Great. Do Google next!
I would vote Amazon, then grocery chains & food production.
Tech companies need broken up too, but things that affect food supply and distribution have such a disproportionately large impact on those with lower incomes, and would result in much larger, immediate quality of life improvements for the majority of Americans.
Like Walmart which is way worse than Amazon.
I like to call them “Openly More Evil Amazon”
Walmart = offline Amazon
What about 73 billion dollars in online sales in 2022 says “offline” to you?
Goddamn. I completely forgot they even had an online shop.
I agree. The fact that chicken eggs tripled in price with seemingly little cause crosses the line. I know there was the bird flu that swept through farms but there were several articles that talked about how that event shouldn’t have caused such a steep increase. It’s criminal, that’s our food!
that’s true! amazon has a disproportionate impact on lower income people, but i’d consider the wider effect on society: google/facebook/etc controls access to information, which is more and more dangerous every year that they remain with that relatively unfettered control
amazon will remain similarly problematic, but that problem will likely be just as fixable while information access allows the FTC to act with a way to counter disinformation campaigns
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Also Microsoft
Honestly, MS could probably use at least a hand slap, but the WebDRM bs Google is trying to pull is far far far worse than what MS is doing these days.
Amazon will settle for no admission of guilt for 0.000000001% of their profit. The FTC chair will then join the board of Amazon after declaring success.
Current FTC chair has a pretty good track record so probably not the last bit
Everyone has a price
Most people have a price. Some people have principles and values, even if they get offered $1b (or some other crazy number). Those people are very rare, though, and usually aren’t in positions of power.
And they tend to commit suicide with two bullets to the back of the head, for some odd reason…
Didn’t she just lose spectacularly to Microsoft over the Activison purchase?
Yes. The FTC and other government agencies will lose all important cases against big businesses. Or they will be stripped of any power that matters. Our completely legitimate supreme court will be happy to rule their powers unconstitutional. (M*** is gunning for the SEC now.) Or we find ourselves with a president that instantly installs stooges with no intent on doing their job (like T****'s dog Mulvaney and CFPB).
I’m still proud that we have people like Khan willing to spend their (life)time fighting against obvious wrongs, or even just trying to enforce our laws against oligarchs. I just think any wins are temporary miracles until the cancer is obliterated. (At the polls!?)
vanontom’s reply is great. I’m just going to add that every government agency fighting against the merger has lost, because money is power. You just can’t blame the FCC on this one, only the Republicans that love to strip its power, because they’re anti regulation except when those regulations benefit them.
Companies this large never get their appropriate comeuppance since we’re essentially a corporatocracy.
What will actually happen is setting a precedent that Amazon’s operations are just fine and not in breach of whatever antitrust law the FTC is quoting.
Yeah as much as I hate Amazon, I have no trust in our government to successfully pull this off
Well specifically the FTC has a track record with fining several companies a few nickels everytime.
Has to do with who was in charge lately though, so I’m hopeful but not expecting.
I’ll save my enthusiasm for actual action. There’s a lot of “look! This giant corporation is about to get theirs!” lately.
None seems to ever materialize.
What do you mean nothing ever materializes??? They’ll probably be found to be breaking anti-competition laws then given a fine equal to 15 minutes of profit.
Whoa buddy, slow your roll. 15 whole minutes of profit? Are you trying to bankrupt one of these poor defenseless corporations, who signed a document that said “we did nothing wrong but unrelated we are going to pay you some money just because”?
On a more serious and somber note, until the fine wipes away all the profit gained and then some for the period they were breaking the law nothing will change.
Never gonna happen. Neither the democrats or republicans would let something like that come to pass, it would set a precedent their donors wouldn’t like.
I’ll believe it when I see Amazon actually broken up.
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I mean I’m glad they’re trying but considering they couldn’t even fight off the shitty, monopolization of Microsoft and Activision/Blizzard/King (fuck Bobby Kotick, btw), I don’t have any hopes of this happening.
They did somehow stop Comcast and Time Warner Cable from merging - which was extra weird because they were already effective merged at that point.
Spectrum/Time Warner employee here. They are just moving forward anyway in many ways. We’re about to release a streaming TV box that is a collaborative project of Spectrum and Comcast.
I used to work as a contractor at the Comcast Center and Time Warner had a whole suite of offices right in the building. This was shortly before the merger attempt.
How about the Safeway/Albertson’s merge? Or the Albertson’s/Kroger merge after that?
Well all I can say is, if you aim for the gigalith that is Amazon, please don’t miss.
Same advice I can give for those who are planning to break up Meta.
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To be fair, I definitely would have doubted Standard Oil or AT&T getting broken up if I were alive then.
They’ll pay some fines and go back to business as usual, if anything even comes of this.
Guess a lobbying payment was late.
FTC trying to stay relevant, lol. They can’t win shit these days.
I’d recommend everyone download all of their amazon purchased mp3 music and back it up in a safe spot just in case, heh.
You know, if you’re a weirdo like me who still buys individual albums that way.
You and the 13 other people need get right on that
Jokes on you, im a weirdo who buys CDs still.
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I wemt back to ripping cds
This should happen. This will not happen.
