HUGE: A federal court judge rules — in a case brought by the Trump DOJ and continued by the Biden DOJ — that Google is an illegal monopoly and violated anti-trust laws by abusing their search monopoly by forcing consumers to use its search engine.

Remedies to be decided next.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 5, 2024

I should also note that this decision is very beneficial to @rumblevideo, which has long been suing Google on the ground that it illegally abuses its search engine anti-trust power to suffocate competitors.

I wrote about Rumble’s big 2022 victory allowing the case to proceed: pic.twitter.com/AYZO3fLCnA

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 5, 2024

This is theoretically a very big deal.

Apple stock dropped because it’s now illegal for Google to pay Apple $20 billion per year to make Google their default search engine.

Reuters:

A U.S. judge ruled on Monday that Google violated antitrust law, spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and become the world’s default search engine, the first big win for federal authorities taking on Big Tech’s market dominance.

The ruling paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, possibly including a breakup of Google parent Alphabet, which would change the landscape of the online advertising world that Google has dominated for years.

It is also a green light to aggressive U.S. antitrust enforcers prosecuting Big Tech, a sector that has been under fire from across the political spectrum.

“The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” District Judge Amit Mehta wrote. The search engine giant controls about 90% of the online search market, and 95% on smartphones.

The “remedy” phase could be lengthy, followed by potential appeals to the District of Columbia Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. The legal wrangling could play out into next year, or even 2026.

Shares of Google parent Alphabet fell 4.5% on Monday as part of a broad tech share decline. Google advertising was 77% of Alphabet’s total sales in 2023.

…

Mehta noted that Google had paid $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to ensure that its search engine is the default on smartphones and browsers, and to keep its dominant market share.

…

The ruling is the first major decision in a series of cases taking on alleged monopolies in Big Tech. This case, filed by the Trump administration, went before a judge from September to November of last year.

We always say the government never does anything good. That’s maybe a slight exaggeration.

This isn’t a minor issue in the scheme of things, but obviously, Google losing market share would be a good thing in theory.

What I will say: it matters a lot less now with AI prepared to make search completely obsolete anyway.

Here’s our statement on today’s decision in the DOJ case:

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the Court’s finding that Google is ‘the industry’s highest quality…

— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) August 5, 2024

The Department of Justice unveiled a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging the tech giant of maintaining a smartphone monopoly and boxing out its smaller competitors. Apple called the lawsuit “wrong on the facts and the law.” https://t.co/sX61Jc6psb pic.twitter.com/XOtOlGLn8G

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) March 21, 2024

Given that this is coming from the Justice Department, it’s very obvious that it’s just about pushing for more control over the company, demanding more censorship and spying and so on.

The issue of whether or not Apple is a “monopoly” is complicated by the fact that Google exists, meaning the phone market is a duopoly. A real lawsuit would have to make the argument that the two have collaborated to suppress competitors.

When Epic sued both Google and Apple over the app store charges, they did it as separate lawsuits and they won against Google while losing against Apple. So there is no basic logic here. The issue is complicated by the fact that these companies are international, and UK and EU authorities also end up having an impact on regulations.

But it would be ridiculous to suggest that the Biden government cares about consumer protection.

Reuters:

The U.S. Department of Justice and 15 states on Thursday sued Apple as the government cracks down on Big Tech, alleging the iPhone maker monopolized the smartphone market, hurt smaller rivals and drove up prices.

Apple joins competitors sued by regulators, including Alphabet’s Google, Meta Platforms and Amazon.com across the administrations of both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

“Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies violate the antitrust laws,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly.”

The Justice Department said that Apple charges as much as $1,599 for an iPhone and makes larger profit than any others in the industry. Officials also said Apple charges various business partners – from software developers to credit card companies and even its rivals such as Google – behind the scenes in ways that ultimately raise prices for consumers and drive up Apple’s profit.

Dating back to its time as a marginal player in the personal computer market, Apple’s business model has long been based on charging users a premium for technology products where the company dictates nearly all of the details of how the device works and can be used. The Justice Department seeks to unwind that business model by forcing Apple, which has a market value of $2.7 trillion, to offer users more choices around how apps can tap in to the hardware that Apple designs.

…

Apple denied the allegations made by the government.

“This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple — where hardware, software, and services intersect.”

White House assistant press secretary Michael Kikukawa said: “President Biden strongly supports fair and robust enforcement of the antitrust laws.”

The Justice Department, which was also joined by the District of Columbia in the lawsuit, is seeking changes at Apple. An official suggested some form of breakup or reduction of the size of Apple was a possibility when they noted “structural relief is also a form of equitable relief.”

