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posted by janrinok on Thursday February 22 2018, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-find-you,-m'lud? dept.

The Case Against Google: Critics say the search giant is squelching competition before it begins. Should the government step in?

[...] might have been surprised when headlines began appearing last year suggesting that Google and its fellow tech giants were threatening everything from our economy to democracy itself. Lawmakers have accused Google of creating an automated advertising system so vast and subtle that hardly anyone noticed when Russian saboteurs co-opted it in the last election. Critics say Facebook exploits our addictive impulses and silos us in ideological echo chambers. Amazon's reach is blamed for spurring a retail meltdown; Apple's economic impact is so profound it can cause market-wide gyrations. These controversies point to the growing anxiety that a small number of technology companies are now such powerful entities that they can destroy entire industries or social norms with just a few lines of computer code. Those four companies, plus Microsoft, make up America's largest sources of aggregated news, advertising, online shopping, digital entertainment and the tools of business and communication. They're also among the world's most valuable firms, with combined annual revenues of more than half a trillion dollars.

In a rare display of bipartisanship, lawmakers from both political parties have started questioning how these tech giants grew so powerful so fast. Regulators in Missouri, Utah, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere have called for greater scrutiny of Google and others, citing antitrust concerns; some critics have suggested that our courts and legislatures need to go after tech firms in the same way the trustbusters broke up oil and railroad monopolies a century ago. But others say that Google and its cohort are guilty only of delighting customers. If these tech leviathans ever fail to satisfy us, their defenders argue, capitalism will punish them the same way it once brought down Yahoo, AOL and MySpace.

[...] There's a loose coalition of economists and legal theorists who call themselves the New Brandeis Movement (critics call them "antitrust hipsters"), who believe that today's tech giants pose threats as significant as Standard Oil a century ago. "All of the money spent online is going to just a few companies now," says [Gary Reback] (who disdains the New Brandeis label). "They don't need dynamite or Pinkertons to club their competitors anymore. They just need algorithms and data."

Related: Microsoft Relishes its Role as Accuser in Antitrust Suit Against Google
Google Faces Record 3 Billion Euro EU Antitrust Fine: Telegraph
Antitrust Suit Filed Against Google by Gab.Ai
India Fines Google $21.17 Million for Abusing Dominant Position
Google's Crackdown on "Annoying" and "Disruptive" Ads Begins


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by arcz on Thursday February 22 2018, @11:11PM (1 child)

    by arcz (4501) on Thursday February 22 2018, @11:11PM (#642068) Journal

    Splitting up the companies doesn't fix the problem. Copyright and patent law are the problems.

    Here's how to fix it overnight:

    1. Eliminate software patents, these squash most competition in the tech sector.
    2. Overrule the Federal Circuit and make all contracts which prohibit reverse engineering and fair use categorically invalid.
    3. Prohibit blocking network services (net neutrality)
    4. Remove DMCA anti-circumvention laws.

    Fixed!

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    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2) by Lester on Friday February 23 2018, @08:57AM

    by Lester (6231) on Friday February 23 2018, @08:57AM (#642276) Journal

    In fact, Google uses a lot of GPL, and publish a lot of Opensource code. The problem is they have more huge, enormous resources to do things that small companies can't do.

    i.e. The can publish their A.I. algorithm but it is useless unless you have zillons of data mined from a zillons of users connections and a data center with thousands of CPU power and zettabytes of storage.

    The solution is: "You are forbidden to store data about users habits"