> Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.

This is the problem. It doesn't matter if they used those specific assets to perpetrate these specific acts. The overall market power derived from those assets (and many others) taints everything they do.

There is no way to effectively curtail monopoly power by selectively limiting the actions of monopolists in certain specific domains. It's like thinking you can stop a rampaging 500-pound gorilla by tying two of its fingers together because those were the two fingers that were at the leading edge of its blow when it crushed someone's skull with a punch.

Once a company has monopoly power of any kind, it is useless to try to stop it from using that power to do certain things. It will always find a way to use its power to get around any restrictions. The problem isn't what the monopoly does, it's that the monopoly exists. The only surefire way is to destroy the monopoly itself by shattering the company into tiny pieces so that no entity holds monopoly power at all.

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r0m4n0 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Sounds nice but many companies cannot exist in tiny pieces, Google included. So if you force that it will cease to exist. Which I believe to be a net negative to the US, and world, some may disagree though

Disclosure: Google employee, words are my own

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BrenBarn 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Which I believe to be a net negative to the US, and world, some may disagree though

Yes, I disagree. If we can't have Google without monopolism then we should have neither. Treating Google as essential in this situation is like a druggie saying he "needs" his next hit. People only "need" Google because Google has used its monopoly position to try to make people addicted to it. It should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, the company should have been broken up 10+ years ago, and it's only getting worse. It would be better to destroy it entirely (along with many other such large companies) than to keep it with its disproportionate power.

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shadowgovt 2 days ago | parent [-]

Or, perhaps, it should be nationalized. If it's such a critical piece of infrastructure that dissolving it would be unthinkable, but it also can't be competed with in the marketplace... It could be removed from the marketplace.

This isn't unheard of for communications technology. Postal service in England was exclusively a Crown privilege, then the monarchy realized there were benefits to the Empire if everyone could use the system, and that was such a good idea that when the US Constitution was written it asserted the government had to provide a postal service. There is past precedent for a government-oversight private enterprise in the US.

	▲	harrisi a day ago \| parent [-]
		It's not only not unheard of, this just happened with US Steel in June. The president currently has essentially full control over the board and veto rights to just about any decision that the company makes, which effectively nationalizes it.

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Certhas 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Power grids also can only exist reasonably as monopolies. This is true for many utilities. Consequently, after the initial decades of development had occurred and the tech had settled down, we now no longer let them operate as ordinary companies, but heavily regulate them. We're probably not quite at the point where this is feasible for what Google provides... but then again, who knows?

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shmeeed 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Google Search, Chrome, Android each are market leaders in their domain. You seriously consider that "tiny pieces"?

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r0m4n0 2 days ago | parent [-]

I personally would not like chrome, or some of these other things to exist on its own. Google operates some of these things mostly like a charity. Obviously there are serious incentives to have control but imagine what Chrome would be doing without Google… you think your privacy is at stake now? Some private equity companies were drooling over the idea of buying chrome a few weeks ago

	▲	BrenBarn a day ago \| parent [-]
		Private equity companies should also be destroyed.

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KurSix 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Breaking up monopolies is politically radioactive