Share this page!

Matt Stoller Profile picture
Twitter logo
20 Oct, 12 tweets, 4 min read
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division will be filing an antitrust suit today against Google. wsj.com/articles/justi…
Yesterday I noted that Biden will be much stronger than Obama on corporate power, in large part because the environment has changed.

To wit, the Republican Trump administration is trying to restructure a trillion dollar corporate giant. Truly extraordinary times.
Still waiting to read the Google complaint. The DOJ case is likely to be narrow, because that's what the DOJ lawyers could deliver in Barr's timeline. But there will be two more cases coming, both state AGs and both broader.
Apple may get hit hard with this Google antitrust case. The DOJ AT is saying, among other things, that Google's annual payment of $12B+ to be the Safari default search engine is illegal. fortune.com/2018/09/29/goo…
Any questions on the Google antitrust case? I'll try to answer as best as I can.
No, the remedies come later.
My organization @econliberties came out with an explainer on how these kinds of monopolization cases work. You can read it here: economicliberties.us/our-work/secti…
In addition, here's our big tech abuse tracker on Google, a list of all the scandals the corporation has gone through over the recent past. economicliberties.us/big-tech-abuse…
Just the fact that there is a DOJ Antitrust monopolization case is massively important. There hasn't been a DOJ Antitrust monopolization case in twenty years. Now lawyers will wonder, is antitrust back?

(The FTC had some, but they were mostly useless.)
We will go back to tilling the New England rocky soil to eke out a subsistence living.

Wait, I mean competition will induce much more innovation, as it pretty much always has.
No, the case is far too narrow, focused entirely on distribution. But the state attorneys general are going to bring two other cases that go after different parts of the problem. We still need more though, but this is a good start.
That will be a huge problem. mattstoller.substack.com/p/will-bill-ba…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Matt Stoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
16 Oct
The author of this piece @Claudia_Sahm has it wrong. The answer is to give up on the Fed and to actually turn to politics. Congress needs to address our political problems, and handing it over to the Fed to take care of Wall Street was the wrong move. nytimes.com/2020/10/16/opi…
What I mean here is that the Fed needs to *let the stock market crash* and refuse to engage in fiscal policy. And Congress needs to replace the FOMC with a Congressional committee. That's what pushing Congress means, not Jay Powell murmuring at hearings.
I'm well aware that @Claudia_Sahm has been saying Congress needs to act. My point is, that doesn't matter, the problem is institutional. Congress is the only body that can address our problems, and the Fed is putting Congress to sleep by taking care of the stock markets.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
14 Oct
To Republicans whining about the Hunter Biden censorship, you had four years to bring antitrust cases against Facebook and you didn't. Your FTC fought bitterly against sanctioning FB. Democrat @davidcicilline wrote a report on FB's monopoly, @Jim_Jordan opposed it.
I *loathe* the way Democrats gave Obama a pass on all of his failures, which included everything from a foreclosure wave to amnesty for white collar criminals to opioids to failures on antitrust and banking regs.

Trump has done the same thing. Lotta talk, little action.
We brought this up last March. Trump's antitrust chief Makan Delrahim was *helping* big tech. nytimes.com/2019/03/06/opi…
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
11 Oct
I've spent a few months reading and learning about English history. My conclusion is that it is perhaps necessary that the 1619 Project overstate its claims, and hopefully there is a great synthesis coming.
It's just too easy to write history from the vantage point of the winners, because winners tend to document their point of view incessantly. Also, the winners often destroy whatever the losers wrote down. If the 1619 project overstates their claims, well, maybe that's ok.
The synthesis I want is one combining the narratives of Oliver Cromwell adherents with slavery.

Bacon's Rebellion is a good place to start. That was key to forming racial hierarchies, but it was also a burning ember from the English Civil War.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
9 Oct
A new digital regulatory agency is a TERRIBLE idea for many different reasons. First, there are no boundaries. Everything is digital these days. Second, the FTC and DOJ didn't lack jurisdiction, they just didn't act. Why would a new digital agency not repeat that?
Dodd-Frank was a failure, but liberals bought into it because we got a regulatory agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB was mostly useless, then Trump shut the CFPB down with a shrug.
The way to address structural problems on Wall Street is to *break up the big banks,* not by regulating them. The same thing is true with big tech. The solution for things that are too big is to make them smaller.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
6 Oct
The threats Facebook and Google made to Australia after that country attempted to regulate them come up in the Cicilline Report on big tech. Apparently @davidcicilline is unhappy when big tech monopolies threaten sovereign nations.
“It would be commercial suicide to be in Amazon’s crosshairs . . . If Amazon saw us criticizing, I have no doubt they would remove our access and destroy our business.”

- Anonymous partner of Amazon to the Antitrust Subcommittee
An attorney representing app developers said they “fear retaliation by Apple” and are “worried that their private communications are being monitored, so they won’t speak out against abusive and discriminatory behavior.”

Jfc
Read 38 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
6 Oct
1. I'm reading Republican @RepKenBuck's leaked views on the big tech antitrust hearing, and it's quite a remarkable document. First, the Chicago School has lost the argument. Buck endorses the the fact there's a monopoly crisis.

"Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have used...
2. "... their monopoly power to act as gatekeepers to the marketplace, undermine potential competition, and pick winners and losers, all while simultaneously cozying up to unfriendly nations like China in order to further expand their global footprint."
3. "Big Tech's titans, with a combined market cap nearing $5 trillion, have tipped the technology marketplace towards monopoly. These tech titans have used their dominant positions to hike fees, misappropriate third-party data, steal IP..."

It goes on. This is a Republican!
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get email notifications when new thread is out from this Author!

Check out other threads from this Author!

Read all threads by @matthewstoller