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US Treasury Secretary Calls For Google Monopoly Probe (theregister.co.uk)
After a 60 Minutes episode that focused on Google and its effective search monopoly, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin called for large tech companies to be investigated for potential antitrust violations. Asked whether Google was abusing its market dominance as a monopoly, Mnuchin told CNBC on Monday "these are issues that the Justice Department needs to look at seriously," and argued that it was important to "look at the power they have" noting that companies like Google "have a greater and greater impact on the economy." The Register reports: Mnuchin's willingness to directly criticize Google and other tech companies and argue that they should be under investigation is just the latest sign that Washington DC is serious about digging in the market power of Big Internet. It is notable that it was 20 years ago, almost to the day, that America finally dealt with another tech antitrust problem when the Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general filed suit -- on May 18, 1998 -- against what was then the most powerful tech company in the country: Microsoft.
Not Google.
Federal prison is a lot more fair than state prison that's for sure.
Dupe!
https://search.slashdot.org/st...
Editors: I suggest to just google the title you are about to publish to help avoid dupes.
Example: I googled for " US Treasury Secretary Calls For Google Monopoly Probe" and found the previously posted article right away ("Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Wants Justice Department To Scrutinize Big Tech")
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
As a tour guide? That'd be neat. Sounds like a good job for a retiree.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Google has been ripe for anti-trust for more than long enough. And for the people that are asking why lets break it down. Google is NOT just a search engine. Visit a few websites and look at who all is running scripts. Most sites will have at least 1 or more of googles analytic, tagging, ads, or static services. Next up is Android... do you use Android? Then you have a relationship with Google like it or not. Play Store is owned by Google or Alphabet whichever.
Do you use Chrome, google owns it. Remember when Microsoft was in trouble for just having internet explorer installed when you got it? The simple fact is that you cannot do nearly anything without Google on the internet. And while that might seem harmless it is not. Google tracks you, tracks what you do, catalogues what you like or it thinks you like. Google keeps bio-metrics and facial recognition of you. Once you are in, you are IN!
Google is in your business, they gather and correlate any an every bit of information about you that it can so it can sell it and use it to appropriate more information about you to sell as well. The problem is not just monopoly, it is anti-trust, and that means google colluding with and influencing or even "forcefully/maliciously influencing" businesses they partner with the same way Walmart and Amazon likes to push distributors and suppliers around with their largess...
If you are a small business... and google tells you that you need to do something or face being delisted or worse... what are you going to do? They are a big player and if you don't play according to their rules they have ways to make life tough for you, no one is going to actually care! Google just simply should NOT be allowed to be a browser, search engine, business data/analytic, application store, ISP, and ad service all at the same time.
Anti-Trust is NOT about keeping people from using google as a search engine, or ads, or as a content provider, or as application store, or as a mobile OS platform. Anti-Trust is about Google owning and operating all of those at the same time and keeping their API's in house just enough so that they are not easy to use by competitors. Because now that google owns most of the logic on the roads, you still have to bend to their will or you just get no service and websites will not serve up content to you unless you accept google!
Tour guides have show proficiency in a subject and be able to convey knowledge verbally.
This should be very interesting. Are they a "web search" monopoly or are they an "web advert" monopoly or a "user uploaded video" monopoly. Should the government differentiate between say professionally developed videos and user uploaded web videos? I mean they have utter and complete control of the user uploaded video market and they take away peoples livelihood on a whim leaving people no where else to make a real living. I am just interested as to how they determine which factor is the monopoly or is it all of them. Is it because they dominate all of those areas and user each of the dominate areas to make each other even more dominant. It would be very interesting if congress decided they needed to split those businesses up, you may actually get more than one "YouTube" finally. I mean others exists but YouTube has to have like 95%+ market share of user uploaded videos.
https://www.google.com/search?q=monopoly+probe
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I'm confused.
What market do they monopolize?
In what situation does anyone not have a choice as to whether to use some product or service offered by google, or one offered by another entity?
Between them, Google and Facebook control 60% of online ad revenue. That duopoly by itself, in a field that can best be described as "civilian propaganda," deserves close scrutiny by regulators. The difference between Facebook and Google is that Google does hardware, OS, software, search, and apps (vertical integration), while Facebook does just apps. Thus, of the two, Google actually has far more of an impact and interacts with nearly every citizen through vertical integration. Vertical integration wasn't OK in the early 20th century, when the Clayton Antitrust Act went through, so we should be especially wary of a new vertical integration that's arisen in the propaganda/media field today.
It is not only interesting but directly correlated.
I don't know if it happened in this very specific order, but it likely happened something similar to this.
Facebook was given loads of user data by its own users.
Analytica harvested that data from Facebook.
Trump campaign hired Analytica.
Trump won election contrary to statistics that painted Hillary as a landslide winner.
People began to freak out about it and wondered how it could happen.
People seem to still not realize that not only did it happen but it has been happening for much longer than Facebook.
