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US Court Rules Google a Monopoly in 'Biggest Antitrust Case of the 21st Century'.
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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No shit. Now do Amazon, apple, meta, Microsoft, Disney and all the food conglomerates. Then it will have been a good start.
They've got Amazon in the works
Amazon
Would be nice if we didn't let them kill off so many other businesses first before doing something about it.
Walmart and telecom too.
Too big to fail financial industry should go first.
oil, pharma... most of all critical aspects of every day life is controlled by oligopolies
"Too big to fail" shouldn't exist
Do PG&E
I still don't understand how the Californian government bailed them out when they were bankrupt, yet they were allowed to remain an independent company? Why didn't the government take full control?
Electricity in cities in the Bay Area that have their own municipal power company (like Palo Alto and Santa Clara) is literally 1/3 the cost of PG&E.
FUUUUUUUUUUUCK PG&E
Fuck them. If there was ever a case to be made for government owned utilities (and like why is that even a debate in the first place?) these assholes would be the poster child.
Because the USA haven't had the balls to hold corporations responsible for their actions in decades. They can save them from failure, but have no willpower to correct any of their malevolent behaviors.
I really hope this generation is the one that finally changes that trend.
Gotta keep the rich people rich so they can fund my campaign.
It’s not about the balls to hold them responsible, it’s about not biting the hand that feeds you. They don’t want to do anything about it.
Cable companies too please.
You can't break up steam and improve the market in any particular way. Since they're not really big on exclusivity agreements, there's also very little a court order would do to make the market more competitive.
Their market dominance isn't because of anticompetitive practices, it's because of customer-friendly practices. People like it, so people use it.
Majority also like Google. Like it or not, they still provide the best search engine.
Lol, they absolutely do not. Their search results have turned to shit.
There are lots of articles about how they make their search results worse on purpose for more profit. They alter search queries on the server side to give results for a search which is more aligned with an advertising partner. They inject AI into search results which can be wildly wrong.
Did they fix it? Last I tried it, all I could get was sponsored content and LLM spam.
Steam? Really out of all these, the the one that treats it's customers properly and gives them any and all tools needed to make a proper purchase decision with many big sales consistently. Great call
They're not anti-competitive, that's the difference. Devs can even sell Steam keys on their own website and take 100% of the profit if they so choose, and there's absolutely no lock-in.
I'm not sure where the anti-trust is. Having a high marketshare by itself doesn't mean you're committing anti-trust, abusing that market position does.
Just having a high market share isn't the issue. It's abusing that dominant market position that is.
Valve has been smart enough not to do that. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the like haven't. In fact, Valve's competitors have been more anti-competitive than Valve.
ASML, who make EUV machines and other semiconductor tooling, is also in a dominant market position (way more dominant actually). Do you ever see calls to break them up? No. Because they haven't been abusing their power. They know that if they put a toe out of line, they'll be in trouble with regulators.
Google and the like have been able to act with impunity because the US protects them, to the detriment of their smaller companies and their citizens.
You say that like your only option is to buy games from steam.
There are many other online stores you can use. Sorry you don't like the most popular/oldest/one that reflects the wishes of the consumer the most.
Steam isn't actually a monopoly in a meaningful way
Neither did google. The problem is that this case, from the title stated in another thread, Google are doing anti-competitive shit to make sure they maintain the dominant position. But steam does not practice in anti competitive behaviours (as far as I know anyway). In fact, the competitor can arguably be held to anti competitive behaviour depending on how you spin it.
It's not about market share, it's about actually using that market share to negatively impact competition. Steam doesn't have any sort of exclusivity agreements with anyone, nor do they get paid if a customer buys a key on another platform or on the dev's own website. There's no anti-competitive behavior here at all, people use Steam because they like the experience more.
There's a massive difference between anti-competitive behavior and just being a really good option. You don't get broken up because you're successful, you get broken up because you're abusing your dominant market position. I have yet to see any evidence that Valve does this.
Where companies with monopolies are found to gain that title by ousting competitors and brutal buyouts and tactics literally every time, Valve exists. Literally. They just exist. Big difference between a monopoly and the best.
Other companies also exist. In fact there are several launchers and two other digital distributors, and several websites, where one can purchase games. There are some things Steam is shit on. The still feels old interface as a broad example. Competitors could push in, like Epic. Instead, they manage to create the next step up from a gold-tainted dung pile, shit on their own launcher or store stability and performance, and create an experience so bad that Steam is able, through the fuckups of their rivals, maintain a market majority.
SHHHH!!!
Monopolies and authoritarians aren't bad as long as people like them! Hadn't you heard?
I don't think they'll ever do anything serious to apple. That shit is untouchable.
The food companies fly low under the radar. They definitely need a wake up call.