Good. Breaking the power of any company growing too big for its boots should always be on the table, especially in such a vital media and industry
How would the EU go about breaking up a US based company?
By fining it or disallowing it to business in the EU if it doesn't.
Ban and fine them from operating in Europe until they break off all of their staff and subsidiaries in the continent. If they persist, start arresting employees.
Sounds like a good way to generate a huge amount of public opposition. Can you imagine if suddenly Google, YouTube, Chrome, Android ect... all got banned overnight?
Id hate to live in a country where you could get arrested for going to work.
I mean are we trust busting or being little bitches to an american conglomerate? If it's going to happen you might as well go the full mile and make an example out of Google so their American monopoly and malpractice never engulfs Europe again.
Honestly, I they would just raise their costs of operation within the EU to an unsustainable level.
Oh yeah, that will go down well.
While I agree with you that it would be a big problem, the direction we're currently going into like a train is that of cyberwarfare and exploiting small and big data
I don't trust monopolies to do right by us
Break up Alphabet
Welcome to pretty much every country in the world? If your work is illegal, you're doing illegal shit by working there.
and Microsoft
I really don't see what gains there will be for the consumers by doing this?
In all of their domains Google isn't a monopoly, Amazon isn't a monopoly either and they don't really seem to be engaging in large-scale predatory pricing, etc.
They may not be a total monopoly but there isn't really any viable competition.
What do you mean by viable?
If they aren't stifling competition then monopoly/antitrust laws don't really apply.
In the example of Google for search engines, other search engines are perfectly fine to operate freely and I don't know of Google doing anything like making deals that give its crawlers special privileges, or signing contracts with a fuckton of companies to only allow its use, etc.. It just seems like the most reasonable thing to do is regulate characters like this in general, e.g. by forcing them to be more transparent about how their results work.
I mean in terms of marketshare which is what i assume antitrust agencies look at when calculating this stuff. In anycase, should we wait until Google starts flexing before we do something?
When a company starts to affect the political and personal climate in the world, they need to be regulated heavily.
Marketshare is part of it but the main reason antitrust laws exist is to break apart businesses that are acting anti-competitively. Being large doesn't necessarily mean that.
The main question is whether Google can even flex like that. With search engines again, there are viable alternatives that haven't been unfairly stifled, so if Google "flexed" on its customers like by charging them they aren't trapped like in usual monopolies. And if they engage in stuff like price discrimination that gives a pretty clear go-ahead to break them apart/penalize them.
There are stories of Amazon barring people in the UK for making too many returns (which isn't many depending on what you return). Under law here it's illegal to bar people for returning things so they just outright bar you because as a business they have a right to refuse service.
And it's not like a ban that isn't heavily enforced by the seems either, they will do whatever they can to make sure you can't touch their service ever again. Then you've got people like my dad who says he'll use another service because that's how competition works.
After explaining where he gets most of his online orders from, it didn't really take much convincing to him that in the grand scheme of things, Amazon is the only go-to-place for most of your shopping. They need regulating (and splitting up is a good start).
Couldn't speak for other companies though.
At what point do we admit Google has a huge share of the internet traffic pass through them, and they carry undo influence on our world based on that? And that maybe we do something about that?
Do Apple
They investigate returns after a certain number. If you're discovered to be fraudulently returning stuff, no shit you get banned.
I'm talking about returns that aren't fraudulent.
Yes I could imagine google having to put up with the same draconian ill conceived nee completely fuckdumb policy they tend to enact on a regular basis.
I can imagine it quite vividly.
Do that at any store and they will stop serving you. It's not just about fraudulent returns.
Under EU law, there's nothing wrong with holding a dominant market position (the technical term for what Google has in online search and video). According to one of the EU's foundational treaties, the problem comes when they "abuse that position, for example by charging unfair prices, by limiting production, or by refusing to innovate to the prejudice of consumers." So yeah, it's entirely down to how Google acts but any company that holds that kind of position is (in theory) gonna be under the microscope to make sure they aren't abusing their position.
Amazon isn't your usual store though. Most other stores if you do that then chances are there's plenty of competition to turn to that can actually compete. You'd be much less likely to return many items to one store as you're shopping at companies of comparable sizes AKA you're more likely to shop around (not to mention much smaller than Amazon).
Also take it with some salt as it is just one source but allegedly Amazon have banned people for legitimate returns (faulty, damaged, etc).
Lets start breaking up ISP's, too, and Walmart.
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