The state attorneys general investigating Google for potential antitrust violations are leaning toward pushing for a breakup of its ad technology business as part of an expected suit, people familiar with the situation told CNBC.
Fifty attorneys general have been probing Google’s business practices for months, alongside a similar probe being led by the U.S. Department of Justice. Both the states and the DOJ are looking to file a suit against the internet giant as soon as within the next few months, the people told CNBC.
Any corporate break up always depends on the details, but there’s no denying the large technology companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and others have amassed such immense amounts of wealth and influence that they should definitely be either leashed, or broken up entirely – something the US in particular has a lot of experience with.
Thom Holwerda,
Google absolutely have too much power and control. The end game is when all small & medium companies collapse and consolidate and we’re left with only gigantic multinationals holding all the money, resources, and control. In many ways I think it’s futile to stop this eventuality since they’re already holding nearly all the cards.
I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about…was this meant sarcastically? With few exceptions, the US has done very little to tackle the widespread consolidation of corporate power.
look up AT&T or Rockefeller’s Standard Oil – it does not happen often enough, but in the pat the USA is/was very capable of breaking up a monopoly … that said: they failed to do so with Microsoft in the 90s …
cybergorf,
Those events were so long ago that many of the people from those events have passed away. If this is what Thom is referring to he should have said “something the US in particular had a lot of experience with”. I don’t think it was “a lot” of experience, but whatever. However if he meant to use the present tense, then it isn’t clear to me what he’s referring to…?
The USG scared Google into breaking itself up, albeit into many smaller subsidiaries.
They also stopped Apple and Amazon from colluding on fixing e-book prices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#State_governments
Whilst the tech wold hasn’t seen much progress on the antitrust side of things, i think most of that is because tech companies are often much much younger than the careers of these senior prosecutors. Therefore, they’re likely not to be aware of what tech company monopolies can look like
They have in the past but mostly the US Gov does it’s very best to service and enhance Monopolies by incorporating corporations into the running of the State. Can barely tell the difference in a lot of sectors such as ISPs or the financial sector. Public Interest, never heard of it.
Google and Amazon are way more dangerous than Apple.
I would add Facebook to that list too.
Definitely!
In my opinion, Apple and Google are bad in different ways. Google tend to support Open Source a hell of a lot more than Apple, while Apple are happy to benefit from Open Source without putting much back. Google are worse for privacy issues – which isn’t really surprising for an ad company. Apple are guilty of creating much more closed ecosystems, and not just policing software on quality, but also for imposing guidelines on their platforms as to what is allowable, which are often unrelated to security or quality concerns.
Amazon I can see littlle redeeming about.
Ironically, I think Amazon is the least harmful of the trio, at least it goes some way to enable some small trading as oppose to obliterate them!
Google and Apple are in my thoughts equally bad, they have both become ultra-professional at stealing IP, it’s the primary skill of both organisations. This will only get worse when Apple pushes further into proprietary hardware solutions, they’ll sue everyone who invents or offers a possible alternative to suppress opposition which will stifle innovation. It’s ironic that Apple is the biggest road block to innovation given it’s marketing speaks exactly the opposite!
They’re all harmful in their own ways.
Facebook: Harmful to society, allowing the spread of misinformation.
Google: Harmful to the web experience, filling every website with ads.
Amazon: Harmful to the environment. Masses of waste produced by their shipping processes.
Apple: Harmful to your wallet.
@The123King, I think many would probably see Apple are predatory towards inventors and makers.
I disagree.
syngularyx,
They’re all bad in that they all have too much power over their respective markets.
In the US, we went from anyone with moderate means having an opportunity to open up their own mom & pop store to compete in the world to the point where you had to be financially privileged and now even many of those financially privileged are struggling with looming bankruptcy against today’s corporate titans sucking up all the customers and money. More and more of our economic activity is controlled by these corporations. Whether it’s search engines, walled gardens, or dominant portals, all of these corporations are controlling access to customers.
They all do it in different ways of course, but all of them are effectively using their brands to capitalizing on the struggle of smaller businesses to compete with them.
Can’t compete with amazon? Don’t worry, you can become an amazon seller!
Can’t compete with the apple store? Don’t worry, you can sell through the apple store!
Can’t get customers to find your site? Don’t worry, you can pay google to send them your way!
The problem isn’t so much that their actions are illegal, but that collectively those at the top have all the power and the small/medium businesses are suffering left and right. What kind of civilization do we want to be? Do we want to have a future where a few huge corporations control all of the customers, resources, wealth, etc? It’s pretty clear that if we don’t take action, only the biggest corporations are going to succeed in the long run.
