Tootfinder

Read today’s pathetic remarks as an attempt to mock the military and all the people who serve in it so that the fascists can get what they crave: a monopoly on the perception of strength. It is a “culture war” in the truest sense of the word: an attempt to make lies about strength trump actual strength. (The very same principle is at play when fascists mock protestors, but I think the dissonance is culturally easier to spot here.)
Also read it as an attempt to consolidate military power. It is both. These things go together.
Dangerous times.
/end

Another excellent thread from @… I especially agree with this bit:
"The EU needs to get the *hell* off US tech infrastructure. Under Trump, Big Tech and the US government have stopped even pretending that American tech companies are independent of the US government. We know (from China) that Apple will happily backdoor its cloud servers to assuage authoritarian governments"
Not easy for even a motivated person to achieve without a lot of help though. Yet.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115271300104707706
pluralistic@mamot.fr - Apple has threatened to stop selling iPhones and other devices in the European Union (home to over 500,000,000 affluent consumers) if the bloc doesn't rescind the Digital Markets Act, a democratically accountable anti-monopoly law that bans Apple from blocking third parties from offering services to iPhone owners:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/25/apple-calls-for-changes-to-anti-monopoly-laws-and-says-it-may-stop-shipping-to-the-eu
 
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The Federal Trade Commission, last month, announced that it would approve the merger of two of the biggest ad agencies in the world
-- only if the parties agree to an unusual condition:
The merged company cannot refuse to place ads on websites for political reasons.
The move was a sharp break from its traditional practice.
The F.T.C. is usually focused on such concerns as consumer protection and monopoly power;
Now it’s trying to dictate where businesses adverti…

Opinion | Trump’s Campaign to Coerce Advertisers Into Backing Conservative Media
The administration seeks to coerce advertisers into using conservative media.

Multiple Concurrent Proposers: Why and How
Pranav Garimidi, Joachim Neu, Max Resnick
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23984 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.23984

Multiple Concurrent Proposers: Why and How
Traditional single-proposer blockchains suffer from miner extractable value (MEV), where validators exploit their serial monopoly on transaction inclusion and ordering to extract rents from users. While there have been many developments at the application layer to reduce the impact of MEV, these approaches largely require auctions as a subcomponent. Running auctions efficiently on chain requires two key properties of the underlying consensus protocol: selective-censorship resistance and hiding.…

Coverage of the penalty phase of the Google Ads Monopoly trial continues to be fascinating: https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/…

Day 5: Another Bad Day for Google as the Spirit of De Tocqueville Looms
And an expert witness who oversaw Instagram's migration to Facebook explains how Google's ad tech can be divested within 18 months.

A post from the archive 📫:
Monopoly
#musings #law

According to the complaint, more than 60% of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa’s debit network,
allowing it to charge over $7 billion in fees each year for processing those transactions.
The complaint further alleges that Visa illegally maintains its monopoly power by insulating itself from competition.
For example, Visa wields its dominance, enormous scale, and centrality to the debit ecosystem to impose a web of exclusionary agreements on merchants and…

Justice Department Sues Visa for Monopolizing Debit Markets
The Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today against Visa for monopolization and other unlawful conduct in debit network markets in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.

Google lawyers navigating European anti-monopoly laws: oh noes, too complex! can't innovate! reset plz?
Google lawyers navigating European tax laws: Double Irish with Dutch Sandwitch.

The Google AdTech monopoly trial is a really big deal, bigger in my mind than the search monopoly.
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/its-groundhog-day-for-a-google-breakup

It's Groundhog Day for a Google Breakup
Deliberations on the remedy to Google's Ad Tech monopoly start today. Will Judge Brinkema deliver Google the break-up it evaded in Search?

Time for authors to get off Audible (and ideally Amazon as well) before you'll find yourself trapped in a death spiral.
And yes, I know how hard that would hit most. But if Amazon is able to destroy competitors, nothing will stop them from exploiting you even more.
https://www.instagram.com/r…

A post from the archive 📫:
Monopoly
#law #musings

Newsmax Broadcasting files an antitrust lawsuit against Fox Corp and Fox News in a Florida federal court, alleging Fox has deliberately blocked Newsmax' growth (Katie Arcieri/Bloomberg Law)
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/newsm…

Newsmax Sues Fox News, Claiming Conservative TV News Monopoly
Fox News Corp. was sued Wednesday in federal court by conservative news rival Newsmax Broadcasting LLC, with claims the organization unlawfully maintains a monopoly in the market for “US right-leaning pay TV news.”

