I agree that others do the same, but the observation that vocabulary somewhat affects thought is still interesting. As an example, the sentence about "defensive rationale" didn't just reformulate the sentence, it completely changed the meaning.
If people aren't allowed to talk about "crushing competition" they also can't think about it. If they can't think about it they also can't recognize it when it happens.
Do they? Googles competition is Facebook (advertising). But Google seems very wary about going into FB dominated areas (Google+ notwithstanding), and FB is very wary about going into Google areas (no FB phones or tablets).
They kind of agree Google is the search/Android company, and FB is the social network company, and that way they can both sell ads.
Even Reddit, Snapchat, and TikTok, FBs main competitors, were never “crushed.” There was never a full out assault on them.
FBs attitude seemed to be to watch them, learn from them, and adopt their best practices.
The policy isn't to avoid crushing competition or becoming a monopoly in some market, it's to avoid specifically setting out to do so. Unless Google intentionally slows development/cuts resources, the amount of capital and level of talent they put into products makes "make the product better for users" a plan very likely to result in naturally taking over the market.
That's the policy that the Biden team is trying to change. Following from what you said, do you expect Google to change its behavior once the natural monopoly policy loophole gets fixed?
> That's the policy that the Biden team is trying to change.
Source? the FAAMG plan with horizontally scaling the business into more markets is ultimately "benefit the consumer", so disallowing such expansion is effectively making products worse (for the majority; the minority customers unhappy with the new FAAMG-backed competing product do indeed suffer). If this policy is that narrow, they'll just slow acquisitions/product development and either start spinning off more companies or increasing VC spending, which doesn't move the needle besides detaching the company's name from their money.
> What do you think Biden meant when he said "capitalism without competition isn't capitalism"?
Until we see some antitrust action that's an actual breakup and not 'locked down devices that aren't game consoles need to allow third party App Stores' we won't know the actual extent to which Biden is serious about doing anything to natural horizontal monopolies.
If people aren't allowed to talk about "crushing competition" they also can't think about it. If they can't think about it they also can't recognize it when it happens.