Antitrust enforcement is so scattershot, varying over time and depending on current us administration. It's like an entire higher level of abstraction over the problem. And in practice we have extremely little antitrust enforcement in the us over the last 20 years. We'd have to theoretically fix antitrust enforcement, then eventually "market forces" would force google say, to improve customer service.
Google is not going to change, they are one of the trillion dollar babies and they can just ignore us. Just like apple. What anti-trust enforcement could cause them to change? I'm skeptical the new EU rules about how "open install of apps to breakup app-store monopolies" will work to effect change.
Google ads are a natural monopoly, like power lines. What are you going to do, go to 1/3 of its ad customers and tell them they're switching to Southwestern Google while another 1/3 have to switch to Pacific Google?
And then one of them becomes dominate after 5 years, and the other(s) fold. It's an inevitable problem. The only way to "break them apart" that would make any sense at all would be to break off distinct divisions, like Search, YouTube, Gmail, Google Cloud, etc. Into separate companies. Then forbidding them to acquire each other, and generally be extremely pessimistic/restrictive if any of them attempt to acquire any company at all.
Nope, Google is utility. It is embedded on how the web works, it's not a matter of not having an alternative but it is a matter on Google defining how everything works. Whatever Google chooses to do, it becomes a standart. People design their products to fit Google's infrastructure.
When that infrastructure rejects you or your product, you are in trouble because everything is build around the assumption that you will be reachable over Google.
This is a horrible argument. If Google disappeared tomorrow the web wouldn’t lose anything but ads that I block anyway and you would go to another search engine.
I think this is about as silly as claiming that Microsoft controls how all computers work, or that Apple has the final say over every smartphone. Chrome has the advantage here, but that doesn't make them a defacto monopoly. If your definition was right, every other member of FAANG would probably have worse crimes to answer to wrt "defining how everything works". Even the people standing behind Apple have lost this fight, since even Safari has admitted it was wrong about PWAs. Plus, it's not like Google is all-powerful here. Negative public response got FLOC shelved before it hit Chrome betas, and they still don't have the gall to bring it up again.
Google is not a utility any more than Apple or Spotify is a utility. And if we're going to break up both of those companies, we may as well just dissolve every other Fortune 500 company while we're at it.
Except I don't agree with their definition. Google's ability to "choose how things work" comes from their investment in the web as a platform for things like GSuite, Google Meet and more. Plenty of other companies have the ability to speak up, but none of the big players (Apple, Microsoft) do because it would sabotage their market position. So, Google is the only one left making significant changes, aside from open source contributors/committees.
> Sounds great.
Now you're grossly missing the point. The problem isn't the status quo, it's the system. Tearing down Standard Oil will leave a power vacuum, and adequate incentive from suppliers and processors will just make another monopoly. If your goal is to get rid of those companies, that's a pretty counterintuitive way to do it.
Personally, I think our world needs to start taking digital standards more seriously, like ISO but taken to the next level. We let ourselves get in these positions because we don't force these companies to provide interoperability or data ownership. Capitalism can work in the tech sector at this scale, but we need better regulation and more strict rules around proprietary interfaces. At least, that's the accelerationist mindset; we can languish in technological fiefdom for as long as we'd like, I'm sure FAANG doesn't mind.
> Now you're grossly missing the point. The problem isn't the status quo, it's the system.
That is my point. A system in which any of the fortune 500 companies can come into existence is grossly broken on multiple levels. Companies should be afraid of getting more than 10% of a worldwide market for fear of real anti-competition laws coming into effect rather than the farce we have now, or of vertically integrating too much, and should only make proprietary interfaces as a last resort.
A company being in a position to unilaterally change web standards, and force a monopoly on their web browser to further monopolise their advertising business should be grounds for splitting it into pieces at the very least, and seizing it in its entirety as the expected oitcome if they exercise that power.
> Capitalism can work in the tech sector at this scale,
The surveillance state and pending apocalypse we live in where you get jailed for successfully fighting in court says that it really can't. Any regulation or democratic control is ephemeral when you are systematically assigning more power to megacorps on a daily basis.
I think between the democracy we have in practice and the megacorps, most would choose the megacorps.
Partially /s. But in general, democracy isn’t doing too well, and a lot of it is due to a massive segment of bored, decadent, and petty populace that would rather watch the world burn if it owns their political enemies. At least with megacorps there is room for competence and science.
> But in general, democracy isn’t doing too well, and a lot of it is due to a massive segment of bored, decadent, and petty populace that would rather watch the world burn if it owns their political enemies.
This is what the megacorps being in control looks like because they're the ones that led us here through ownership of media and thus any political candidate with a chance. Facebook, microsoft and google are only just getting started in the same space, and it is already many times worse than fox ever was.
No, this is your problem with monopolies. The fix is anti-trust enforcement, not slapping the word "utility" around.