When the stock pops 10% on the announcement you got your antitrust enforcement wrong.
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> Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly
What should be the effect of antitrust enforcement to a monopolists share price? We are looking at something structural after all.
However, for whatever reason, the judge decided that penalty was basically slap on the wrist and finger wagging.
Google would not spend all this money with Apple/Firefox if they knew that customers would use Google without being forced into it. Since they won't change search engines, Google realized they need to force it.
Not saying we should favor share price over all else, but far more than a few wealthy shareholders will be the benefactors of this.
It's not that high-QoL societies cannot have shareholders, it's that the stock market shouldn't take precedence over laws and regulations and anti-trust enforcement.
I think a lot of regular users actually might prefer one company that makes all their choices for them so they don't have to deal with decision fatigue so often... the browser wars of the 90s and 2000s were not pretty, either...
But I think this problem should be solved at the level of countries, not individuals.
Because individuals are always looking for a way to avoid taxes, they can disappear as a class, and there is not that much money if it is fairly redistributed among everyone.
In fairness, EVERY American should be taxed an additional 80-90% in favor of poorer countries. How can a country with a minimum wage of $10-20 an hour not share with other countries when billions of people make less than a dollar an hour?