1218
US Court Rules Google a Monopoly in 'Biggest Antitrust Case of the 21st Century'.
(www.commondreams.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
1218 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
69947 readers
1937 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
No shit. Now do Amazon, apple, meta, Microsoft, Disney and all the food conglomerates. Then it will have been a good start.
They've got Amazon in the works
Amazon
Would be nice if we didn't let them kill off so many other businesses first before doing something about it.
Walmart and telecom too.
Too big to fail financial industry should go first.
"Too big to fail" shouldn't exist
Do PG&E
I still don't understand how the Californian government bailed them out when they were bankrupt, yet they were allowed to remain an independent company? Why didn't the government take full control?
Electricity in cities in the Bay Area that have their own municipal power company (like Palo Alto and Santa Clara) is literally 1/3 the cost of PG&E.
FUUUUUUUUUUUCK PG&E
Fuck them. If there was ever a case to be made for government owned utilities (and like why is that even a debate in the first place?) these assholes would be the poster child.
Because the USA haven't had the balls to hold corporations responsible for their actions in decades. They can save them from failure, but have no willpower to correct any of their malevolent behaviors.
I really hope this generation is the one that finally changes that trend.
Gotta keep the rich people rich so they can fund my campaign.
It’s not about the balls to hold them responsible, it’s about not biting the hand that feeds you. They don’t want to do anything about it.
Cable companies too please.
Steam...
Edit: Funny how I was replying to a comment with examples of companies that wish they had 70% of the market under their control yet people didn't disagree with OP but bringing up Valve? Oh man, Gaben can do no wrong! 70% of the market under the control of a company owned by a single man? No problemo!
You can't break up steam and improve the market in any particular way. Since they're not really big on exclusivity agreements, there's also very little a court order would do to make the market more competitive.
Their market dominance isn't because of anticompetitive practices, it's because of customer-friendly practices. People like it, so people use it.
So? A private company having control of the market is never a good thing, no matter how good they are at the moment because you never know what will happen in the future.
So if people trust a platform it's hard to build an anti-trust case because the owner has a majority share.
It's okay if you don't like them for whatever reason, but comparing them to google, apple and Disney is ignorant at best, dishonest at the very least.
Rethink this stuff before you put yourself up as a reactionary lmao
Steam? Really out of all these, the the one that treats it's customers properly and gives them any and all tools needed to make a proper purchase decision with many big sales consistently. Great call
Funny the things you can do when you don't have to worry about shareholders.
So because they're treating you right it's ok to put 70% of the market in the hands of a single person?
They're not anti-competitive, that's the difference. Devs can even sell Steam keys on their own website and take 100% of the profit if they so choose, and there's absolutely no lock-in.
I'm not sure where the anti-trust is. Having a high marketshare by itself doesn't mean you're committing anti-trust, abusing that market position does.
You say that like your only option is to buy games from steam.
There are many other online stores you can use. Sorry you don't like the most popular/oldest/one that reflects the wishes of the consumer the most.
Steam isn't actually a monopoly in a meaningful way
Neither did google. The problem is that this case, from the title stated in another thread, Google are doing anti-competitive shit to make sure they maintain the dominant position. But steam does not practice in anti competitive behaviours (as far as I know anyway). In fact, the competitor can arguably be held to anti competitive behaviour depending on how you spin it.
Steam is currently being sued for anti competitive practices and do we really need to wait until they do bad shit before we start to consider that a single company having a good on 70% of the market isn't a good thing?
Isn't that only about the 30% fee?
Steam provides a lot of value for that 30% fee, more than Apple does.
Wtf is with people deciding a monopoly is good because the company hasn't started enshittifying it yet. It will happen. It's what monopolies do. Healthy competition is an important part of preventing enshittification.
Steam has no competitors because nobody is competing with them, not because they are forcing nobody to compete with them.
Steam isn't abusing their dominant position to prevent competition. Other companies could make their own storefront and compete with steam. Nobody does in a way that's actually comparable to steam.
Steam has a monopoly, but it's not because steam is actively keeping it that way.
If you have enough control on the market you don't have to actively try and stop competitors, you're just the default solution and people automatically turn to you. Walmart doesn't need to use dirty tactics to compete against mom and pop shops, the day they open people just start going to Walmart instead because they have everything in a single place.
That wasn't always the case, and I don't know if it's currently the case. At least at one point, they would intentionally lose money by dropping their prices below profitability just to get mom and pop shops to shut down, and then raise prices back up to profitability. Or they'd force suppliers to cut costs only for them to the point where the supplier wasn't making a profit, but by then they had stopped selling to competitors.
There's a lot more evidence for Walmart committing anti-trust than Valve.
The day Newell leaves people will be eating their words.
And that practice is what? Providing value to the consumer? The thing that MAYBE can be used against them is the clause for selling STEAM KEYS outside of steam. But that is it. Take a look at mindustry, the game is free everywhere else but steam. But that did not violate steam ToS since they didn't sell the steam keys for less than what is listed on steam.
You know anyone can be sued for anything right?
Being sued doesn't mean a damn thing, the case judgement is what matters.
You don't need to have full control of the market to be considered a monopoly, you just need a big enough share that you can make it sway in the direction that you want, which Steam has. Example: Microsoft is considered a monopoly even though there's Apple and Linux that get market shares.
I always find it funny how defensive people get when I bring this up about Steam on Lemmy of all places, suddenly people are perfectly ok with the centralization of power in the hands of a single person.
It's not about market share, it's about actually using that market share to negatively impact competition. Steam doesn't have any sort of exclusivity agreements with anyone, nor do they get paid if a customer buys a key on another platform or on the dev's own website. There's no anti-competitive behavior here at all, people use Steam because they like the experience more.
There's a massive difference between anti-competitive behavior and just being a really good option. You don't get broken up because you're successful, you get broken up because you're abusing your dominant market position. I have yet to see any evidence that Valve does this.
Where companies with monopolies are found to gain that title by ousting competitors and brutal buyouts and tactics literally every time, Valve exists. Literally. They just exist. Big difference between a monopoly and the best.
Other companies also exist. In fact there are several launchers and two other digital distributors, and several websites, where one can purchase games. There are some things Steam is shit on. The still feels old interface as a broad example. Competitors could push in, like Epic. Instead, they manage to create the next step up from a gold-tainted dung pile, shit on their own launcher or store stability and performance, and create an experience so bad that Steam is able, through the fuckups of their rivals, maintain a market majority.
SHHHH!!!
Monopolies and authoritarians aren't bad as long as people like them! Hadn't you heard?
I don't think they'll ever do anything serious to apple. That shit is untouchable.