I have published this video this morning. In it I argue that the trouble with monopolies has been known for well over a century. They can abuse their power to extract excess profits. Google has now been ruled to be a monopoly doing just that. Suppose that this ruling was extended to all monopolies and the power of the big corporation was shattered? What could happen then?
The audio version of this video is here:
The transcript is:
Google is a monopolist. I don't face any risk by saying so. That is the ruling that has been determined by a court in the USA in what is called an anti-trust case in that country. What antitrust means, when translated into English, is anti-monopoly.
What does this mean? Well it means that what has happened is that the US federal authorities have brought a legal case against Google saying they have used their market power to abuse consumers, in this case those who search, but also those who get advertising results in the USA from Google's search engine, and they have used that power to abuse them by exploiting the market power they have to increase their profits by refusing market entry to other competitors.
And let's be honest, most of us use Google all the time. We know that there are other search engines available. Apparently about 10 percent of the market does go to other search engines, but 90 percent of all searches are done on Google. So much so that if we want to find something out, we actually just now say “Google it”. Inherent in that assumption that we will all use that one search engine is the result that we have given Google the most extraordinary economic power - the economic power to abuse.
That's because monopoly exists when there is no effective opposition to a company within its market space, so that it can determine what the prices are within that space and extract excess profit as a result, in this case by and large from advertisers, but it also denies us as consumers choice as a consequence.
We are all abused by this. And Google is not alone in being a monopolist. Even though Google is in an exceptional position, many other companies are in a similar position, like other tech companies. Twitter is. Facebook is. So, too, are the producers of many other tech, like Microsoft and Apple.
We know that Amazon is in an extraordinarily powerful position, and there are others, too.
When we go a little bit further down the corporate hierarchy, and we move away from monopoly, we move to something called oligopoly. When there's an oligopoly, we have a few companies who dominate a market and who, between them, subtly, because they have to be subtle about this, can control prices to ensure that they obtain massive profits at cost to us.
Supermarkets almost certainly do that.
So, too, do some food supply chain companies who dominate the market in certain sectors. Some of those names will be familiar, others won't be.
Energy companies are very often in this position, too.
The reality is that we do not live in a world where there are free markets.
If you listened to right-wing politicians who sing the praises of such things, you would believe that there was a world where there was genuine competition going on. The reality is genuine competition is pretty rare unless you have two competing coffee stalls in a market square in a town near you.
Even then, they may not be genuinely competing because they both might be buying coffee from the same supplier. In other words, there would be no product differentiation between them in any case.
So, my point is this. We live in a world of rigged markets. The fantastic news is that Google, one of the most obvious monopolists in the world, has now been ruled to be a monopolist.
You might say, surely that was obvious? Well, it clearly wasn't because the case went to court in the USA. But now it has, the door is opened, and the US government could take action to end this.
Kamala Harris could, for example, say, “I am going to defeat the monopolists who are gouging profits out of the markets and suppressing wages in the US economy.”
If she did that, she would break politics in the US free from the power of corporate influence, which is very heavily related to the power of the billionaires who own the monopolist companies. She could do that.
She could also require that these companies like Google, who operate around the world, operate fairly and appropriately in all the markets in which they operate, including the UK, the whole of the European Union, and way beyond.
But will she? I don't know. But if the right wing - and I count the Democrats in the USA as being amongst the right-wing exponents of market ideas - if the right wing really do believe in free markets, they should be celebrating the fact that Google has now been ruled to be a monopolist because that means their monopoly should be broken and that would be good for everyone.
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The difficulty you get is that for whatever reason one ‘product’ be it Google, Microsoft, C41 & E6 film chemistry (remember them!) ends up as a default standard for whatever reason.
The challenge I suppose is not only to manage whoever becomes the default standard but to try and prevent it happening in the first place.
What is inspiring though is those who developed products and then put the ‘intellectual property’ into the public domain free of charge. The Miners Safety Lamp being an early example. More recently Malcom McLean made the Containerisation system he developed, and are all now very familiar with, available royalty free
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_McLean
Possibly one of the best examples of ‘The American Dream’
Thanks
“most of us use Google all the time.”
I don’t – & have not for ++ 15 years. I used “Startpage”. Strips out ads, does not track you & when bolted on to a VPN plus anti-ad applications gives an acceptable result.
I don’t understand why people use Google for searching, easy enough to set up something else on the web browser (mozilla).
Likewise other stuff such as e-mail (for the life of me – why do people use the Microshaft product? – Thunderbird is as good – if not better & is free).
The US gov has little interest in breaking up US-based monopolies – they rake in money. Best chance wrt breaking them up is the EU.
I stopped guggling some time ago, I don’t know why, just that I was starting to feel uncomfortable with it. I now use Duckduckgo as my preferred search engine and find it just as good if not better.
I also never used Twitter for the same reason and now that it is X with some of the content it apparently puts out I won’t go near that either. As for abusing it’s power how about this. https://news.sky.com/story/its-war-elon-musks-x-sues-companies-for-not-advertising-on-its-platform-13192318.
DuckDuckGo and Ecosia are both perfectly good search engines.
https://www.ecosia.org/
Very important issue Richard – so characterstic of our day to day world.
But why do BBC ‘consumer’ programmes collude with this pseudo competition. Their ‘you and yours’ programme has consumer after consumer saying they have tried to commuicate with their energy providers etc – spending weeks on the phone and getting spurious bills of thousands..
