Fun fact 2: the AGs are being advised by a former News Corp (read: WSJ) lawyer who also advises other google competitors (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/texas-a...)
Fun fact 3: AGs are elected so they seek publicity, they are also corrupt: the one in Mississippi was issuing subpoenas to Google on behalf of the entertainment industry (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141217/06353329462/attor...)
We've got nothing against Google [1] but we've sure got something against abuse of HN—it boils our blood. Since your comment was the top post on the top thread, I think it's fair to leave this up so everyone can see what you've been doing.
It feels like I spend half my life telling HN users not to make insinuations about astroturfing and shilling without evidence [2]. The other side is that we have a contract with the community: when we do find evidence, we crack down hard.
[1] In case anyone is worried about bias, here's an example of moderation going the opposite way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890092. And here's one that involved a different company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11905831.
The Googlers who participate on HN are overwhelmingly honest and are some of the best community members that HN has. They're 100% welcome here, and if I were them I'd feel even madder about this than we do.
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Sounds interesting...
This ban seems unfair, and if it is rooted in an anti-astroturfing policy, then that policy appears way too aggressive - no one wants HN to be a marketing site for mega-corps, but passionately defending one's favorite company shouldn't result in a ban. Also, the moderators have all the power, and accused none. While moderating is likely arduous and maybe even moribund, being a fanboy/AstroTurf-er especially one not behaving badly, isn't worthy of silencing/banning (that's my opinion).
The consumers of HN content have a healthy skepticism towards polarizing opinions, and as with all social media, have their guard up on what can be blindly trusted. This ban assumes your average HN-er cannot tell a fanboy apart from a neutral third party - which is not the case. Let opinions be, let the fanboys talk freely (as long as they're not impolite), and trust the HN audience to use their better judgement in drawing any conclusions. I don't think anyone assumes the top comment on any topic to be an endorsement by YC/HN, or it's users.
The former would constitute a moderator bias against Google (examples of moderation going the opposite way don't change anything about this particular instance), while the latter would be actual abuse. Although seems like creating multiple accounts doesn't lead to an automatic ban in every single instance, meaning latter is unlikely to be the case here.
Astroturfing would imply that he has a business motive while trying to conceal it as a grassroots comment. Purely from the content of his comment it doesn't seem like that's the case.
It's super, and I mean super, fucked up that you turn around and accused the the other side of corruption with literally no evidence that it is true.
It's beyond super fucked up that HN thinks OPs answer adds any actual insight to this conversation, as opposed to utterly unsupported insinuations.
OP could be right, but we should all be doing better here, from the WSJ to the people upvoting this garbage.
That's the wider context.
Here is a NYT article about how state AGs get used by company lawyers to go after competitors with money exchanging hands (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/us/politics/lawyers-creat...)
Here is the one about the Mississippi AG used by the movie industry to go after google (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/technology/google-attorne...)
The WSJ is a not an uninterested party in this case, and this is but one example of them misquoting and spinning reports to attack google (https://searchengineland.com/misquoted-and-misunderstood-why...)
A situation where one side is corrupt or doing things wrong does not mean the other side is right or not corrupt. Both sides are capable of doing wrong and corrupt things.
This may be an example of corruption in an Attorney General's (AG) office, it does not prove that all AG's are corrupt because they are elected (of which, public relations is a requirement).
counter example: Letitia James
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letitia_James
One may not agree with her actions, however, corruption it is not.
Assuming your allegation is true, an AG was serving subpoenas on behalf of Google and that makes all AGs corrupt...then it goes without saying that if just one Googler has ever engaged in one bad act or act of corruption, then all Googlers are bad or corrupt.
I am not sure that is the standard you want to apply.
>AGs are elected so they seek publicity
Well nothing would gain an AG more publicity than deviating from the other AGs and exposing this case as having no merit and simply a collusion of 49 State AGs in an attempt to collectively seek publicity for their reelections. Of course Google's army of lawyers could expose the same and win Google's attorney's fees from the State, which would be negative publicity...so its pretty far fetched what you allege without any evidence.
