[burningChrome]

At its core antitrust cases are about monopolies and how companies use anti-competitive conduct to maintain their monopoly.

Github isn't the only source control software in the market. Unless they're doing something obvious and nefarious, its doubtful the justice department will step in when you can simply choose one of many others like Bitbucket, Sourcetree, Gitlab, SVN, CVS, Fossil, DARCS, or Bazaar.

There's just too much competition in the market right now for the govt to do anything.

[datsci_est_2015]

Minimal changes have occurred to the concept of “antitrust” since its inception as a form of societal justice against corporations, at least per my understanding.

I doubt policymakers in the early 1900s could have predicted the impact of technology and globalization on the corporate landscape, especially vis a vis “vertical integration”.

Personally, I think vertical integration is a pretty big blind spot in laws and policies that are meant to ensure that consumers are not negatively impacted by anticompetitive corporate practices. Sure, “competition” may exist, but the market activity often shifts meaningfully in a direction that is harmful consumers once the biggest players swallow another piece of the supply chain (or product concept), and not just their competitors.

[ianburrell]

There was a change in the enforcement of antitrust law in the 1970s. Consumer welfare, which came to mean lower prices, is the standard. Effectively normal competition is fine and takes egregious behavior to be violation. It even assumes that big companies are more efficient which makes up for lack of competition.

The other change is reluctance to break up companies. AT&T break up was big deal. Microsoft survived being broken up in its antitrust trial. Tech companies can only be broken up vertically, but maybe the forced competition would be enough.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

> you can simply choose one of many others

Not really. It's a network effect, like Facebook. Value scales quadratically with the number of users, because nobody wants to "have to check two apps".

We should buy out monopolies like the Chinese government does. If you corner the market, then you get a little payout and a "You beat capitalism! Play again?" prize. Other companies can still compete but the customers will get a nice state-funded high-quality option forever.

[StilesCrisis]

Forever, for sure, definitely. State sponsored projects are never subject to the whims of uninformed outsiders.

[mrweasel]

Picking something other than Github may also have the positive effect that you're less of a target for drive by AI patches.

[porise]

Can they use Github to their advantage to maintain a monopoly if they are nefarious? Think about it.

[afavour]

Unfortunately the question is "have they", not "can they".