Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business • Hacker News Board

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#111

Post by bogomipz » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:37 PM UTC

franciscop wrote: post #6

In my opinion this is the problem of monopoly. US ISP don't have to compete among themselves to offer a better service as I learned recently. You/they get one ISP per area with no option to use a different one. Then they become huge and start to compete for other things, which in this case is the content. This turns out is bad for: - the user for getting subpar Internet access with a fixed conditions and no option. -…

>"In my opinion this is the problem of monopoly. US ISP don't have to compete among themselves to offer a better service as I learned recently."

This is true, in some cases there will be a duopoly where Verizon FIOS might exist but that's it. The really unforgivable part about all this is that these local monopolies uses public right aways to lay their cable that allows them to deliver service at all. This is because local governments must approve their charter to operate there. These local governments are bought and sold by these monopolies/duopolies the same way Washington is bought and sold by them.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#112

Post by devnullmonkey » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:40 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #85

yeukhon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, only encrypted traffic. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh . Verizon was fined ~1.35M by FCC on this violation. But one can still infer actual page a user is visiting by means of looking at some leakage of data. See https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4388/are-urls-v... . It isn't easy but I am sure some people have done it. One thing ISP has been doing for years is with DNS. I…

They also will use your dns data. There's existing companies that already do this.

You can always use CryptDNS, which prevents this. CryptDNS plus OpenDNS and you're pretty good. Add a VPN and you're doing better than 99% of people online. Add uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, and block http/s referrer, disable mediaconnect (prevents RPC from seeing your RFC 1918s--private address scheme) and you're largely unidentifiable in the true sense.

You can do this for $5 a month by renting a droplet virtual server on Digital Ocean and setting up Streisand. Don't log anything. You will control the VPS/VPN. Use it for your mobile phone and household router (if your router supports this). If not, individual machines, but having a router that does this is key.

Use Opera and it's free VPN until you can get something sorted for yourself.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#113

Post by bogomipz » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:42 PM UTC

Oath, Verizon, Altaba - There seems to be an almost Conways type law in effect with Verizon in that their naming reflects the mentality of the company - tone deaf, out of touch and unfriendly.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#114

Post by jasonkostempski » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:54 PM UTC

lorenzhs wrote: post #100

dforrestwilson1 wrote: post #99

This is why I think Google Fiber, or some other ISP offering by Google, is an important strategic component for Alphabet.

Google Fiber is pretty much dead though, they've put all expansion plans on hold: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/googl...

I wish they had stuck around a little longer solely to start "looking into" areas. That was sometimes enough to trigger the current monopoly to start behaving more friendly. Even though Google didn't move in, it's now a lot harder for Comcast to go back to selling 20Mbs @ $100/month after they've offered 60Mbs @ $50/month.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#115

Post by ssambros » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:58 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #78

This is what advanced capitalism looks like - companies that are successful use their money and lobbying power to block competition. It's sad for everyone, except them. Capitalism tends to undermine competition and turn into monopolies. But maybe now this will give a new reason to boost TOR-like anonymity tools. If millions of people participated in such networks, then they would be much faster. VPNs could suffer fro…

What other solution do you propose? Give even more power to the government so it will become even more lucrative to bribe/own the regulators?

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#116

Post by debt » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #88

debt wrote: post #59

i don't see anything wrong with this. if it's shitty adtech then they're basically offering a base competitor to a market dominated by two players: facebook, google. apple does it all the time. shit, walgreens does it when you buy the waldrug instead of whatever else.

> walgreens does it when you buy the waldrug instead of whatever else. How? I never noticed this. Is the ad printed on the receipt or something like that?

they provide a generic "walgreens" competitor to all the other incumbent products. verizon is gonna do the same thing.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#117

Post by mirimir » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #103

mirimir wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just disconnect the VPN while streaming. Or use different devices with and without VPN.

Yes, all that seems to indeed be exactly as easy as not changing the defaults my browser came with.

