Google Antitrust Trial: Economist Explains How Internet Giant Rigged Ad Auction Bidding to Boost Prices 15%
According to recent testimony in the landmark antitrust trial against Google, the internet giant strategically altered its ad auction formula in 2017, raising prices by 15 percent and potentially earning billions in extra revenue.
On its face, this would seem more in the realm of fraud than antitrust, but if advertisers were forced to pay Google prices since they control most of the volume, then I see where this is relevant.
They have a monopoly- so every push they make into another sector should be illegal.
Youtube/gmail etc etc.
This legislation is from when standard oil used its train monopoly to create refining monopolies or something like that.
However google is in bed with the democrats :
“we are the best defense against another trump situation” - google exec undercover to project veritas
Government enforcement on this has not been consistent at all. They were supposed to do something to Microsoft and never really did. In the more modern age, I'm not aware of any major antitrust pursuits. I forgot about them maybe.
Back in the day they broke up Standard Oil and Bell Telephone. Precedent is all over the place, and I think it has less to do with the severity of the monopoly than the politics.
Microsoft wasn't lobbying all that much before their anti-trust issue. now they are. it may be the case that our government uses anti-trust actions to extract cash from corps that aren't filling the lawmakers' bank accounts. and that they are not all that concerned about what is best for the country.
these government employees and elected officials are not American Nationalists. Hell, many of them are Americans in name only. They don't care about this country.
I do know that as soon as Google was Google the giant and not Google the startup, they started spending beaucoup bribe bucks in Washington. IIRC they are one of the biggest contributors. It's a bit different than what you'd think a tech company would do, but it makes total sense for a monopolist.
They are getting investigated, but we will have to see how that turns out. I think the government is their friend, if anything. We know that Google has served the administration.
I think it was peter thiel who says google/alphabet is always rebranding and spending on self driving cars etc to DISTRACT from their massive search monopoly.
I think that's Google being Google and wanting to take over the world. They were never content to rest on their laurels with search. And the feeling that if you're not doing that, you're likely to be left behind. They don't want to age into a company that focuses on its strengths at the expense of doing dangerous things.
Finding a product is kind of incidental. For instance, I think Pixels came out of the need to have a reference platform for Android that Google could control. And now they are pretty good phones and judging by the advertising are at least expected to sell pretty well.
This whole thing hasn't been getting much press.
As soon as the SEC is done investigating Elon Musk for
wrongthinkthe Twitter purchase they forced him into, I'm sure they'll be right on this.