In a landmark antitrust ruling against Google last week, another case was at the heart of the story — one from the 1990s.
Steve Lohr, who covers technology and the economy for The Times, explains the influence of United States v. Microsoft and what lessons that case might hold for the future of Big Tech today.
Guest: Steve Lohr (https://www.nytimes.com/by/steve-lohr) , who covers technology, the economy and work for The New York Times.
Background reading:
• How the Google antitrust ruling may influence tech competition (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/technology/google-microsoft-antitrust-cases.html) .
• The ruling on Google’s search dominance (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/technology/google-antitrust-ruling.html) was the first antitrust decision of the modern internet era in a case against a technology giant.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily (http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily) . Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
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There was no consumer harm. We don’t need equal outcomes for companies. If Google were truly a monopoly, there would be no need to innovate. If all other competitors are locked out, Google could fire all engineers to collect way more money. I suppose the government’s remedy is for Google to stop innovating because their search engine is too good. Let the competition catch up, is that the remedy?
Your argument rests on googles being good what if it isn’t so effective and useful or innovative in search. Google isn’t all that good in the other ways like YouTube would probably be better as separate company. Edit: gen ai’s success is proof that google hasn’t been innovating past page 1 lol
@@zacharyrichard2764 Why would YouTube being a separate company be better? I like that Google News and Search adjusts recommendations based on what I like to watch on YouTube. It makes search, news and Gemini more useful to me. The judgement/ruling had nothing to do with YouTube. The government didn’t like Google paying Apple $20b/year to be the default search engine on an iPhone.
Wow. You’re really high on that supply. Actually there always is a cost to stifled competition. You should learn a little about free markets.
@@macareuxmoine gen ais success is a sign of googles failure in actual search lol what if there were just multiple viable search companies like a hypothetical future YouTube rather than this rentierist feudal anti democratic nonsense LOL and yeah soaring cause it’s just insane how much reality resembles Fallout lol
@@macareuxmoinenot stifling competition actually because gen ai’s success is due to googles failures in search lol it became a trophy to them that people never went beyond the first page, they became useless to the original core function of search. YouTube would likely if separated rise as a competitor search engine to compete and innovate even more.
Google sucks now, hope something changes
Am I crazy or are these remedies a little arbitrary? Microsoft used monopoly power to suppress Netscape, in response we: split Windows off from Office? Google pays companies to make their search engine the default, in response we: split chrome and google? Split Android and google?
Absolutely no evidence presented that Google success or founding was inspired or helped by Microsoft case. None.
Microsoft the monopoly that got away with it.