Apple has a lot of problems. Their phone sales are dropping (even though the 15 sold better than the 14, because people wanted the USB-C port), and maybe more importantly, they’ve made no significant investment in AI, while every other tech company is at least trying to do something.

Apple has long avoided innovation, canceling their planned car, which presumably would have sold very well. It was a really good company when Steve Jobs was alive, but after Rim Cook took over, the company has been on a clear downward trend, despite the bloating market cap.

This lawsuit will impact the stock more, presumably. Warren Buffett and various politicians with insider trade knowledge were already dumping the stock.

🚨This is crazy

Sen. Tommy Tuberville sold his entire $500K stake of Apple 2 months ago

Today, the DOJ opened a lawsuit against $AAPL to break up its “Smart Phone Monopoly”

The stock is -10% since he sold

Lucky or? pic.twitter.com/1APPDs0tkI

— Insider Tracker (@TrackInsiders_) March 21, 2024

Elvis Dunderhoff contributed to this report. 

Yes, everyone hates Facebook, and they deserve to be punished.

We do have antitrust laws, and the Justice Department should have used them a long time ago.

States suing Facebook isn’t going to accomplish anything, but I guess it’s good to draw attention to the issue.

CNBC:

A group of U.S. states led by New York is investigating Facebook for possible antitrust violations and plans to file a lawsuit against the social media giant next week, four sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The complaint would be the second major lawsuit filed against a Big Tech company this year. The Justice Department sued Alphabet’s Google in October.

More than 40 states plan to sign on to the lawsuit, one source said, without naming them.

Facebook declined to comment.

The Federal Trade Commission, whose commissioners met on Wednesday, could file a related complaint with an administrative law judge or in district court.

It drives me insane when I hear these Antifa faggots talking about how they’re “fighting capitalism.” Firstly, they’re not fighting anything other than normal people, while being supported by the globalist elite.

Secondly, we haven’t had “capitalism” in a very long time in the West. One of the most fundamental elements of capitalism is that governments have to protect against monopolies, because the entire core concept of capitalism is competition, and monopolies prevent competition.

Libertarianism isn’t capitalism, because they don’t believe in restricting monopolies. It was libertarians who took over the Republican Party in the 1980s and used it to push this insane agenda to concentrate all power in society in the hands of multinational corporations.

At the same time, we’re obviously not a libertarian society either.

Basically, Jews have taken all these different ideologies and pulled out the parts that benefit them – i.e., hurt normal Christian white people – the most, and mixed them all together to create a system which doesn’t really fit into any of these ideological categories. At the same time, they tell you to believe in all of these different stupid ideologies, because then they can point at you to explain why whatever horrible thing is happening.

In a real society, we would do what was best for the people, not what was supposedly the path of some bizarre ideology.

Jew run Facebook is one of many Silicon Valley tech monopolies that needs to be dealt with under existing antitrust laws.

Things may have looked bleak over the past month, but we are starting to see some good things happen. One very positive development is the fact that we are now seeing a mainstream debate on if the government should start regulating these big tech monopolies. This answer is an obvious yes, but this was never something that was previously talked about in the mainstream.

This debate has been simmering for quite awhile as sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were slowly but surely engaging in increasingly aggressive forms of censorship. What really put gasoline on the fire was what happened after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. These big tech companies claimed that certain thoughts could no longer be expressed because that fat bitch Heather Heyer died. Many sites and social media accounts were shut down as a result. The after effects of which we are still dealing with to this day.

We also have the lawsuit Gab filed against Google for banning their app from their Google Play Store because they hate free speech.

Google is a very evil organization founded and run by Jewish people. It is another monopoly that needs to be dealt with.

Then there’s Facebook which has manged to piss off the Communist bloc after admitting that they sold political ads to a Russian group during the 2016 campaign cycle. Considering how the Jewish media pushed the whole Russia conspiracy narrative for so long, Facebook has now found itself in the middle of the on-going Robert Mueller led witch hunt.

So we have a perfect storm. These companies have pissed off people on all sides of the political spectrum. The end result of this is a debate about big tech monopolies in the mainstream.

The Guardian has published a whole piece on this subject. Fox News was even talking about it today. Newt Gingrich brought up the idea of regulating these companies like public utilities. I’m sure there were many other segments and articles written about the topic as well.

The important thing to note here is that people’s perception of Silicon Valley has completely changed in the past few years. They’re now being perceived as an evil and sinister force. Everything is lining up perfectly for us to achieve victory.

These companies went way too far and the backlash has come. We need to do everything we can to support government action against Silicon Valley. The public seems to be with us on this one.