Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by GeekyBear 73 days ago
Using your monopoly market share video service as a weapon against companies offering platforms that compete with your own is textbook antitrust behavior.

Google used YouTube as a weapon against both Windows Phone and devices running Amazon's Fire fork of Android.
1 comments
bigyabai 73 days ago
> monopoly market share video service

A "monopoly" "service"? What have they monopolized, laziness? It's not the App Store, you can go replace it with DailyMotion at your earliest convenience.

You're still retreading why your original comment was not at all relevant to the critique being made. We have precedent for prosecuting monopolistic behavior in America, but it doesn't encompass services even when they're mandatory to use the client. It does have a precedent for arbitrarily preventing competitors from shipping a runtime that competes with the default OS, incidentally.

link
GeekyBear 73 days ago
When your product has a monopoly market share, you don't get to use it as a weapon against competitors in other markets, even if you claim there is some imaginary exception to antitrust law involving servers.
link
raw_anon_1111 73 days ago
It’s called “No duty to deal”

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

link
GeekyBear 73 days ago
Which is fine, right up until you:

have a product with a monopoly market share

AND

use that product as a weapon against competitors in other markets

That conduct is clearly illegal.

link
raw_anon_1111 73 days ago
The entire idea of capitalism is to use your advantages over competitors.

But exactly how does Apple have a monopoly in computers with less than 10-15% market share?

link
GeekyBear 72 days ago
The entire point of antitrust law is to place limits on what capitalists are allowed to do.

Apple doesn't have what American law sees as a monopoly market share in any market.

Be aware that other jurisdictions, like the EU, start placing restrictions on the behavior of companies with lower market share than American antitrust law requires.

link
bigyabai 73 days ago
You don't get to demand that the server support your endpoint, period. There is no precedent for that ever happening in US antitrust law, because it's not anticompetitive.

If you think otherwise, make your case to Google's lawyers instead of spinning hypothetical case law.

link