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858 points colesantiago | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.401s | source
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BrenBarn ◴[] No.45112364[source]
> 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 ◴[] No.45112871[source]
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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shmeeed ◴[] No.45114195[source]
Google Search, Chrome, Android each are market leaders in their domain. You seriously consider that "tiny pieces"?
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1. r0m4n0 ◴[] No.45117273[source]
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
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2. BrenBarn ◴[] No.45120920[source]
Private equity companies should also be destroyed.