value in a "great institution". A bunch of smaller companies would probably be better economically and be more innovative.
svachalek 11 hours ago|||
Ah yes, the great US institution of ad tech. Mass privacy intrusion in the service of selling clicks for a nickel.
Natfan 10 hours ago||
Stalin wishes he had this much reach
btmiller 9 hours ago|||
> colincowardly

Appropriate last name. So any institution that lies, cheats, and steals their way to top is absolved of all wrongdoing just because they got to the top?

CincinnatiMan 10 hours ago|||
I kinda somewhat reluctantly agree with you, and I think other commenters are missing the point that breaking up Google may allow non-US competitors to rise up and take Google's place on the world stage. Thus, breaking them up is not in the national interest of the US.
bigyabai 10 hours ago|||
If Alphabet allows a non-US competitor to replace them, isn't it their fault for failing to compete? The threat of replacement is supposed to be what motivates Alphabet to innovate.

It could also be argued that allowing Alphabet to sustain anticompetitive damages is exactly what creates the opportunity for them to be replaced. Alternatives to AdSense and YouTube can only succeed in America if Alphabet rests on their laurels and is artificially defended from natural price competition.

Georgelemental 10 hours ago|||
As long as there are many competitors, that's better than a monopoly, even if some of the competitors are foreign. Powerful monopolists restricting our freedoms is not in the interest of Americans long-term.
CincinnatiMan 9 hours ago||
> As long as there are many competitors, that's better than a monopoly, even if some of the competitors are foreign

How do you prevent another monopoly from forming from a different country than your own?

Georgelemental 8 hours ago||
Same way you prevent monopolies based in your own country from forming. Anti-trust regulation. Your country's government controls how companies operate inside it
al_borland 10 hours ago|||
Capitalism requires some level of regulation to avoid eating itself.
2OEH8eoCRo0 11 hours ago|||
Bring back Ma Bell and Standard Oil they were great US institutions!
wbl 10 hours ago||
Standard Oil was sued for keeping low prices thanks to vertical integration prompting the classic quip about antitrust litigation.
cyberax 11 hours ago|||
Companies like modern Google should not be permissible in the even firster place.
deaton 11 hours ago||
So because Google monopolizes on a big enough scale, suddenly they are too important to break up? I would argue that if any single company is big enough to where if it were to break up it would be "against the national interest," then it is too big and must be broken up.
paulpauper 11 hours ago||
what shocker . google has a long history of prevailing in court
strictnein 11 hours ago|
The ACLU has a long history of prevailing in court, as does the NRA.

Courts should regularly issue rulings you don't like. Their job isn't to make people happy.

cj 10 hours ago||
"long history of prevailing in court" is another way of saying "Google isn't being punished as much as they deserve"

> Their job isn't to make people happy.

Sure, but I think we can all agree the US legal system very, very, very rarely issues any ruling that materially punishes a corporation. Even the worst of the worst typically get off very easy.

Do you disagree with that?

strictnein 10 hours ago|||
> "long history of prevailing in court" is another way of saying "Google isn't being punished as much as they deserve"

Those two things are completely different and have very different meanings. For the most part, the courts aren't the ones that fine businesses.

> There have been more than 180,000 corporate fines issued in the US between 2020 and 2024, totaling more than $345 billion

> 3M Company has been issued with the costliest fines, adding up to $18.6 billion

$345 billion over 4 years seems like a lot to me. Maybe it should be higher? I don't know.

imglorp 10 hours ago||
The system is not equipped to check and balance multi-trillion dollar corporations.
SllX 10 hours ago||
“The system” by which I assume you mean the Government of the United States or America doesn’t need to, because “the system” is sovereign. Corporations are not. They get checked when they get checked, and this ruling only avoided a worse-case scenario for Google. It wasn’t a win for them either.
xp84 8 hours ago|||
Not GP, and I regularly lament as well the incredibly gentle treatment of certain companies that I'd argue should have been literally fined out of existence (e.g. Equifax, PG&E, etc.), but we should probably stop to reflect that if the US were a country which erred in the other direction, issuing crippling fines often, we would probably stop being the country where innovative companies choose to do business. I don't just mean that as a talking point, I actually think I probably would prefer to have the economy we have here today (with its injustice) compared to one where most innovative companies won't do business here because they can't afford the possible fines.
ocdtrekkie 11 hours ago||
What an incredible miscarriage of justice. Make enough money and pay off enough politicians, and you can pretty much shoot people on the street in broad daylight.
strictnein 11 hours ago||
Assuming you read the ruling, what do you disagree with the judge on?