My claim was that changing the defaults was harder than installing VPNs. I mean, there are lots of things that you could change. Firefox has simplified the GUI, but there's a ton of enigmatic stuff in about:config. Using VPNs for basic browsing, messaging, email etc is indeed trivial. There's basically an on/off button.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#118

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

ssambros wrote: post #115

visarga wrote: post #78

This is what advanced capitalism looks like - companies that are successful use their money and lobbying power to block competition. It's sad for everyone, except them. Capitalism tends to undermine competition and turn into monopolies. But maybe now this will give a new reason to boost TOR-like anonymity tools. If millions of people participated in such networks, then they would be much faster. VPNs could suffer fro…

What other solution do you propose? Give even more power to the government so it will become even more lucrative to bribe/own the regulators?

The most likely successor to Capitalism is not Socialism but Anarchism. The transition looks like this:

Decentralized infrastructure for commerce allows individuals to compete with corporations on a level playing field. In other words, Uber for Everything on Ethereum. You will know this has happened whenit is just as easy for a college student to hire a semiconductor design team as it is for Tim Cook, so long as the college student has their business model in order.

Another way to think about this is "AIs take away the finance jobs".

That will (largely) negate the competitive advantage of capital, people will realize there are plenty of resources to go around, stop working so many hours, and eventually stop thinking about money during daily transactions like feeding each other, fixing things, fabricating personal items, etc.

This will, with respect to resource allocation, represent a successful transition from "Capitalism" to "Anarchism" * , although money will still be used for certain activities involving superpersonal (more than what a person needs) amounts of resources (yachts, blockbuster films, musid festivals, etc). And some locales will stay under a propertarian regime. Regulatory capture is too slow to tip the balance of power back to Capital, although it will cause some hiccups along the way.

* Besides the dissolution of property, Anarchism also suggests changes to social expectations around state-sponsored violence, but that's is a whole other discussion. I am not aware of a satisfying story for how that goes down.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#119

Post by newsat13 » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 8:42 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #50

newsat13 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google also started as a search engine to help me find my way to my real destination. Instead it has snuck in and started tracking where I am going, what I am doing there, why I am there and what not. If Google is allowed to change business models radically (and very profitably), why not Verizon. To be clear, I am just pointing out that singling out Verizon/Comcast does not get to the root of the problem. We need bla…

I think the difference boils down to (a) trust and (b) power. Maybe also (c) competence. (a) Many have criticised google over the years, especially it's slogan of "Do no evil". But the fact of the matter remains that, by and large, they have always convinced people with superior services, and been very careful not to through their weight around to force people to do business with them. They may actually be terribly e…

You are horrified of a future but I am already horrified with the present where I am at the mercy of Google for my startup. Their search is opaque and my product has to do various hacks to be discovered. Email from any of my servers end in spam thanks to gmail. Chrome has taken major share and these days pages are made pretty much only to work in chrome. (real story: page does not work on firefox and i am told to use chrome).

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#120

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #36

pixl97 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, Youtube is a Google destination. Lots of people make content for the express purpose of distribution on Youtube. Those people could put the content on other services, but they would likely have lower viewership. So, I'd say you're wrong on that. Google is the destination. About search. You don't have to use it. You could go straight to the content producers website if you wanted. Chances are nobody would ever fin…

> Eh, Youtube is a Google destination. Lots of people make content for the express purpose of distribution on Youtube. Those people could put the content on other services, but they would likely have lower viewership. So, I'd say you're wrong on that. Google is the destination. You could equally well look at it this way: Lots of people make content for the "express purpose of distribution" on the Internet . The Inter…

>The Internet, which is provided to you by Verizon, is the destination.

Uh, that makes so little sense that it kinda hurts my brain. Do you even understand what 'common carrier' is?

>You don't have to use the Internet.

There are services I use that only accept payment via the internet and are not available locally. Again this makes little sense.

> I'm uncomfortable with the idea that Google deserves all the advertising revenue,

Google doesn't get all of it, but they get a large majority because unlike everybody else a decade ago, they decided not to suck. Google will one day collapse under its own weight, your local cable monopoly will not.

>sometimes at a loss due to regulation (being forced to serve remote areas and so forth, regulations that companies like Google do not have)

Your cable company didn't have to do that. They only play the 'woe is me' trick when asking for money. If you countered that they didn't have to serve all the customers, but they would lose the monopoly they will stick with the monopoly every time. It is very profitable, and yes, I've worked for Cox in the and had lots of experience.