Of course if you really cared or wanted to know if Google engages in anti-competitive practices try to Google a flight from your location to another city anywhere on the Earth and tell me what pops up first? Is it an organic result? Is it an paid ad? Or is it another Alphabet product embedded into the top of the results driving all internet traffic looking for flights to their self owned product? This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the reality of Alphabet unfairly using Google's market dominance in an anti-competitive way.
The solution is clear, at minimum Alphabet should not be able to buy/bid up Google AdWords, but the better solution would be Alphabet products/services should not be able to appear in Google results at all (or at least on page 1). The beauty of this solution, if/when Google complains that the internet won't be able to search/find their products, Alphabet can be reminded that of course the internet can find their products, through competitor search engines which are only 1 click away.
Re: the other points... Are you implying that current trust-related investigations and such are mostly bogus?
Google defends itself against trustbusting constantly: Android, adwords... the platform businesses. It has lost cases & earned record-breaking fines. €5bn is just not a dealbreaker for Google.
They expect these occasionally because Google's main MO is prone to it, at their scale. Their platform businesses are exactly the "monopolies" Peter Thiel described as the goal of modern business. The whole point of antitrust is to dampen monopolies. It shouldn't be surprising they collide.
I don't really understand the counterargument to pursuing much more decisive antitrust legislation & control, myself. It seems like a clear win.
I think it means they have some documents they don't want to give up. What that means I don't really know, it could mean they have something to hide, but then again it could be they just want to make things difficult for the people they consider their opponents - as I would.
I might also add incompetent and narcissist.
Fun Fact 4: Everyone, that is everyone which includes Google has due process rights which I feel should be exercised by everyone. Next what ? > "Man charged with murder resists punishment by pleading non guilty in court".
It's not going to get better any time soon. Karma I guess.
No, there is no resonance between those two things.
Google isn't giving up documents, that's what the headline says, and it's perfectly fair.
Your other 'fun facts' are equally disputable.
If this is a politically motivated attack on the left, why have so many jurisdictions that are controlled by the left leaning party joining in the investigation?
Google is in the unfortunate position that Republicans don’t like them because they are bunch of “hippy liberals” and Democrats are well Democrats.
That said, in theory at least, the US Justice Department is supposed to be unbiased and not directed by the whims of the parties.
The Justice Department has never been unbiased. I don’t recall any scandals where the justice department were obviously been manipulated by a Democratic President (I’m not putting it past them), but there have been many reports about Bush II and Trump.
But even if it is not stated, the Justice departments more or less goes after cases along party lines.
Why should Republicans care about startups run by tech bro’s being squashed by big companies? It’s not like they will be able to donate large sums to PACs and they are probably hippy liberals too.
Not Google, but part of the overall strategy:
"“We can’t remove all of it because it will disproportionately affect conservatives,” said Kaplan, a former George W. Bush White House official and now the head of Facebook’s Washington office, according to people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect professional relationships."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/20/faceboo...
Google has destroyed free market in programmatic ads.
Arguably a giant no-holds-barred antitrust litigation every 15 years (Republican way) is better than onerous legislation that always ends up entrenching the incumbents (Democratic way).
For the record, I was just as opposed to government intervention when it came to MS. History shows that the market took care of that. The government had nothing to do with the rise of Amazon, Facebook, Google and the resurgence of Apple to take away MS’s influence on tech.
This would be true of any company. It would even be true for many individuals.
This article is nothing more than a bulletin updating us on the latest developments in the case, painted up to look like more than it is.
It's called a "process" article. Some small thing happens in the process of a larger event, and it's updated. It helps the publication later if research has to be done into what happened and what the coverage was. It also indicates to its avid readers that it's following the event long-term and "on" whatever happens.
