KEY POINTS
- The Department of Justice late Tuesday indicated that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy.
- The DOJ said it was “considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search.”
- The judge has yet to decide on the remedies, and Google will likely appeal, drawing out the process potentially for years.
Neat!
Do Amazon and Facebook too.
There should just be a law that just periodically breaks up AT&T every few years.
And then everything too big to fail! Too big to fail = too big.
It’s not like the knowledgeable people, or systems/infrastructure all disappear if a business fails. Business is basically a bunch instructions for people moving a bunch of shit around for money. Literally nothing about it is so unique it cannot be reproduced.
And then also Physically split up Elon, billionaires need to learn how to exist in a society of laws and consequences instead of above it.
Also break up ISPs. I have the local monopoly and 4 red herrings providers allowed to operate to give the illusion of competition.
And force fiber installation. I have plenty of fiber in my area… it just stops at the boundary of every apartment complex.
I have no doubt Alphabet Google would try to delay any breakup as long as physically possible, but this would be a huge win against big tech if it went ahead.
It’d probably be quite the win for public privacy as well, as it’d decouple these widely used platforms from Google.
Break them away from Y O U T U B E
People aren’t going to like this comment, but YouTube is pretty much guaranteed to get worse if it’s spun out as an independent company. The main reason it can survive is because of Google’s money. Video streaming at YouTube’s scale is extremely expensive and there’s only a few companies that could really afford to do it.
Do it! Do it motherfuckers, we dare ya!
I know very little about the operating structure of Google, but I wonder how this would work functionally. Doesn’t most of their revenue come from ads? So like you couldn’t have google search’s ad business help to prop up the lines of business that don’t make money (Youtube, chrome development)
I’m not anti-breakup but I just wonder if this would imperil some of their lines of business. Like would Youtube shove even more ads down your throat post-breakup?
A great question, Id never considered that previously.
My instant gut feeling would be that they would all just continue selling adds, but as separate entities?
Also how does breaking up google work when the current structure is that Alphabet is the primary company now?
I took “breaking up Google” to mean the Alphabet suite of companies; I had presumed “Google” was just shorthand for “Alphabet”. But I might be wrong