[addicted]

Google isn’t “getting targeted”.

But to answer your question.

1. Microsoft gets left alone - Really? You may want to ask the closest adult near you about this.

2. Amazon - The government has looked into Amazon multiple times. It’s hard to see where Amazon does anything to illegally use its monopoly (they don’t use their shopping advantage to cross sell AWS in any way, or Vice versa). Amazon is genuinely not a bad monopoly (they have pushed down prices), but they are a terrible monopsony (basically destroying retailers that are not Chinese knockoffs), but monopsony protection laws are weak to non-existent world wide.

3. Apple - Apple is not a monopoly in nearly anything, which makes antitrust action against them very difficult. The EU has better laws around this, which has allowed them to force Apple to do the right thing in many cases (USB-C, opening up the App Store, although Apple complies in the worst ways possible, even though compliance has often been beneficial for them, like in the case of USB-C connectivity), but US laws are far too rigid to be able to really do much with them, as long as they are not monopolies.

[lesuorac]

> It’s hard to see where Amazon does anything to illegally use its monopoly

Amazon literally uses the marketplace data to determine which products to make Amazon Basic versions of.

I think the better argument of "Google isn't getting targeted" is that literally all of those companies have been sued in the past (and will be in the future and probably currently have cases being worked against them).

[burnte]

> Amazon literally uses the marketplace data to determine which products to make Amazon Basic versions of.

So does BestBuy, Kroger, WalMart, drug manufacturers, and literally ever single other industry where there are generics, private brands, and copycat products/services of all types.

[klabb3]

Which is a problem there as well. The way I see it, just empirically, is that the marketplace needs separation from an actor on said marketplace, on a strict no-collusion basis. It’s two naturally opposing roles with a conflict of interest (by design - it can be a force for good). Every time I see this inbreeding, sure enough there’s corruption, laziness, perverse incentives, and at the end of it, high prices and poor consumer experience.

It can be train operators and rail, fiber owners and ISPs, insurance companies and pharma, or an App Store and apps, social media and ad delivery.

US antitrust law doesn’t cover this, but I believe in EU there’s stricter pro-competition enforcement (I don’t know enough to pinpoint the exact laws behind, but some markets really work here. Writing this post from a 10GBit symmetric residential line for €24/mo). At least you don’t see as much of this kind of false choice and nefarious market makers.

Sorry I can’t explain it better.

[burnte]

You're explaining it ok, it's just not a workable idea. You're talking about taking away a fundamental aspect of economics, which if even if it were possible would be a huge blow to efficiency of markets. It's like saying you don't like that people die at different ages so you're going to legally mandate everyone gets to live for 1000 years. It can't be done, and the ramifications if you could are earth shattering.

First, it's not possible because to do this you'd have to outlaw sales analytics. You'd have to ban companies from making decision on what to sell and what to price things at based on what is happening in the market. Even if you pass a law that says that, you'll never be able to prove a company did or didn't make a decision based on sales data. Imagine going to a grocery store in November in the USA and seeing 18,000 cases of sardines but no breadcrumbs or stuffing boxes because the ordering guy isn't allowed to know what is selling well and what is selling poorly. That's insanity.

Second, market efficiency. The cornerstone of the economics of trade is that goods should be produced by the most efficient producer and sold by the most efficient seller to a market where they get a good return. By blocking companies from doing this, you're saying pricing should be made blindly, and you can't change based on what other actors do, what the market does, what customer want, because that would be "unfair". In the 90s I was part of a small business that built and sold PCs. Dell's volume ability absolutely destroyed the small-business PC maker industry, including mine. That wasn't unfair, that's economics.

[klabb3]

Huh? I am talking here about EU regulations that are in effect today, and giving examples of healthy markets. This isn’t some hypothetical thing, they do it different than (post-Reagan) US but it’s not like the US has no rules, so free market vs equal-outcome-tyranny is a completely false dichotomy here.

On topic, it seems like the US is focused on competitors ie preventing horizontal collusion and preferential agreements. At least after reading up a bit, that’s where EU is different, which considers vertical ones equally, such as supplier and distributors. In any case, that’s where antitrust seems to fall apart in practice – that depending on how you slice and dice the “market segments” you can craft a narrative where it’s impossible to prove even obvious perverse markets like health insurance - pharma.

[burnte]

The EU doesn't make it illegal to use sales data to optimize your product offering.

[written-beyond]

But how many Googles, Apples, Bells, and Enron's does Europe have? Not many...

[tbrownaw]

> Microsoft gets left alone - Really? You may want to ask the closest adult near you about this.

I've got some bad news for you: 2001 was 23 years ago. It's possible to not just be a legal adult (18) but also old enough to drink (21) and still not have been born yet when that was going down.

[mattferderer]

Thank you for making us all feel very old.

Slight aside on the original post:

* Microsoft did just fight off a huge government battle on Activision. I believe they lost a battle on Teams bundling. Last week the FTC announced they were looking into Azure.

* Apple, their store & mobile browser has been a topic of monopoly discussions for years.

* Amazon wasn't allowed to buy Roomba just this past year. They've had tons of inquires over the past decade.

[msabalau]

Or run for Congress in the midterms if they are 25 by the time of the next election two years from now.

[tootie]

I look back and I honestly wonder if that lawsuit actually had the effect they intended.

[tremon]

Who are the "they" in your question? Clinton's administration that started the enforcement action against Microsoft, or Bush' administration that ultimately presided over the conclusion of the case?

Similar thing will happen now: none of these actions will be pursued nor enforced by the new government.

[lopis]

> hey don’t use their shopping advantage to cross sell AWS in any way, or Vice versa

Isn't AWS directly sponsoring Amazon by essentially letting them run the biggest online retailer for free, which other retailers can't? And Amazon in itself is a terrible monopoly because it has unfair access to all user purchase data, while also selling their own amazon products on their platform.

[scarface_74]

AWS charges Amazon to use their servers as it does any other big business. If your department can’t be profitable taking into account your AWS bill, questions will be asked.

It happened to something related to an internal game studio (???)

When I was there, our department’s use of the internal system for creating sandbox accounts (Isengard) was charged against our profit and loss.

If you are a big enough customer, you can get rates similar to what AWS charges Amazon.

[guerrilla]

> You may want to ask the closest adult near you about this.

This doesn't belong on this site. Find another way to say it.

[niutech]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

[wepple]

We know the MS antitrust case. I believe the point was that suggesting someone isn’t an adult is not productive.

They could’ve simply referenced the case directly.

[guerrilla]

Correct.

[tbrownaw]

I'm not sure that misunderestimating the amount of time that's passed invalidates the point that it was pretty widely known before apparently being lost to the mists of time.

[lukas099]

> they are a terrible monopsony (basically destroying retailers that are not Chinese knockoffs)

Wondering if you or someone could explain this. I looked up monopsonies but still confused.