The FTC Microsoft Antitrust Case

Craig: there's always somebody getting sued by the ftc. and this week, it's microsoft, and they've got a antitrust case. and what's this all about, john?

Jon: yeah. so, this is interesting because they've launched a wide ranging antitrust investigation into microsoft's business practices. it covers the areas of concern that it covers is microsoft's growing influence in the ai sector, which i don't think they have much influence except they've got cold points, which yeah. okay. company's diverse range of businesses, which includes windows, linkedin, and xbox, and their potential anti competitive practices in cloud services integration. now that last one's interesting because it'll bring me to another point. but, ibm, aws, google or sorry. amazon, google, they all definitely implement anti competitive practices in their cloud services because you can't easily go from one to another to another. like, when you go with one, you're stuck, and you better be, you better, pick the right one that you need, or else you're screwed because it's really difficult. you not saying you can't migrate to another, but it's they make it really, really difficult. that being said, the ftc has taken legal action against amazon, meta, and the justice department has filed lawsuits against google and apple. so this investigation just signals that even companies like microsoft, like, who have avoided all of this stuff in the past are now under regulatory microscope. now my question to you is, craig, do you think all of these cases are gonna go away once trump gets into power?

Craig: so it depends. this goes back to, trying to remember the doctrine it was, the chevron doctrine, where they def def or the chevron deference depending on how you talk about it, where the congress deferred the rights to these private organizations to make the rules. and that was recently overturned saying, well, they can't do that. congress has to make the laws. these other agencies can't be given the power to do that. so as these things come up, they're gonna get challenged and get challenged. so, it depends here. like, this is a antitrust. antitrust is antitrust. that's different than throwing on regulation. so i don't think this goes away.

Jon: okay.

Craig: but i think they have to take a look at this. trump and the republicans are concerned about losing america losing its dominance in the world, whether that's the space race, whether that's ai, whether that's technology. so if this has a negative impact on microsoft overall, they may get a light slap on the wrist as a result of that if they think that we need microsoft to be a leader in ai as, because china and whatnot is way ahead of us. because they're way ahead of us in drones and whatnot because of regulations that they put in place. for example, i did you, was watching an interview with mark andreessen as he was talking about this, and, part of the regulations is all the reg in north america is line of sight for drones. yeah. you can't go past line of sight unless you, can certify that the person driving is an official pilot and has a pilot's license and a bunch of stuff. so as a result, other countries don't have those limitations, and they are so farther ahead in drone technology than we are because of those self imposed government limitations. yeah. so it's like, oh, i never really thought of that. and you start looking at these things, and you're like, okay. is this regulation gonna slow down the us on a corporate level or not? i look back and say, i'm not sure. from a cloud computing platform, everybody's doing their own thing. so what specifically is microsoft doing that's anti competitor? i'm not sure, but i see on artificial intelligence, you know, microsoft leveraging their dominance in the market for operating system and for, word, like the office suite.

Jon: yeah.

Craig: they just threw artificial intelligence into their product, and now i'm sure immediately, they're the world leader in artificial intelligence overnight.

Jon: yep.

Craig: because they have now hundreds of millions, if not billions of people who are using their ai products that are alongside, and they become and they immediately shut down everyone else who potentially had it. so is that antitrust?

Jon: you know, and that's why i said the ai thing. i think that's that's bullcrap because, it's they've just integrated it into their office product.

Craig: yeah. but i sit back and say, well, did they offer anybody else integration into their office product? i know you're muted, so i'll keep talking because you've got a friendly animal over there saying hello. so i might ask my point is, is this anti competitor? because, you know, google's getting crap for putting their, search engine everywhere, and, essentially, we're gonna have to pull out the chrome browser, and that's gonna be a separate product. so microsoft, you've added ai. you're competing with openai. you're competing with perplexity. you're competing with google for these things. and now you're saying, alright. but we bolted on our ai product to windows and to office exclusively, and it's gonna have way more access than any of you guys will have to our kernel, to all of the stuff we wanna do. and now as a result, you know, you can't compete if people are using windows or people are using, office. that's what i'm saying. is that, you know, anti because that's what they were saying before. oh, you gotta make sure that anything else.

