DOJ’s proposed Google anti-trust remedies

[Eric]

Feel free to use any term you want. Calling everyone on the right Nazis, Fascists, and garbage worked so well last election.

I've been waiting for your to pull this one out. Just remember that while Trump supporters aren't all Nazi's, all Nazi's are Trump supporters. Most of you all today would've supported Hitler without question. Be proud of who you are or don't, it's the truth.

The original Nazis came to power by winning elections. They were still nazis.

It's estimated that in 1939 Hitler's approval rating was between 80% and 90%. Is that more than Trump? A real man of the people.

 

[Herdfan]

The original Nazis came to power by winning elections. They were still nazis.

Doesn't change my point. Calling everyone names didn't work. In fact, I would say it hurt. But if the left wants to keep it up, by all means please do.

 

[Eric]

Doesn't change my point. Calling everyone names didn't work. In fact, I would say it hurt. But if the left wants to keep it up, by all means please do.

Nobody is calling you a name, we're saying there's a huge swath of you all that side with Nazi's. If you want to bust on someone for calling people names then look no further than your MAGA president. Or is he the only one you approve of doing such things?

 

[diamond.g]

But, like I said, if you happen to open the Google app on an Android phone, it helpfully provides you with a search box below the dock-like icon row, and once that happens, if you want that to not be there, you are SoL. It does not matter if you set a different default search engine, google is IYF.

Change your launcher (I guess now they call it home app)? Most folk go with Nova Launcher.

 

[Herdfan]

Nobody is calling you a name, we're saying there's a huge swath of you all that side with Nazi's. If you want to bust on someone for calling people names then look no further than your MAGA president. Or is he the only one you approve of doing such things?

And the mean tweets certainly hurt him in 2020. I think he picked fights he didn't need to pick. Fight back sure, but just trolling for fights wasn't good.

And yes, they did call us names. Maybe not on here specifically, but when the MSM is calling his MSG rally a Nazi rally, well you can see why people thing that. It didn't change the minds of the base, in fact it may have engaged them some. But look at the iffy Trump voter who liked some of his policies, but wasn't 100% convinced. So you call him a Nazi or fascist and he thinks, I'm not one of those so his distrust of the people saying it decreases. This election cured more cases of Gell-Mann amnesia that any in recent history.

 

[Eric]

And the mean tweets certainly hurt him in 2020. I think he picked fights he didn't need to pick. Fight back sure, but just trolling for fights wasn't good.

And yes, they did call us names. Maybe not on here specifically, but when the MSM is calling his MSG rally a Nazi rally, well you can see why people thing that. It didn't change the minds of the base, in fact it may have engaged them some. But look at the iffy Trump voter who liked some of his policies, but wasn't 100% convinced. So you call him a Nazi or fascist and he thinks, I'm not one of those so his distrust of the people saying it decreases. This election cured more cases of Gell-Mann amnesia that any in recent history.

They called you names you deserved to be called in my view. I couldn't care less about if they're being snowflakes (your guys' term, not ours). Anyone who stood by while Trump was the worst offender who is now suddenly "we won so stop calling us names" can suck my hairy bean bag.

Kamala still got 74,207,529 votes, those people count too. Welcome to being in charge with the majority dude, we had to deal with you all crying about it when Biden won.

 

[Nycturne]

But it's not baked in, not hard to change and changing it doesn't cripple anything. The MS thing was a bit different since they were using "Explorer" as both a web browser and to access settings.

MS did bake the IE engine into the OS, and there was a whole thing over whether or not IE and Windows could be "disentangled" which to me was a huge distraction/conflation. Yes, Microsoft was using the browser engine for other things in the OS by that point (since HTML was starting to get use for things like documentation), but it was beside the point of leveraging one dominant position (Windows) to create another dominant position (IE). I don't think anyone would care if parts of the OS still used the IE engine underneath for other purposes, except Microsoft's lawyers. The fact that the only real option for an OEM making PCs (other than Apple) was to license Windows, creates a scenario where if Microsoft says you need to include IE to get the Windows license, and pressures you to not accept pre-installed copies of competitors' software, what choice do you have other than accept or get out of the PC business?

https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/704876/dl

If a company forces their browser on you through it's default service and it's big enough, it then becomes a monopoly and rightfully so. Whether MS or Google, if it's baked in then changing it to another "default" is deliberately hard to do and often leaves it crippled. I mean look at all of the legal action it took force MS to make it so you could remove their browser from Windows.

Except, having a dominant position (monopoly) by itself isn't when anti-trust kicks in. You have to also be engaging an anti-competitive practices to either protect that position, or leverage it into new dominant positions. Google participates in multiple markets, and part of it is that Google has the ability to use Chrome and Android to favor its own internal businesses by being the one to steer the browser market, and half of the duopoly that's the mobile industry.

My thinking here is that the DOJ wants to split these off to limit the leverage Google has to shape the adjacent industries that Google uses to protect the core ad business. While many talk about having a technical moat, monopolies are basically on another level where they can have whole products or adjacent markets that are part of the moat.

I'll admit that I haven't closely followed the case, so I don't know exactly what DOJ argued here, but again, monopoly by itself isn't the problem as much as it is the ability to use that monopoly to distort the market in anti-competitive ways.

 

[Yoused]

The thing is I don't know if Google put it there as part of Android or if Samsung put it there.

Google put it there. Specifically, the Google app put it there: I saw it on a Pixel. If the user has never launched the Google app, it does not show up there at all. And, quite frankly, I am at a loss why anyone would even want a search box of any kind there – though, I am a bit of a paranerd luddite and always do my searches in DDG, using FF. I will most certainly not touch Chrome.