Comment by summerlight
3 years ago
> If Google ceased all behavior-based advertising in favor of, for example, subject-based advertising, there would be no distortions to competition.
That still doesn't work. Google already has built dominant ad network/serving infrastructure as well as exclusive access to billions of its first party user data which gives asymmetric power to Google against any other competitors. Probably the only advantage that those competitors have is their own "secret sauce" on user data and removing 3p cookie effectively eliminates this edge and gives Google unilateral power.
The core problem is that privacy and antitrust regulations usually don't work very well together unless it's carefully designed. EU tried it for GDPR (which took 4 years to design) and it only has strengthened big-tech's position.
> They could most certainly have taken the much easier road of forcing Google to discontinue Chrome.
It's much easier said than done. What's the legal basis of doing this? The only applicable law is too general and requires intervention from the Judiciary. And this level of landmark antitrust cases usually takes several years with extremely high level of uncertainties. And it's worth noting that the US congress has failed to introduce a basic level of digital antitrust laws such as AICOA or OAMA, so good luck with any new direct regulations.
And even if assuming that everything works in your favor, the result is almost guaranteed to be other big guys (likely MS) taking the share and doing something worse since the market is already strongly incentivizing this behavior. To apply the same "correction", it will take another multiple years of trial against more well prepared defendant. Regulators and legislators are not that dumb and they actually care about all those unintended consequences.
> What's the legal basis of doing this?
I mentioned this in another reply, but I was imprecise with my language here. I meant that regulators could decide it's not OK for Google to have both a dominant ad network and a dominant browser. Discontinuing Chrome would be one remedy here, but there are also other remedies, such as spinning off Chrome development to a separate company.
As for the legal basis for doing that, I'm not as familiar with UK or EU law as I am with US law, but this was in response to the linked UK ruling by the CMA, where I was expressing my awe at how much effort they were going to in order to try to balance competing interests. I don't think regulators are dumb or lazy, but the report very clearly identifies that the core of the problem is that Google has both a dominant ad network and a dominant browser, but they still went through a lot of trouble to try to find a workable solution.
As for US law, Judge Jackson did rule that Microsoft should be split into two separate companies, one for the OS, and the other for apps, but was overruled on appeal. However, that appeal was muddied by other issues as well, and the case never came before the Supreme Court.
You're right about the US congress, but Europe does seem more eager to go after big tech companies.