I never wrote that Apple is good, only that Amazon & Google (and Facebook!) are way more dangerous.
Their business-models are dangerous to society, not only to IT.
Truth be told, Apple got rich with its hardware. There is really no compelling reason to buy an iPhone. As simple as that. If, for any reason, iPhone’s sales decrease, Apple’s power will be resized too.
With Amazon, Google, Facebook is a complete different story, because they have other business models.
Amazon controls the online retailing industry. I get it. Bezos got it right. He had a great idea and nowadays using Amazon is so comfortable, that deciding not to, is pretty much a political choice! Due to its power, Amazon & Bezos can afford to loose money to expand and put smaller competitors out of business (it already happened and it will happen again!!!)
How crazy is this?
Google and its services know all your life. Doesn’t this scare you?
This whole sector (personal data, privacy) should be better regulated, before it’s to late.
And if Google’s other bets are successful, we will soon have a real Umbrella Corporation.
Facebook is, simply put, a misinformation industry. The thing that scares me the most with Facebook is its popularity among youngsters. Zuckerberg has showed where his company’s priorities are… money!
Facebook left unchecked is dangerous to society.
So, yes, they are all bad, but some are way worse and more dangerous than others!
syngularyx,
Obviously they’re all different, but we must not dismiss the danger of walled gardens where owners are explicitly denied full control over their own devices. We’re allowing these restrictions to become normalized and it’s even spreading to other areas of computing. Apple does this with the explicit intent of blocking competing stores and charging fees, but if that’s not bad enough mark my words it’s only a matter of time before governments start to seek control. Too many of us are naive about the dangers of locked down hardware that we as owners can not control.
The source of apple’s revenue is irrelevant to me, it’s artificial restrictions on owners that are harmful. They use their position & control over hardware to skim tens of billions of dollars per year out of software channels into apple’s own pockets. Apple didn’t earn that money, they didn’t put the work in, but much like google, facebook, etc, they benefit by having control over users. I’d even argue that apple relies more on anti-competitive vendor locking than the others too. Sure it’s a different strategy, but it still hurts owner rights and competition.
I’m plenty critical of google. But it isn’t my intention to rank which powerful corporations are worse in some apples to oranges comparison. We’ve got to be smart and not justify or trivialize the harm in X because we dislike Y more than X. we need to be critical of all the attacks on our liberties and control that are happening across the board!
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Why would America Want to break up amazon/google/apple/facebook? They are globally dominant companies and brands. Breaking them up would allow competition, and that competition wouldn’t be American. It would be Huawei/Xiaomi/Alibaba/Baidu. With state backing, these companies wont Every be broken down if they replace the monopoly the Americans currently hold
Adurbe,
I think you’re right. US lawmakers don’t give a crap about fair markets so long as the US is in the lead. I suspect that foreign companies like hikvision and huawei are feeling the wrath of US politicians and lawmakers specifically because they are foreign. Had they been US companies, they’d be getting more of the very contracts they’re being banned from now.
The problem with protectionism (explicit or implicit) is that the privileged companies on top become too inefficient and top-heavy. They take such a large & disproportionate share of the pie that it takes away resources from the real innovators in the rest of the market. Killing off the small businesses could be counterproductive to society in the long term, not merely in terms of jobs and equality, but potentially also leaving the US overall competitively vulnerable to far more efficient foreign businesses from countries where they actually encouraged competition. This is what’s happened with textiles, manufacturing, etc, the US just could not compete anymore. Maybe lawmakers should consider that US corporations will be healthier and stronger overall if they face genuine domestic competitive threats to their dominance. Eventually we will face foreign threats and we probably won’t be prepared if our companies spent most of their existence pampered and privileged.
There is such irony in the defence of one mega-corporate entity versus another, the concept of one or the other being more damaging to “society” really depends on who’s “society” you are referring to.
Statements along those lines just tend to expose a greater prejudice! Apple is “OK” if you’re wasting you’re disposable income buying the latest Apple gadgets, perhaps not so good if you scratch a living by making them! Or if you’re a 2 cent developer helping Apple build a trillion dollar business for which they throw you a few scraps.
There some irony in the world protesting that black lives matter while using the latest iPhones to self-organise, built with Apple’s foot on the throat of SE Asia! At least the workers can’t throw themselves out of 3rd floor windows anymore, they are locked in like a prison now!
Of course Apple keep that all at arms length by sub-contracting! Sure good for “society”!