Comment by ekidd
2 years ago
I personally feel that this kind of "exclusive search only by Google deal" should result in an anti-trust case against Google. This is the kind of abuse of monopoly power that caused anti-trust laws to be passed in the 1890s.
if i create a vacuum cleaner and decide to only sell it at Walmart you can't get mad at me for not wanting to sell it at costco
you can always buy a competitor's or make your own vacuum cleaner if you hate buying at Walmart
maybe what you are really mad about is Reddit monopolising content
Usually, to trigger any kind of anti-trust law, you need to have massive market share. In this case, for example, Reddit almost certainly hasn't committed any antitrust violations, because they're a relatively minor player in their market.
Similarly, if you start a vacuum cleaner company, you can make whatever exclusive deals you want. But if you control 80% of the market for vacuum cleaners, then you might need to be more careful about leveraging your market share in unfair ways.
If a company is part of a robust, competitive market (like Reddit), it's usually wiser to let customers vote with their wallets, and leave the government out of it. If a company becomes massively dominant (like Google or TicketMaster), and if it starts pushing exclusive contracts, it's much harder for customers to switch away.
Unless you’re deemed to be an unfair monopoly and abuse your position to harm consumers interests.
You don’t even need >90% market share for that to be the case. e.g. Standard Oil only controlled 64% of the US market at most, it was still broken upz