You're assuming anti-competitive behavior doesn't exist based on the premise that it's not prosecuted more often but that is flawed logic. Anti-competitive behavior and lack of prosection are not mutually exclusive.
We don't see antitrust lawsuits for a variety of reasons. One of which is that they are extremely resource intensive to fight since by definition they tend to be fought against massive corporations. When the feds can go after 50 other cases for the cost of going after a single massive company, that's a hard sell.
As to purchasing a competitor: Sure, if you're purchasing it because it adds to your capabilities then it seems fairly straightforward. That's not what we see here. Here, we have an example of purchasing them when, at this stage, Google saw little or no value in it except as a means to limit competition.
>As to purchasing a competitor: Sure, if you're purchasing it because it adds to your capabilities then it seems fairly straightforward. That's not what we see here. Here, we have an example of purchasing them when, at this stage, Google saw little or no value in it except as a means to limit competition.
You're interpreting the email screenshots incorrectly. I think you need to carefully re-read them and mentally note that there are _2_ different people expressing 2 different opinions: Jeff Huber & [redacted].
- Jeff Huber (Google Ads team): he initially brings up the question about a Youtube acquisition and sees them as additive to Google because he sees their team iterating on new features faster. He perceives the Youtube team as a "passionate" bunch. He also sees value in getting Youtube's assets and existing deals if Google buys them. Jeff sees synergy with buying them because he predicts that Youtube will eventually need a more scalable backend (think of Google's big datacenters) -- and monetization... and as a convenient coincidence... Jeff is in the ads team.
- [redacted] (Google Video team): he pushes back because he thinks his Google Video team will eventually build the same Youtube features anyway by 4th quarter. He's the one who wrote Google acquisition of Youtube purchase would be "defensive".
You're giving too much weight to one person's opinion ([redacted]). However, PC is not the ultimate decision maker for Google to buy Youtube.
Maybe we can use some common sense about [redacted]'s perspective. If [redacted] were to wholeheartedly agree with Jeff Huber, that would mean.... he's admitting that he & his team are not competing as well as those Youtube guys. So it would be understandable human nature for him to think the Youtube acquisition would accomplish nothing but take them away from Yahoo.
It looks like Jeff Huber (and later Susan Wojcicki) championed buying Youtube because of the value there. It seems that [redacted]'s opinion was discounted or ignored. You don't have war meetings about the risks of fighting the multi-million dollar lawsuit with Viacom as a consequence of buying Youtube, and then subsidizing Youtube's money-losing business for years if you saw no value in them.
Well said. And as [redacted] himself noted in one of those emails, "there are 20 more sites like this that Yahoo could go out and buy". In order for Google to effectively gobble up the competition, they would need to go on a video site acquisition spree far beyond YouTube -- and they didn't. From their behavior, it really does look like Google was buying YouTube because they thought the two companies would complement each other.
I’m saying we only know when behavior is anticompetitive, in the sense that someone undoubtedly acted in a way that violates US antitrust laws, when it’s ruled as such in court. You can have an opinion for if some act is anticompetitive behavior, but you can’t allude to that as fact or create a ”reasonable working definition” when such criteria is already writ in law.
If this was Google in 2016, it would be very notable and your comments would apply.
This is all completely irrelevant as anti-competitive behavior is only an issue when a company holds a monopoly, which Google did not have in any way in 2005. In the absence of a monopoly position, anti-competitive behavior is completely normal, expected, standard, and does not even merit the label because it is how businesses grow.
We don't see antitrust lawsuits for a variety of reasons. One of which is that they are extremely resource intensive to fight since by definition they tend to be fought against massive corporations. When the feds can go after 50 other cases for the cost of going after a single massive company, that's a hard sell.
As to purchasing a competitor: Sure, if you're purchasing it because it adds to your capabilities then it seems fairly straightforward. That's not what we see here. Here, we have an example of purchasing them when, at this stage, Google saw little or no value in it except as a means to limit competition.