Their answer is so often ‘shop around’ – as though there is real competition – but they never say that we need to make the providers provide a prompt reliable interaction with their customers backed with laws and massive fines.
Agreed
Ironically, Google began as the idea of Open Access idealists. They were overtaken by the Dot.com bust, and later disappeared when corporatism discovered how to make money out of it. The rest is history (the story is told by Shoshanna Zuboff in her brilliant book, ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’). Unlike Britain the US has anti-trust law with teeth. While the US actually does something about all this; meanwhile, Britain’s PM is bullied by Musk, with complete impunity. There is the measure of Britain. Last year Sunak was interviewing Musk, like an over-excited, weak-at-the-knees-fan interviewing his Rock Star idol.
Wow! Changes of camera angle. I assume that’s an experiment. I’m no movie director, but suggest that if you are going to continue with it you need to change angle at a point when there’s a change in content, and I think you need to turn your head to camera too with a pause in between. It can be very attention grabbing and stops the viewer from nodding off.
I’m afraid I’m guilty of using Google even though I am a reactionary at heart and used Yahoo! for years.
It’s an experiment as yet
We will get better at it
I don’t think that changing angle works well; for me it’s just distracting. I think it is always important to face the camera in the same way as you would face the person you were talking with in person. You are making an important argument and you need the viewer to understand that you are delivering that message directly to them: so pay attention!
The dark shirt works well due to contrast issues. For the exact same reason, you might consider rearranging the section of the books immediately behind your head. Why? Books with a darker spine will make a stronger contrast with your lighter face and hair during your presentation videos: you and your message are the target center screen. Another experiment, but I think it will be positive and I hope this input helps.
The books are staying as they are. They are organised by topic.
The side view comment is noted….
Keep wearing solid shirts.
The solid shirts highlight the backdrop of the books and makes you look slimmer due to less eye distortion as caused by prints in film and video.
Yes, you must always turn your face to the camera, unless you are speaking to someone other that the viewer.
Just watch Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News.
We will discuss…..
My experience in the corporate world was that many mergers and acquisitions were defensive with the aim of reducing or eliminating competition.Executives talked of lower pricing for customers however the reality is that the larger the market share the greater the ability to control pricing and increase margins. As you point out Richard there are many examples where informal cartels of large companies control markets. They don’t benefit customers. The regulator had repeatedly allowed the consolidation of sectors.
Business in Britain still has very old genetic traces of mercantilism in its dna. In the US they know you cannot trust business, and need tough anti-trust law, and it is still a struggle against the monopolists. But in the US, a bigger country in so many ways than the UK, they do believe in competition. Notably Alfred Sloan, the genius behind General Motors, the biggest of all twentieth century industrial powerhouses, carefully avoided the blatant monopolism that infects most of 21st century business. He believed in competition, and new thinking.
In Britain most businesses hate competition, once they have a foothold in their market. The latent mercantilism is dormant, only because few are ever in a position to exercise the aspiration. Most do not think they are monopolists, until the opportunity arises….
Britain is nothing like its image. The authentic portrait of the real Britain remains locked in a room.
Matt Stoller has been following this case for years, and yesterday wrote:
‘Fifteen years after it was first investigated, search giant Google is finally going to be held accountable for unfairly thwarting competition. In this piece, I’m going to discuss the complaint against Google, why it lost, the next steps, and what this case means for American business going forward.
Make no mistake, this decision is huge for Google, the web, and the revival of monopolization law against giants across the economy.’
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist
What’s next?
Everybody being sued for using the letter “X” without permission? Businesses being sued for not advertising where they are instructed to advertise? States being run on the instructions of foreign Big-tech billionaires, in their interests and for their convenience?
Big Tech making up its own rules; eh, maybe too late to stop that one.
Hello, Just a comment about your new video practice of switching to a second camera during the filming. I don’t understand the reason for it. If the switch revealed a graph or photograph to your right, which added something pertinent to the content of the video it would work, but as it has been used in the videos I have seen, (one or two at present) it doesn’t seem to add anything. Just saying.
Apart from that, well done, your videos are very enjoyable and get a lot of information over in an entertaining way. Keith Smith.
Noted
We will rethink this
I haven’t yet read the details of the case, but in any case I stopped using Google years ago. I use DuckDuckGo, and have set it as my default browser on all my devices. It doesn’t track you or record your searches.
The original reason for my defection was that I noticed my search results were slowly becoming less varied in terms of offering all angles or points of view. I dug around and it turned out that Google’s algorithms are written to push content to you that Google thinks you may like, based on your previous searches and browsing history. This, of course, repeatedly reinforces your own biases, as content which you do not like/don’t agree with/do not read is steadily weeded out. Algorithms such as the ones programmed into Google searches are very good at refining data using feedback loops, but are actually quite dangerous when they limit your search results to the ones you tend to agree with anyway.
Say that Richard over near Ely likes the band “Madness” and regularly searches online for their music. If he were to type “Madness” into Google, the first 20 or so results would very probably be links to Madness’ albums and news about the band. Meanwhile, if I searched for “Madness” using Google over here in Rutland, the first 20 or so results would very probably be links to articles about psychosis, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. That’s because I’ve worked in acute psychiatry and keep up to speed with recent studies.
So, despite using exactly the same word to search using Google, I would never read about Madness’ music, and Richard would never read about the latest treatment for hearing voices.
A trivial example to make a very important point. Think of the decades Google has had to narrow our input. The decades of not learning about others’ viewpoints and different cross sections of society.
Accepted