Posted on 10/20/2020 8:43:40 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday charged Google with illegally maintaining a monopoly on search and search advertising, teeing off a legal battle likely to take years and send shockwaves across Silicon Valley.
The lawsuit, filed in District of Columbia federal court, is the result of a year-long investigation into concentrations of economic power in the online economy.
The DOJ argues that Google has entered into exclusionary contracts with phone makers to preload its search engine onto devices using Alphabet’s Android operating system.
Those contracts have allowed Google to maintain a monopoly while stifling competition and innovation, the suit contends. It also accuses Google of using profits from that monopoly to buy preferential treatment for its search engine on web browsers, including Safari.
Estimates of Google’s control of the market for online searches range from 80 up to 90 percent, resulting in tens of billions in annual revenue.
The Federal Trade Commission investigated whether Google had abused its search market power nearly a decade ago, but the five-person commission voted not to bring a case in 2013.
Eleven Republican state attorneys general joined the case filed Tuesday. Other attorneys general may choose to join the case later or bring their own challenges to Google’s position.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Release the algorithms.
What has taken so F’n long?
FWIW, I remember when they re-opened the case into BJ Clinton’s wife’s crimes around now in 2016, so they could “clear” her several hours later.
The issue, unfortunately, which the antitrust suit does not address is doctored search engine algorithms to produce a certain biased result when it comes to political and policy issue research. Try googling “torture works” and witness the
result of “torture does not work”. It is not so much a search engine as an adversarial debate engine. lol
A monopoly isn't illegal under U.S. antitrust law. Taking steps to maintain a monopoly by putting competitors at a disadvantage is. That's why the focus of this case isn't the workings of the search engines themselves, but the steps taken by Google to put their search engines on Android phones and block competitors from doing the same.
This seems like the exact same basis as the original Microsoft antitrust suit.
Google claims search results are based on search queries; they don’t manipulate searches.
***********
That’s pure BS. The search results are clearly curated and massaged to manipulate people. Its the most obvious thing in the world.
They needed a Project Veritas guy to show them how to investigate?
Thanks!
+1
Informative and insightful comment.
Yes!
Yes!
Then, instead of propping up newspaper monopolies in our big cities (through exemptions from anti-trust prosecution, etc.) they, too, need to be busted up into smaller AND COMPETITIVE publications.
Most cities used to have several newspapers, which generally provided much better news coverage and at least some diversity in political biases.
Today’s monopolistic papers usually do a crappy or non-existent job of covering local and regional news (with some exceptions), and only present one POV. This latter is extremely important now that the papers appear to lack editors (with political bias taking over in both the selection of stories and their presentation).
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA federal court? WHY???!!!! 7 of 12 judges are Obama lackeys; Roberts oversees. It’s the new Ninth.
bookmark
If they are committing crimes now, seize their servers until they fix it.
Yup. But this is a start. Thank God.
Yes, good legal info.
The search engine itself CAN be used to limit competition.
In this case, the Google search engine favors Big Government Democrats. Big Government Democrats in turn, give Google, Big Government protections that other search engines don't have.
There should be more to this than challenging the putting of search engines on Android phones.
But that's not illegal. Do you think the New York Times has an obligation to print ads for the New York Post? Of course not.
It WOULD be illegal, however, for the New York Times to sign a newspaper distribution contract with newspaper vendors that prohibit them from selling the New York Post at any retail store where the NYT is sold.
In this case, the Google search engine favors Big Government Democrats. Big Government Democrats in turn, give Google, Big Government protections that other search engines don't have.
For one thing, that's not an antitrust issue. It's simple corruption -- and legal, too. The law needs to be changed.
Secondly, what "protections" does Google have that other search engines don't have?
L8r
10 years in court and a fine. No biggie for Google.
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