[o-o-]

I always thought that the idea behind antitrust laws was that if an entity reaches total market dominance and uses that dominance to keep other out of the game, the entity should be split into competing entities.

What I'm seeing however is nothing more than toothless, political pointing sticks.

Both IBM, Microsoft and Google have clearly at some point obtained total domination of their markets. Consequently they've all found themselves at the antitrust chopping blocks, however these companies have become so important to the economy that actual verdicts are reduced to a "carry on, just don't exert your dominance too much".

Or have I misunderstood antitrust laws?

Edit: s/excert/exert

[taeric]

Splitting companies that have physical presence is something that is a bit easier to do? That is, my gut would be that the examples you have in your mind for how companies that hit market dominance were split, are dominated by markets that required a bit more physical connection to the consumers they were serving.

You could also see easy ways to force a company that is using a dominant position in one industry to gain an upper hand in another to divest from that expansion.

Most of that falls apart with the nature of these markets, though?

[singron]

The original Sherman Act specifies imprisonment for 1 year, a $5,000 fine, and the seizure of property due to the violating behavior. It also gives courts the authority to "prevent and restrain such violations". It makes no specific note of splitting up corporations.

Obviously this isn't the modern understanding, and the act was later amended.

[KolenCh]

I was just listening to this episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/acquired/id1050462261?...

They pointed out that a monopoly is not the sin, the sin is to abuse that market position for unfair advantage.

So your summary of their verdict in a way is what the US view of antitrust is.

[ghostly_s]

FYI, when you share an Apple Podcasts link, anyone reading on an Apple device without the Podcasts app installed cannot do anything with it, even copy the link to open elsewhere-it just turns into a prompt to install "Podcasts." So I don't even know what podcast you're pointing to to find it in the app I prefer.

[jeroen]

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/microsoft-volume-ii

[KolenCh]

Sorry, I was on mobile and I got that link from the “share” sheet. I probably know that it is not portable, as I shared Apple News links and found that out before.

Here’s the part of the transcript:

> It is not necessarily illegal to be a monopoly. It is illegal to abuse your monopoly power. This court is examining both of those questions. (1) Is Microsoft a monopoly? (2) Are they abusing their power?

[762236]

How would you split Google? Any type of split would kill that which makes Google so great.

[Oleksa_dr]

1. Search site. As a separate product, it would need to earn money. Improve filtering and the search itself. It would be able to host ads from other advertising networks (like any other large site). Make an additional API or tool to regularly update data by certain filters) You can charge money for all these things.

2. Ads. As a separate advertising network, for which google.com will be just one platform/site, like thousands of others.

3. Mail as a separate service, leave the ability to log in to other sites through this account, so you keep one login for everything (who needs it). It can also be an advertising platform for any advertising network. You can offer better services for a fee, while keeping the basic functionality free.

4. YouTube as a separate service, as well as a platform where many other advertising networks or advertisers will compete for advertising space. Introduce paid plans for creators, where there will be a certain volume limit after which you will need to pay for the service.

5. Cloud services. Separately.

6. Google Docs. As a separate online document service, you can charge a subscription fee for certain features as in 365.

7. Browser. No need for Manifest v3. Improvements to the extension store. You can also sell advertising space and make integrations with various tools, as Opera does, for example. You can even make some kind of subscription, or make paid extensions that will speed up sites, improve the look, and cut out ads.

This is the first thing that came to mind. This can be thought out better. This will create competition for other players and for these potentially divided campaigns. General improvement of products. And all of this can be kept "under one login, in one ecosystem," with the ability to make "one system and one login" in conjunction with other tools.

[meiraleal]

Chrome, Android and the Play Store being separated companies would be great.

[jonny_eh]

How would Chrome make money? Accepting $1B a year to make Google the default search engine?

[ruszki]

Just like how they do now: selling your data.

[jfdjkfdhjds]

thanks for saying out loud.

its uncanny how even people in the industry lives in the make believe world where google is a charity, moving mountains just so you can have a browser with "faster JavaScript" (which it's not, its all prefetch and marketing)

google made more money from the features they normalized by strong arming the w3c via chrome than anything else.

[meiraleal]

App store. The plug-in ecosystem is huge but Google makes more money using Chrome as an ad dump