I have a question. Do Google's behavior and actions from 15 years ago matter in this case? When they purchased YouTube, they 'disappeared' our exploding music video website SINGINGFOOL. A year later, they did the same for our movie and tv search and review site VIDEODETECTIVE. I hired a lawyer who wrangled me a visit to the DOJ. Absolutely nothing happened and we moved on to providing B2B data service which thanks to Netflix and Comcast did quite well. So again, does this matter now or is there a 'statute of limitations' kind of thing? If it does, how can I help win this case?
I was a beta user of Neeva as well and got excited immediately after I started using it. When they rolled out the AI feature to their search engine I was tickled, and when they announced they were shutting down I was immensely disappointed.
The irony is that while they had a relatively large percentage of their users who signed on for the premium paid service, they simply did not have *enough* users, paying or not, to justify their continued operation. I hope that this case lays the groundwork for competition to re-enter the search engine space.
Conceptually, ATT constricted bandwidth because of their network control. (Remember how much it was to talk to Grandma?) The market's reaction - creating a bunch of new providers, allowing outside devices on the network, and replacing Bell Labs with a thousand start-ups - led, at least indirectly to Google/Android/YouTube. And another monopoly, this one constricting search.
Great article. However, having lived much of my life prior to the ATT breakup I tend to disagree to some of the points. What we had pre 1982 was far and away the best communications system on the planet. Now we don't. It is also a stretch, in my opinion, to say that the breakup pretty much led to things like the internet and todays cellular phones. Things like that came because of technology advances, many of which had actually originated in Bell Labs. The real issue, and you did spell it out nicely, is the total lack of enforcement of regulated monopoly and antitrust since the mid 1980's. This is today affecting everything from communications to search to medicine to pharmaceuticals to the electric grid and much much more. And, it is hurting the consumer with all of those things costing orders of magnitude more than they should, not to mention lack of access for millions. Breaking up Google, while it may be a good thing, doesn't solve the main issues we have.
My dad was a low and practically no income physician in a small town. I noticed that he had prescription pads that were provided by one of the pharmacies in town. From the pharmacy’s point of view it tended to make the patient think he had to go to that pharmacy to fill the prescription. At some point this was ruled illegal, so today prescriptions do not have a pharmacy name on them (if you can get a paper prescription). I think the default search engine setting has a similar effect.
By the way, electronic subscriptions make it more difficult for the patient to shop around.
Since AT&T’s monopoly was a government granted monopoly on long distance service I don’t think the analogy with it and Google works. Almost all local phone service was government granted monopolies as well because it was believed these services were natural monopolies. It is not clear to me that search engines are natural monopolies whereas before wireless phone service was developed local telephone service was. And I think the long distance monopoly held by AT&T was certainly no longer a natural monopoly after they began to use satellites.
Methinks the Supreme Court will have the final say on Google.
"Google has maintained this monopoly, the government alleges, not by making a better product, but by locking down everywhere that consumers might be able to find a different search engine option, and making sure they only see Google."
I hope they mention Neeva, which sought to build a better search engine, but recently folded and got acquired, stating quite plainly that getting people to actually choose to use a new search engine was simply too difficult to achieve. They built a competing search service from the ground up entirely, and technologically this is not a barrier.
Did AGs from PA and/or CT attend? I live connections to each state, and what they do in their states to push back against monopoly power can influence how AGs in other states are going about their work.
Hi, Matt, I would like to fill in the gap in my knowledge. What book would you recommend about the break up of the Standard Oil monopoly for this general reader? I was fascinated to learn today it led to the development of gasoline!
I have a question. Do Google's behavior and actions from 15 years ago matter in this case? When they purchased YouTube, they 'disappeared' our exploding music video website SINGINGFOOL. A year later, they did the same for our movie and tv search and review site VIDEODETECTIVE. I hired a lawyer who wrangled me a visit to the DOJ. Absolutely nothing happened and we moved on to providing B2B data service which thanks to Netflix and Comcast did quite well. So again, does this matter now or is there a 'statute of limitations' kind of thing? If it does, how can I help win this case?
I was a beta user of Neeva as well and got excited immediately after I started using it. When they rolled out the AI feature to their search engine I was tickled, and when they announced they were shutting down I was immensely disappointed.
The irony is that while they had a relatively large percentage of their users who signed on for the premium paid service, they simply did not have *enough* users, paying or not, to justify their continued operation. I hope that this case lays the groundwork for competition to re-enter the search engine space.
Conceptually, ATT constricted bandwidth because of their network control. (Remember how much it was to talk to Grandma?) The market's reaction - creating a bunch of new providers, allowing outside devices on the network, and replacing Bell Labs with a thousand start-ups - led, at least indirectly to Google/Android/YouTube. And another monopoly, this one constricting search.
Great article. However, having lived much of my life prior to the ATT breakup I tend to disagree to some of the points. What we had pre 1982 was far and away the best communications system on the planet. Now we don't. It is also a stretch, in my opinion, to say that the breakup pretty much led to things like the internet and todays cellular phones. Things like that came because of technology advances, many of which had actually originated in Bell Labs. The real issue, and you did spell it out nicely, is the total lack of enforcement of regulated monopoly and antitrust since the mid 1980's. This is today affecting everything from communications to search to medicine to pharmaceuticals to the electric grid and much much more. And, it is hurting the consumer with all of those things costing orders of magnitude more than they should, not to mention lack of access for millions. Breaking up Google, while it may be a good thing, doesn't solve the main issues we have.
My dad was a low and practically no income physician in a small town. I noticed that he had prescription pads that were provided by one of the pharmacies in town. From the pharmacy’s point of view it tended to make the patient think he had to go to that pharmacy to fill the prescription. At some point this was ruled illegal, so today prescriptions do not have a pharmacy name on them (if you can get a paper prescription). I think the default search engine setting has a similar effect.
By the way, electronic subscriptions make it more difficult for the patient to shop around.
Since AT&T’s monopoly was a government granted monopoly on long distance service I don’t think the analogy with it and Google works. Almost all local phone service was government granted monopolies as well because it was believed these services were natural monopolies. It is not clear to me that search engines are natural monopolies whereas before wireless phone service was developed local telephone service was. And I think the long distance monopoly held by AT&T was certainly no longer a natural monopoly after they began to use satellites.
Methinks the Supreme Court will have the final say on Google.
"Google has maintained this monopoly, the government alleges, not by making a better product, but by locking down everywhere that consumers might be able to find a different search engine option, and making sure they only see Google."
I hope they mention Neeva, which sought to build a better search engine, but recently folded and got acquired, stating quite plainly that getting people to actually choose to use a new search engine was simply too difficult to achieve. They built a competing search service from the ground up entirely, and technologically this is not a barrier.
Did AGs from PA and/or CT attend? I live connections to each state, and what they do in their states to push back against monopoly power can influence how AGs in other states are going about their work.
Hi, Matt, I would like to fill in the gap in my knowledge. What book would you recommend about the break up of the Standard Oil monopoly for this general reader? I was fascinated to learn today it led to the development of gasoline!
@matt check out this Tesla monpolizing chargers and more story https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2023-08-10-teslas-dominance-ev-charging-networks/