It's just normal journalism. But since the majority of people on HN consume their news in bits and bites here and there, and random headlines, they don't understand the benefit.
painted up to look like more than it is.
That's more of a matter of opinion than of fact. Sometimes extra background is added to a process story for the benefit of people coming in for the first time, or who will only read a few reports about an event over a period of months or years.
/Was a journalist for 20 years in a previous life.
While the title is technically true, my initial interpretation was that Google was refusing to comply with a demand which they were legally obligated to meet. Turns out it was a request which they were well within their legal rights to deny.
Sure, this is my opinion, but I'd definitely consider that to be a misleading title. This article is probably only on the HN front page because it is misleading.
"Google denies request to provide documents in investigation of anticompetitive practices" is a better title.
What do you do in your current life?
In recent years, since journalists are motivated by clicks/eyeballs, and such things are most easily garnered by outrage, such emotional bias in reporting has sadly become the norm.
The side effect being everything is us vs them nowadays.
Better title/article. https://www.forbes.com/sites/beasleydavid/2020/02/21/report-...
> Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the investigation by 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam, said the company’s actions suggest it is withholding information that could be damaging.
> “Every indication right now is they don’t believe that they’re clean because they don’t act in any way like they are,” Mr. Paxton said in an interview.
There are lots of responses from Google's side of the aisle about why they think they are in the right, but this is just a battle of he-said she-said until they go to court to fight it out.
(I'm a googler, opinions are my own)
There can be a an actual reason that Google is not giving up documents immediately, which is brought up. I don't expect any company/person to give up everything willingly to 3rd parties.
> “But we’re also concerned with the irregular way this investigation is proceeding, including unusual arrangements with advisers who work with our competitors and vocal complainants."
There are two interesting things, to me, about this. First, as Google has expanded into many more things it's hard to find consulting technologists who don't complete with Google in some manner. For example, Google has a web site builder for businesses. It could be argued any web developer is a competitor.
Second, the language use of "irregular" and "unusual" is interesting. I wonder what is unusual here. The specifics. Or, is this language meant to make us feel or think something. The US government regularly uses contractors and consultants. Is that unusual in investigations like this? How unusual are investigations like this?
You could say that, but no such stretching is needed in this case. News Corp has been a vocal opponent of Google for some time. It's not a case of a lawyer working on something that happened to be in a business that Google competes in.
Isn't it typical for regulators to work with competitors of the company accused of antitrust violations? Who is better positioned to identify abuses of the market leader? It's regulators' job to assess what about the reports actually is an abuse.
While I think a lot of this hubbub is motivated by political grudges, I can't help thinking that we would all be better off if the current generation of popular computers (phones, tablets etc) somehow allowed third party app stores.
Yet it was anticompetitive.
I suspect Google thinks it is more than that.
Maybe outside the lawsuit they're encountering telling someone asking for something and they say "No you can't have that." and the next day they get a copy and paste of the same request via this other investigation?
Granted that's speculation but I suspect there is a fine line between a legit investigation and someone driving the government wheel who is simply a competitor.
Is anyone surprised that they'd push back on requests for their own data, especially when it's run by state AGs (i.e. politically motivated) and involves turning trade secrets directly over to competitors?
> “To date, Texas has requested, and we have provided, over 100,000 pages of information,” the spokeswoman said. “But we’re also concerned with the irregular way this investigation is proceeding, including unusual arrangements with advisers who work with our competitors and vocal complainants."
Isn't that kind of to be expected in an investigation into anti-competitive practices though?
Now - you could make a strong argument that G shouldn't be allowed to own have mobile, search, ads, maps etc. which creates altogether another kind of monopoly, but, there's no need to swing the ball so far as to 'limit access'.
"It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."
- Former Google CEO, Google Chairman and Alphabet CEO
Perhaps statements that could apply to David could apply equally to Goliath.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-departments-antitrust-c...
Private browsing isn't cutting it for some reason.
