A look at the well-funded Big Tech opponents, from lawyers to academics, that have helped guide potential government regulation like Google's antitrust suit
although possibly short-lived — for a growing collection of lawyers, activists, economists, academics and rivals who are fueling a backlash against Big Tech @satariano@dmccabe https://www.nytimes.com/... Pui-Wing Tam / @puiwingtam : We've written many stories about people who are taking a stand against Big Tech. Taken together, they have now formed a new class of professional tech opponents, backed by funding from big name sponsors. @satariano @dmccabe https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
Context & Ripple Effects
The Times' reporting stitches together a beat it has been building for years into a single thesis: opposing Big Tech is now a paid profession. The arc runs from Foundem's case against Google, which supplied the intellectual argument that online markets do not self-correct, through the covert funding of political groups by Amazon, Facebook, and Google to blunt antitrust action, to Meta's later founding of American Edge, an advocacy group built to simulate grassroots resistance to reform.
First-order effects
Regulators pursuing cases like the Google antitrust suit now draw on a standing pipeline of sponsored legal and academic expertise rather than ad hoc critics, giving government inquiries ready-made arguments and witnesses.
The companies themselves face a two-front information war: their own funded counter-mobilization must now compete for credibility against a rival class of professionally financed opponents.
Second-order effects
Government findings lower the cost of entry for private plaintiffs — publishers and advertisers have already converted investigation revelations into private antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook — multiplying demand for exactly the specialist litigators this article profiles.
Non-tech incumbents see the advocacy market as an opening: Marriott, Disney, and IBM's push to limit Section 230 shows rivals joining the fight where regulation overlaps with their own grievances against Facebook and Google.
Third-order effects
If both sides remain permanently funded, tech policy hardens into a duopoly of professional lobbies where outcomes are shaped less by public argument than by which sponsors sustain experts longer — while governments worldwide move at a pace, per the sweeping global limits on tech power, that guarantees sustained demand on both sides.
The trend: Antitrust policymaking around Big Tech is consolidating into a two-sided industry of funded specialists, with sponsorship replacing spontaneous opposition as the sector's regulatory battles persist.
She's taken $$$ from Apple too. If your well-funded opposition to big tech is taking $$$ from big tech, that's good evidence that the opposition to big tech is based on truth, evidence, what is happening in the economy, legitimate anger, not funding. https://prospect.org/...
@BeverageSugar I think we should ban targeted ads for the social media part of google and facebook. I submitted testimony to that effect to Congress. However, we still need to split off Google from Youtube, from Google Flights, from Google Shopping, and Facebook from Instagram, f…
The DOJ lawsuit was a moment of victory — although possibly short-lived — for a growing collection of lawyers, activists, economists, academics and rivals who are fueling a backlash against Big Tech @satariano @dmccabe https://www.nytimes.com/...
New w/ @satariano: This has been a triumphant few weeks for the growing professional class of tech critics. Comprised of economists, lawyers, activists, academics and insiders, they hope they'll have the staying power of other social movements. https://www.nytimes.com/...
We aren't anti-tech! We're anti-monopoly. If you just tuned into our event featuring the indomitable @DHH, you would rightly come away with the understanding that anti-monopoly is essential for ensuring the tech sector is both innovative and responsible. https://www.nytimes.com/.…
um 1) To describe new trustbusters as well funded vs. tech giants is ludicrous. 2) This profiles Fiona Scott Morton as one of the anti-big tech forces.. Problem is that Morton has said breaking up big tech won't work.. AND is paid by Amazon. https://www.nytimes.com/...
We've written many stories about people who are taking a stand against Big Tech. Taken together, they have now formed a new class of professional tech opponents, backed by funding from big name sponsors. @satariano @dmccabe https://www.nytimes.com/...
The Justice Department's action against Google strongly echoes, experts said, the last major antitrust case against a big technology company — Microsoft in 1998 https://www.nytimes.com/...
The DOJ Anti-Trust Case against @google effectively comes down to: “If you dominate your market because you are better at AI then your competitors, we will come after you” What separates the top market-cap companies from the rest ? They are the best in their industries at AI
Here are links to their competitors: https://www.bing.com/, https://www.yahoo.com/ (although Yahoo repackages bing), https://www.duckduckgo.com/ Feel free to choose any of them and make them your default. It really is easy. People dont have to use Google, we choose to https://tw…
Some thoughts on United States vs Google, the lawsuit that might end up being this era's US vs Microsoft. I am not a lawyer and these are my judgements about the content of the complaint from an economic policy POV, not its legal prospects.
The antitrust lawsuit against Google makes no sense. Google is literally paying Apple exactly because other competing firms also wants to do it. And it's Apple, not Google, who has created this situation by playing out against them, telling them that whoever pays the most wins. h…
@matthewstoller @KenatGV @Google I get your point. Even great products need to be marketed. They spend the money to market to users of Apple to switch, or they buy the location and do a good enough job that when Microsoft and others market they don't switch
@mcuban @KenatGV @Google Once again, you are saying location is unimportant but also somehow it's all about location location location. If defaults have no value and the product is just better, then Google is pissing away $11B a year for no reason. If defaults have value there's …
Tech press: August: Apple's Services business is dependent on collecting 30% tax from developers. If that disappears, watch out. October: Apple's Services business is dependent on licensing revenue from Google. If that disappears, watch out. *Narrator voice* Neither are true.
@ptb2003 @stratechery @benthompson so none of the deals is actually exclusionary in itself? Does Google prevent Apple offering other search engines as the replaceable default? No. Does Firefox? No. Even Android you can replace the default. It's not *exclusionary*. Adversarial, ma…
Dumb question, but how come the DOJ is estimating $ amounts in the Google-Apple search deal? Isn't it able able to get that info thru its investigation? https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
@IanMorris78 @danieltrichards But this shows that the real power lies in defaults. Now you're going to have to find a legal argument where the government can tell Apple (for example) that it must allow a “search choice” system. You might be looking a long time for that one.
.@mcuban I do not think you are reading this correctly. It is not about penalizing better products, but about constraining business practices that leverage market leadership to deny oxygen to alternatives. Google's behavior in search harms open web, as well as competitors. https:…
An insightful @stratechery analysis of tech industry antitrust issues in general, and the Google case specifically. It has some interesting commentary on procompetitive and anticompetitive uses of exclusivity. https://stratechery.com/...
What Cuban is saying isn't true, but it should be true. Being a monopoly has traditionally been illegal, only after 1968 did that really change. https://twitter.com/...
Ben Thompson: “I believe the particulars of the Justice Department's complaint have been foreshadowed for a long time, and make for a case stronger than most of Europe's” https://stratechery.com/...
“People use Google because they choose to, not because they're forced to, or because they can't find alternatives”, lol. If people are so choosing Google of their own volition, why would they need to pay Apple ~$8-10 BILLION every year?? https://twitter.com/...
DoJ: “Apple dominates search traffic in the USA, and Google is so afraid of losing this traffic it gives Apple $10-15bn a year. Therefore we're suing (checks notes) Google, and, um...”
“As Google founder Larry Page was fond of saying, ‘Competition is only a click away.’” “The problem with the vast majority of antitrust complaints about big tech generally, and online services specifically, is that Page is right.” - @benthompson https://t.co/b1P0XW4V2A