Jon: thing is, microsoft has always has always, embarked in anti competitive processes with microsoft office and all this sort of stuff. it's just now that now now that now and by the way, the biden administration puts, what was her name again? lena khan, in place. they appointed her as the ftc chair. and, just under her, this this was the investigation that was initiated. think, i think it's, like, these companies are finally just getting what's what's been coming to them for years.

Craig: well, i mean, this is probably as a reaction, if nothing else, from the, cloudstrike because, you know, that yep. prescreened everybody, and everyone says, let's just take a deep dive on what's going on here. and then they un unveil all these things. and it's okay. look at all this. some of this will go away, but not all of it because yes. you know, we have to sit back and say, okay. how are they anti competitive in cybersecurity products by letting crowdstrike have kernel access and no one else? maybe. you know, i i have to read in. the article didn't really give me an in-depth of what was going on, and i started looking around. but there is a thin line between running a good company who has to grow and report to shareholders and grow their market share and grow their profitability every year and being anti competitive. so, you know, when do you you know what i mean?

Jon: yeah. it's funny, though. there was a movie years ago that came out called antitrust, which was loosely based on microsoft practices. and there was one that really scared the crap out of me where they were spying on startups and, like like, doing things that were, let's say, less than legal. again, it was a movie, not a documentary, and even documentaries are not, are not always accurate. but, you know, there's been there's been those kind of rumors around all the time. amazon does it too, apparently,

Craig: where

Jon: and, like, they'll they'll do that too. they'll they'll buy a company just to shut it down kinda thing. so, like, is that anti competitive?

Craig: yeah. is that a ip grab? is that a high we want these employees, or we just wanna shut these people down so that we don't you know, there's all sorts of reasons to do that. and is it like, again, is it anti competitive for my google to pay firefox eighty per ninety percent of their revenue so they can, you know, use google as a search engine, and that allows the company to exist or not allow the company to exist and don't pay them to use google. like, which is actually more anti competitive?

Jon: i guess my question to you is, though, like, what other options are there for search engines that give you well, sorry. used to give you decent results because google is their search engine's, all out of whack recently. but, like, bing's results were horrible. i never played with duckduckgo, so i don't know. so i don't know. like, is like, even though they're paying for it, is there something like, would people still not just go to google dot com to search before they go anywhere else?

Craig: i think, you know, their search built into the browsers. that's right. they use a default whatever happens to be there. you know, it's the tyranny of the default that, has been a problem all along. and

Jon: i guess i'm different because i wouldn't do that. i wouldn't use the default. i would use whatever i let, right, or whatever gives me the best results.

Craig: so what are you using right now?

Jon: google for now. but i also now use the complexity and,

Craig: i

Jon: haven't used our gpt search yet, though.

Craig: we're we're just coming into an air of competition for these things as perplexity as chat gtp as other of these things are starting to produce search tools. i, you know, i've tried, and i get mixed results. some people love it. i'm like, i don't want to be back in a chatgtp interface again. i wanna be, you know, doing the things i wanna do. you're not necessarily giving me what i want when i do the search. so there's still some stuff missing, but we're now actually going to have some interesting competition. yes. yeah. so we'll have to see where this goes. you know and the ftc is gonna change its focus, with the trump administration because i'll be a new chair, obviously. so we'll have to see, but that doesn't mean this will stop.

Jon: yeah.

Craig: we'd love to hear what you think. you know, is microsoft being anti competitor in their cloud, in their ai, in these things? do you think bolting ai right on to microsoft office gives them a unfair advantage? and as we continue to watch this unfolding a drama, what do you think about the future of big tech regulation will look like? will it be a fair playing field for or a case of the rich get richer? i'd love to hear your thoughts.