[jeffbee]

You are making the same flawed argument that the DOJ complaint is making: that Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, some of the largest companies Earth has ever seen, somehow can't afford to compete in search, which is plainly ridiculous.

[oceanplexian]

The DOJ complaint isn't "You can't have a monopoly". In fact there is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in a product or service under US law.

The problem arises when a company leverages a monopoly to suppress competition, implement predatory pricing, or manipulate competition in another market. Using a monopoly in search to compel tying agreements prohibiting browsers or manufacturers from including other search engines or apps would qualify. If it turns out that agents of the company (Directors, VPs, etc) internally communicated an intent to suppress competition that would be more than enough to bury them.

[jeffbee]

I don't disagree with your comments but I also don't see the connection between them and the specific case the DOJ has actually filed against Google.

[macintux]

They could compete, but it would be a money hole. You’d have to spend billions and years to reach some level of parity with Google to persuade enough people to switch, and even then the marketing spend necessary to reach any significant level of switching would be another massive investment.

[jeffbee]

"wah, this is hard" is not an antitrust case. Anyway it's clearly not all that hard since Bing exists. The fact that Apple sells iOS users' attention for six billion dollars a year is strong evidence of Bing's strength. Market prices are set by the 2nd bidder, not the highest bidder. The price Google pays to Apple is what those eyeballs would have been worth to Microsoft, not how much they are worth to Google.

[Osiris]

See Bing

[bun_at_work]

This is not what the DOJ is complaining about. The case is that companies that aren't huge can't compete, because they can't scale.

[pythonaut_16]

I don't understand that argument.

By that same argument, companies that aren't huge can't compete with Walmart, UPS, McDonald's, etc.

That argument basically breaks down to "Small companies can't compete against huge companies without finding a way to become huge themselves."

Isn't that just capitalism?