Now that people are at least pretending to understand what is going on with they and talking about it, industry veterans started saying... you think Facebook is bad? Have you even googled yet?
It is too early to tell where or if google has any part in this. Did google help the supposed russian trolls spread fake news to help trump? Was google subverted despite google's own intentions? It's all technology, if your computer can be hacked to steal data, then it is not a difficult task to sour data in such a way as to promote/demote certain things with at least some efficacy.
Regarding the FTC, I would not count on it doing anything other than being the occasional fine collection agency like a mini IRS for the government. Most agencies are more like your employers HR department. They are there for the company not the employee even though they also resolve disputes between them. The FTC hardly goes after businesses like the DOJ. Take the case with the Target breach FTC did perform a joke of an investigation but did not fine Target, it took the states suing for Target to see any harm for it.
"Maybe if a Google search didn't turn up any results on Mueller investigations, the case against Google would disappear?"
Lol, good one, who knows, stranger shit has happened.
No they came to the realization that tech is a threat to the existing power structures that they depend on.
Was expecting 0 hard evidence or actual citations, and was not disappointed. I know facts and reality are the archenemies of Republicans, but here is some actual you know, evidence, showing that your guy is full of shit. https://krugman.blogs.nytimes....
Monstar L
If we get everyone to use Bing instead, the government would be forced to break up Microsoft, instead!
You know what's funny? Both Apple and Microsoft greatly abuse their monopolies in their respective OSes, which actually seems impossible if you think about it.
yep, you got it. My ass hurts, the doc says it is hemorrhoids... But I think it has been from all the years taking it from the nice folks at Microsoft. Damn, they have been getting away with this for decades but now the boot is in the ass to both Facebook and Google...
This stinks like there is a dead fish under the passengers seat.
Who in the hell keeps giving Microsoft all the freedom they have and everyone else gets to be broken up??? I can expect more butt hurt from the bully that keeps telling me to bend over. yes I am talking about Windows 10 and Office...
Your Average Joe
so what is being done about Microsoft? 5,000 employee company is paying those bastards $1 million a year to keep the software cops from shutting the business down. Google is not extorting us for $1 million per year....
get off my lawn you punk!
Your Average Joe
Do you care to share which search engine is superior to Google search then?
I suppose the other examples are subjective, but the numbers don't lie; more people seem to use them than not. I used Firefox since 0.6 days but finally switched to Chrome about a year and half before Quantum came out. Not bothering to switch back since I don't care for the new look of FF and there's no compelling reason to do so at this point - too little, too late.
What's better than Google Maps that's "free"?
I prefer Android OS in general, and the Google Pixel line specifically. I find the flexibility of what I can do with the device "superior" to the alternatives. The other major device is fine I'm sure; however, I've never owned one, so I'm basing that on its popularity. Perhaps they are a monopoly.
As for trackers & ads, I run with uBlock Origin and I use PIA and Incognito mode when I want to "go dark".
Bottom line is no one is forced to use Google products and it's not a monopoly.
#Whataboutism
That must mean Trump is a lot more expensive to bribe than Obama was?
You are part of the problem.
Ad hominem attack based on the geographical location where one lives has no place in informed debate. Stop posting forever.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
There's another much simpler, and far less convoluted way that we arrived in the present:
The Hillary campaign bungled what should have been an easy win by completely ignoring what they thought were 'safe' states in the upper midwest, to their own peril. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio. And that's the ball game.
Don't attribute to conspiracy what is adequately explained by sheer incompetence and an incredibly flawed candidate.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I see someone has decided Google isn't donating enough money to politicians again.
This is the way much of the world works. The only difference is the west pays closer attention and such donations must be on the up and up.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Google actually has competition, in pretty much anything it does.
The cable industry doesn't, and it shows. Why hasn't Comcast been investigated?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
She's an intelligent woman, that I have no doubt. She has trouble with being forthright and conceding when she doesn't have expertise on a topic. Not knowing everything doesn't make you stupid. As for her public speaking ability? Hillary's public speaking abilities are not as bad as G.W. Bush, but on the other hand Bush would make a fantastic tourguide with his goofy charisma. (and has ability to climb stairs)
Not being able to say "I don't know" is a flaw typical of male slashdotters.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I like startpage / ixquick. But it fails me sometimes and I fall back to google.
Firefox is still alright.
The alternatives to android are pretty shitty. Apple? .... Microsoft? But there's an important almost but not quite viable alternative of running F-droid.
Google services don't ship on Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, or the various flavors of Linux.
*Cough* Android is a flavor of linux. *cough*.
And google services ship with them. And seriously don't like being removed, when you even can. If MS can get an anti-trust suit for shipping Windows with IE, then this is probably equivalent.
No one is ever a complete monopoly, but they can be dominant enough to push the market around in abusive ways. I'm not sure google has really been all that abusive though. I get the sense that they're stepping in that direction over time.
Maybe they should go after the ISPs first. Even Google gets slapped around by them.