<story><title>Google is a monopoly – the fix isn&apos;t obvious</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/15/google_monopoly_fix/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fny</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved &amp;quot;uniform&amp;quot; businesses:&lt;p&gt;- American Tobacco: Commodity&lt;p&gt;- Standard Oil: Commodity&lt;p&gt;- AT&amp;amp;T: Utility&lt;p&gt;- Northern Securities: Railroads&lt;p&gt;- Swift &amp;amp; Co: Meatpacking&lt;p&gt;- Kodak: Film&lt;p&gt;- Paramount: Movie Theaters&lt;p&gt;Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective dominance?&lt;p&gt;I support this ruling and more across all industries, but I&amp;#x27;m trying to square how a breakup should work that actually drives competition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mcpar-land</author><text>Breaking up their individual businesses can cause each business to have incentives that line up better with their customers &amp;#x2F; users. Example: if Chrome was separated from Google, they won&amp;#x27;t have as much of an incentive to push back against adblockers with things like Manifest V3. Or include APIs that are only available to google websites (Which it has! &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;x.com&amp;#x2F;lcasdev&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1810696257137959018&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;x.com&amp;#x2F;lcasdev&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1810696257137959018&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>
<story><title>Google is a monopoly – the fix isn&apos;t obvious</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/15/google_monopoly_fix/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fny</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved &amp;quot;uniform&amp;quot; businesses:&lt;p&gt;- American Tobacco: Commodity&lt;p&gt;- Standard Oil: Commodity&lt;p&gt;- AT&amp;amp;T: Utility&lt;p&gt;- Northern Securities: Railroads&lt;p&gt;- Swift &amp;amp; Co: Meatpacking&lt;p&gt;- Kodak: Film&lt;p&gt;- Paramount: Movie Theaters&lt;p&gt;Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective dominance?&lt;p&gt;I support this ruling and more across all industries, but I&amp;#x27;m trying to square how a breakup should work that actually drives competition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brookst</author><text>Ads and search are the two businesses that most directly collude and which could both survive and thrive independently.&lt;p&gt;If the search business worked with other ad networks to maximize their revenue, while the ad business worked with other search engines, we’d likely see higher quality search results, less confusion about what’s an ad versus a result, and better as rates for buyers.&lt;p&gt;That said I don’t support that remedy at all. Maybe ten or fifteen years ago, but now it’s too late and the market is evolving around Google. IMO a consent decree that they won’t pay anyone for exclusive search placement is sufficient.</text></comment>