Re: The rules did not change
when their actions become anti-competitive, when their business groups (search vs Android vs Chrome) collude to maintain a (alleged) monopolistic status, and when they are (allegedly) CAUGHT red-handed filtering search results for news articles from competing sources (read: Breitbart) or on topics that Google's corporate policies essentially "disagree with" [thus no longer operating in the public interest, in an anti-competitive way, even with political 'contributions in kind' that include restricting free speech and the free flow of information], then they have (allegedly) violated existing U.S. laws and SHOULD be sued and broken up into separate business entities that can NO LONGER cooperate at levels not available to non-Google businesses. This opens up competition, such as NON-Google browsers and NON-Google search engines pre-loaded onto Android phones (that would be ONE such example).
This was done with Microsoft in the early 90's, in case people forgot. Back then, MS Office was leveraging undocumented features so that Word wouldn't crash, but WordPerfect might, due to bugs in Windows 3.x that would cause a 'UAE' screen. I started using undocumented functions too, having discovered the problem WAS caused by bugs in Windows, and that 'GlobalHandleNoRIP()' could validate memory handles and prevent the UAE screens from happening. And eventually Microsoft had to actually DOCUMENT THIS (and similar functions) because their Office business group was, in fact, using them for that very purpose, too. it gave them an unfair advantage to have inside information and actual documentation for these functions, which nobody else had (and could only hope that the names or DLL ordinals didn't change in the next version of Windows). And, of course, let's not forget the integration of the Windows '9x desktop with Internet Explorer... which caused a WHOLE NEW set of anti-trust actions.
At least, that much I remember pretty clearly.
I could go on about Google's purchase of DejaNews, which seems to have been taken over and then dismantled. I have to wonder if any OTHER technologies have been so (poorly) treated by Google, reminiscent of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". That's pretty much anti-competitive, too, essentially buying up your potential competition and then dismantling them.