The problem with playing Monopoly
Is more than enduring monotony
To see without fail
Those going to jail
Are never the people who oughta be.
#BoardGameASongOrLimerick
#HashTagGames

The US v. Google ruling signals a cautious antitrust approach by courts and a reluctance to intervene too deeply, ahead of other Big Tech antitrust rulings (Steve Lohr/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/technology/google-ruling-antitrust.html…

Google Search Monopoly Ruling Sends Signal for Big-Tech Antitrust Cases
A federal judge ordered steps in the search monopoly case that will restrain Google but not break it up, signaling a cautious antitrust approach by courts.

Voting is under way in Georgia for two seats on the utilities regulatory commission. Current GOP members are totally in the pocket of the entities they're supposed to be regulating.
https://energyandpolicy.org/georgia-psc-in…

Eco-Movement, which holds a quasi-monopoly on EV charging point data in Europe, has been acquired by Dow Jones.
https://www.dowjones.com/press-room/dow-jones-acquires-eco-movement/

Dow Jones Acquires Eco-Movement
Latest acquisition advances Dow Jones’s energy business with industry-leading data  NEW YORK – [September 18, 2025] – Dow Jones today announced it has acquired Eco-Movement, a leading global platform for EV charging station data. Eco-Movement will operate as part of OPIS, Dow Jones’s growing energy business.  Headquartered in Utrecht, Netherlands, Eco-Movement is a leading charge […]

As Microsoft EOLs Windows 10, I'm reminded of why Windows is fundamentally broken, by design. https://davelane.nz/windows-broken-design When you're a global platform monopoly, your existing users are your biggest competition. Your interests and those of your customers are diametricall…

Robust Competitive Ratio for Deterministic Monopoly Pricing
Tim S. G. van Eck, Pieter Kleer, Johan S. H. van Leeuwaarden
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06619 https://

Robust Competitive Ratio for Deterministic Monopoly Pricing
We study deterministic monopoly pricing under partial knowledge of the market, where the seller has access only to summary statistics of the valuation distribution, such as the mean, dispersion, and maximum value. Using tools from distributionally robust optimization and max-min analysis, we evaluate pricing strategies based on their competitive ratio (CR). We characterize the worst-case market scenario consistent with the available information and provide a complete solution for minimizing the…

…oooohhhhh this s____t FINALLY might start hitting the fan! I, and many others, have been pointing out the monopoly that BC company ConAir has over firefighting contracts for Canadian governments for years.
Coulson Aviation has been doing firefighting aircraft for decades and has never been picked by its own home province on a long term contract.
The bias has been glaring.
Looks like they're going to fight it out in Court in Saskatchewan!
#BCWildfire #BCPoli
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/government-overpaid-firefighting-planes-manufacturer-says-1.7630608

I’m getting the distinct sense nobody at Google saw this. Or at least nobody with authority. So if you work there, forward it to your boss.
“My Request to Google on Accessibility”
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/05/my-request-to-google-on-accessibility.html…

My Request to Google on Accessibility
Hey, Alphabet or Google or Chrome or whomever in that illegal monopoly continues to release things to the web platform that are full of accessibility barriers, I have what I think is a straightforward request. My Request Please, if your team cannot explain how the thing satisfies all WCAG Success…

Kartellbildung 2.0? Microsofts KI-Preistreiberei oder doch nur… äh… ‚innovative Marktgestaltung‘? 😉
Kläger werfen #Microsoft vor : Exklusivverträge mit OpenAI drosselten bewusst das Angebot – und trieben die Kosten für KI in die Höhe.
#KI

Ach mansen, ga toch weg van Facebook. (En Google, Apple, Amazon en Microsoft)
Zuckerberg speelt Monopoly door halve villawijk op te kopen, tot onvr…
https://archive.ph/BFZHQ

Google will be allowed to keep Chrome but can no longer pay for exclusive search contracts. In busting Google's search monopoly, the court has cemented their web browser monopoly. I don't see how Mozilla survives this.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/google-antitrust-search-…

Google stock jumps 8% after search giant avoids worst-case penalties in antitrust case
The ruling comes nearly a year after a U.S. judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

Newsmax sues Fox News, calling it a monopoly that abuses its power (Liam Reilly/CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/03/media/newsmax-sues-fox-news
http://www.memeorandum.com/250903/p96#a250903p96

Who Pays, Who Benefits? Producer-Insurer Games in Life-Saving Medicines
Delia Coculescu, Maximilian Janisch, Thomas Leh\'ericy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16125 https://

Who Pays, Who Benefits? Producer-Insurer Games in Life-Saving Medicines
Pharmaceutical markets for life-saving therapies combine monopoly power with insurance coverage. We build a tractable sequential game in which a patent-holder chooses the drug price, a profit-maximising insurer sets its premium, and a population of heterogeneous agents decide whether to insure and, conditional on diagnosis, whether to purchase treatment. Two sufficient statistics - subjective illness probability and reservation price - capture heterogeneity and nest risk-aversion and liquidity-…

The nightmare of the #Google case,
"As punishment for being convinced of obtaining and maintaining a monopoly, Google will be forced to share sensitive data with lots of other search engines. This will not secure competition for search, but it will certainly democratize human rights violations at scale."

