The Department of Justice late Tuesday indicated that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy.
    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      16 minutes ago

      Considering

      Investigating

      Discussing

      Will put forward a possibility of

      Listen, its this government or we go with the GOP version where its just the MOVE bombing every couple of weeks, while the DOJ issues briefs about busting open a child’s testicles to get information out of his father.

      Do Nothing or Do Something Awful. Those are your choices.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      2 hours ago

      Agreed.

      No f’in way this happens, especially not in the same week when Kamala Harris goes on national TV to say she’s a capitalist.

      With that said, I still hope they try. It should be inconvenient at least to run a monopoly.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        3·
        2 hours ago

        It should be inconvenient at least to run a monopoly.

        The our government can do is make mega corpos pay lawyers … So at least we got some extra jobs out of it 🤡

        Since they are creating extra jobs shouldn’t government reward them with state aid for it?!

    • SeattleRain@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 hour ago

      The trail went really really badly for Google. I know it’s trendy to be all nihilist with regards to government competence but they’d make way more other powerful corporations angry if they didn’t break up Google.

  • Peffse@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    3 hours ago

    Google saw this coming years ago. That’s why they restructured, clearly defining their different services, and became Alphabet.

  • IcyToes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    301·
    4 hours ago

    As much as I want this to happen, I fear it’ll drag on for years and then never happen or end up watered down where they split the company and manage them independently (a bit like BT in the UK but still owned by Alphabet.

      • firadin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        54 minutes ago

        A major issue for the US is that when the president changes, the DOJ can simply elect to stop processing the suit. It’s hard to get 8 years of uninterrupted movement on an action like this.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        14 minutes ago

        A big part of the “Cheney family endorses Harris” push has been corporate flacks racking up favors with the Dem side of the aisle so Harris can replace her cabinet with people who are more business-friendly in the next term.

        They’re playing both sides. This isn’t just “Trump Wins: Things Get Worse” / “Harris Wins: Things Stay The Same Amount of Bad”.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      11·
      3 hours ago

      Yeah I will believe it when I see it. I’m not convinced that actual Teddy Roosevelt-style “trust busting” is something that is even possible in the modern US.

    • CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.worldEnglish
      77·
      7 hours ago

      And Microsoft for monopoly reasons.

      Add AT&T, Time-Warner, and all of the other ISPs that own streaming platforms for anticompetitive reasons.

    • dubyakay@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      2 hours ago

      What exactly does Apple have a monopoly over? Or Amazon? Both have plenty of competition, while, let’s be honest, Google cornered a segment the market really well with Search + Chrome. Google is basically dictating direction of Web based standards towards an ad-driven, zero-privacy, centralized internet.

      If anything, after Google it should be Microsoft again.

  • Dasnap@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    7 hours ago

    Any guesses on how this would affect Android and Firefox?

    I’m not 100% on how the Android business works so I’m not sure how important Goggle’s involvement is.

    Firefox relies on Google’s ‘default search engine’ bribe quite a lot, and they might not be able to offer that anymore(?)

    • Remmy@lemmy.caEnglish
      18·
      6 hours ago

      Android has been largely gutted and depends more and more on google play services, with few exceptions like some AOSP-based roms like lineageos, iodeOS, etc

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      7 hours ago

      Haha. OG conspiracy theory time! I was gonna say this breakup will never happen, but I could totally see it being a plutocratic quid pro quo to split Android from Google and set up an entirely new entity to start charging for the OS or closing it off as a pixel exclusive — something Google couldn’t do without major backlash and probably lawsuits, unless the government “forced” their hand and compelled them. The controlling shareholders would remain the same, and the government would get to act like it’s taking legitimate action, fighting for the working class, against monopolies.

    • Virkkunen@fedia.io
      8·
      7 hours ago

      in In my opinion, it’s likely that nothing will change. If this ever happens, Google might setup an “Android Alliance” with other OEMs which will reach agreements to keep Android as is but for the USA lawmakers and such it’ll seem like everything has changed.

      For Firefox, I believe Google will keep injecting money in Mozilla as long as it keeps them from having Chrome being targeted on an antitrust/competitive lawsuit or ruling.

    • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 hours ago

      I don’t see why a breakup would mean a Firefox deal can’t be done anymore. Unless the search engine business shut down, they would still be motivated to have a default search engine deal with browsers.

      What might change, I think, could be:

      • Search engine may be way less motivated to have a deal with Firefox. FF has pretty low market share. One popular theory is that Google continues to subsidize FF partly to make it look like there is other viable browser competition and that they are helping foster it (for antitrust reasons). If search and browser were different companies - not being proposed I don’t believe, but could happen in a breakup - this might lessen. Although apparently even 2-5% of the market is worth billions so I could see it easily continuing. Especially if signs are that other browsers start losing some share.
      • Less money to FF: If the ads biz does become less lucrative, that’d flow downstream to deals like the one with Mozilla.

      But I don’t see any reason why they “wouldn’t be able” to have a deal anymore.

      • Dasnap@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        But I don’t see any reason why they “wouldn’t be able” to have a deal anymore.

        It’s this part of the article that stuck out to me:

        the DOJ suggested limiting or prohibiting default agreements and “other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products.” That would include Google’s search position agreements with Apple’s iPhone and Samsung devices — deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts. The agency suggested one way to do this is requiring a “choice screen,” which could allow users to pick from other search engines.