What politicians were paid off to make a judge in a lifelong position who has served for decades rule in Google's favor?

shakna 11 hours ago||
What ruling? It isn't released yet. We have declining to breakup, based on behavioral remedies, and zero details.
strictnein 10 hours ago||
Kind of my point. How does one know something is a miscarriage of justice if you haven't read the ruling? Because you don't like the outcome?
mortoc 10 hours ago|||
I don't think it's a stretch to see a systemic pattern of big tech avoiding consequences that leave the rest of us in the power of monopolies.

Regardless of the content of this ruling, it's another brick in the wall.

strictnein 10 hours ago||
A separate discussion for sure, but simply seeing a headline and declaring it an "incredible miscarriage of justice" seems a little far fetched.

For example, many times the courts will point out that the laws need to be updated, which would be in the ruling. Or that a law as written is unconstitutional but it could be made so with some changes. That stuff doesn't make the headlines though, just the "Courts rules for/against X". Ideally we'd have a legislative branch that would look at these rulings and update our laws, but their disinterest in doing so isn't the courts' fault.

webdood90 9 hours ago||
[flagged]
mpalczewski 9 hours ago||
A legitimately rule based legal system is far more beneficial than one that takes sides based on the taste of the day. beneficial for everyone involved. If you want to write "Stan for billionaires", without any sort of reasoning, well, that says more about you.
webdood90 8 hours ago||
The system should serve the people, not a small minority of concentrated players. If you can't see how the system is manipulated in their favor, you are part of the problem.
shakna 9 hours ago|||
Accepting behavioural changes, is the same stink of the last five decades.

I would like to wait for my own judgement... But someone reacting to the same, "We're sorry", that has been so common it became a South Park meme? They have had no evidence, probably in their lifetime, that government has not simply sold out to private enterprise. There is zero reason to be mad at them.

People react to actions. The actions thus far... Do not encourage any of kind of trust. Taking time to redact the ruling, is not an encpuragement to trust.

Sure. Wait for a ruling. Re-evaluate when it releases, too.

But reacting to the exact same pile shit they've seen everytime... Why blame them?

pampas 10 hours ago|||
It's the modern "Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel". I think it's why outdoor advertising is so rife. It's hard to fight something when you rely on it to keep your position.
dgellow 11 hours ago|||
[flagged]
Petersipoi 11 hours ago|||
Just to make sure I'm understanding, you're saying that Google payed someone (presumably Trump), who then went and convinced a Clinton appointed judge who has ruled against Trump in the past to give the case to Google?

Is that actually what you think?

dgellow 11 hours ago||
I do not no, I don’t have an opinion on the Google situation. I was responding to the following:

> Make enough money and pay off enough politicians, and you can pretty much shoot people on the street in broad daylight.

unrented7977 11 hours ago||
[flagged]
kerblang 9 hours ago||
I wonder if it would help to revoke patents that help google maintain its monopoly, assuming that's the case and it's doable by a judge/congress/someone?

What exactly is the nature of its monopoly that moots competition? I was of understanding that it's more than just ads on google search results, isn't it?

spl757 8 hours ago|
I have no proof, but this just figures. It's entirely plausible that google gave some heavy-duty major dark money campaign donations and have used the return on their investment to avoid being broken up. Maybe I'm just cynical and the corporations and ultra-wealthy wouldn't really do anything like that all the time. They are ultra-greedy, though.
hightrix 5 hours ago|
> Sergey Brin ($154 billion), the co-founder of Alphabet and seventh-richest man in the world, joined Musk, Bezos and others in being seated behind Trump during the swearing-in.

You aren't cynical. Big tech absolutely bent the knee and are now wearing red kneepads.