It's not unreasonable to question the motivation of this DOJ, nonetheless, that does not mean that there is nothing here, even if the green light was given for bad reasons. If we are seeing action on Google it could be that they have been preparing something for some time now and it was simply the case furthest along. I would agree that while Google is not entirely clean the behavior of Facebook and Amazon are much more egregious.
I mean, Amazon definitely has issues, but apart from some incredibly good acquisitions and sharp business practices, I don't see the anti-trust case against Facebook.
Agreed. I think that FB is simultaneously one of the least liked tech companies among the general public, but also probably the one with the weakest anti-trust case against them.
The rent-seeking by Google + Apple seems pretty clear to me.
They want to reverse Facebook's Instagram acquisition but Zuck is merging all backend infrastructure of Facebook and Instagram to make it harder for them.
Instagram had like 10mn users when they were acquired, and had literally just launched an Android app (like the week before the acquisiton).
It's incredibly successful because of the FB acquisition, so I'm not sure what the anti-trust concern is.
Now, Whatsapp is a completely different matter, and that should probably never have been allowed to happen (and if Whatsapp had been popular in the US, I'm not sure that it would have been).