«It’s an issue at the intersection of several critical problems with the modern internet: Google’s search monopoly, rampant porn piracy, a DMCA takedown process vulnerable to errors and abuse, and now the automation of all of the above in order to operate at scale.»
https://www.404media.co/how-onlyfans-piracy-is-ruining-the-internet-for-everyone/

Cumulus Media sues Nielsen, accusing it of anticompetitive moves by requiring the purchase of local radio ratings data in order to access its national analytics (Mike Scarcella/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/r

Do you ever stop to think how many companies you despise, but they have your business anyway because they are a monopoly?

LLMs are endgame capitalism. once you run out of ordinary things to do with $, the only thing left is to outspend rivals in some market, in order to become *the* monopoly, for that ultimate power.
existing markets are regulated to be "useful", so it's hard to win there. it's easier (seems easier) to win in new markets.
cryptocurrency was one, "new money". VR tried to be one, "new reality", but participation is too hard.
LLMs are "n…

The DOJ and Google wrap up a two-week remedies hearing in the US v. Google ad tech trial; both sides will offer closing arguments in November (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/technology/google-ad-tech-arguments.html

U.S. v. Google: What Each Side Argued for Fixing Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly
The Justice Department and Google wrapped up a two-week hearing that could have a major effect on online advertising.

a bit physically relieved that we managed to avoid what would have been an extinction-level event for the web (the Mozilla search deal is also deemed fine now) https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/02/tech/google-antitrust-ruling-chrome-android

Google will not be forced to sell off Chrome or Android, judge rules in landmark antitrust ruling
A court will not force Google to sell off its Chrome browser or Android, a federal judge said in a court filing on Tuesday. The decision serves as a significant win for the tech company, which has avoided the most extreme possible outcome from a landmark antitrust case that determined the company was operating an illegal online search monopoly.

Google spared break-up in US monopoly case (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/25863491-1f19-4deb-95a2-fa18ee84eabb
http://www.memeorandum.com/250902/p113#a250902p113

In US v. Google, a judge rejects prosecutors' bid to make Google sell off Chrome but says Google is barred from exclusive contracts and must share search data (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/google-antitrust-search-ruling.html

Google stock jumps 8% after search giant avoids worst-case penalties in antitrust case
The ruling comes nearly a year after a U.S. judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

PubMatic sues Google in Virginia over alleged illegal ad tech market monopolization, the second such suit since an April ruling that Google monopolized ad tech (Leah Nylen/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…

In a stunning reversal, the Trump administration just gave the green light to a major tech merger
— and then fired two Justice Department lawyers who opposed it.
Was corruption at play in the merger decision?
Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with The Lever’s Luke Goldstein and UnHerd Magazine’s Sohrab Ahmari, who first exposed the “mergers over martinis” story behind the reversal

Trump’s New Merger Scandal Is Swampier Than Watergate
After hiring MAGA lawyers, a tech giant got its antitrust case settled, and monopoly cops were fired. Can a Nixon-era law save the day?

A bottleneck model with shared autonomous vehicles: Scale economies and price regulations
Koki Satsukawa, Yuki Takayama
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08848 https://

A bottleneck model with shared autonomous vehicles: Scale economies and price regulations
This study examines how scale economies in the operation of shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) affect the efficiency of a transportation system where SAVs coexist with normal vehicles (NVs). We develop a bottleneck model where commuters choose their departure times and mode of travel between SAVs and NVs, and analyze equilibria under three SAV-fare scenarios: marginal-cost pricing, average-cost pricing, and unregulated monopoly pricing. Marginal-cost pricing reduces commuting costs but results i…

The DOJ and Google wrap up a two-week remedies hearing in the US v. Google ad tech trial; both sides will offer closing arguments in November (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/technology/google-ad-tech-arguments.html

U.S. v. Google: What Each Side Argued for Fixing Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly
The Justice Department and Google wrapped up a two-week hearing that could have a major effect on online advertising.

In US v. Google, a judge rejects prosecutors' bid to make Google sell off Chrome but says Google is barred from exclusive contracts and must share search data (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/google-antitrust-search-ruling.html

Google stock jumps 8% after search giant avoids worst-case penalties in antitrust case
The ruling comes nearly a year after a U.S. judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.