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Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

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Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#271

Post by quadrangle »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #195
jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair No, they were unfairly fought. Don't let the fact that it is your former employer cloud your vision. Not many companies have such a sordid history of unfair competition as Microsoft does.

I'm sorry but I laughed. Amazon and Google are doing things today as we speak that are as sordid as anything Microsoft has done. The warehouse conditions and pressure cooker culture at Amazon have been repeatedly reported to be appalling and Google's planned Chrome ad blocker and compensation scheme is outright abuse of their dominance in search and ads.

But Amazon and Google are power-abusive sordid companies that make GREAT products. In the past, it was easier to recognize Microsoft's bullshit because their power-abuse was combined with shitty products.

I think it was Eben Moglen I heard point out that the places in which software freedom has won over Microsoft turned out to be easier than might have been suspected 20 years ago because it was easy enough for free software to outdo Microsoft garbage. Now, with Google, Amazon, and Apple the power issues remain but the products they make are so much better, it's much harder to compete.

It was easy for Firefox to beat IE, not so easy to beat Chrome. And lots of people who were pissed off about Microsoft's power abuses give Google a pass because it's easier to go explore Google Earth and ignore the issues compared with just frustration about Microsoft's shitty software. Unfortunately, Microsoft is just as into abusing their power but has learned to be a bit less shitty in their product quality…

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#272

Post by dredmorbius »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #195
jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair No, they were unfairly fought. Don't let the fact that it is your former employer cloud your vision. Not many companies have such a sordid history of unfair competition as Microsoft does.

I'm sorry but I laughed. Amazon and Google are doing things today as we speak that are as sordid as anything Microsoft has done. The warehouse conditions and pressure cooker culture at Amazon have been repeatedly reported to be appalling and Google's planned Chrome ad blocker and compensation scheme is outright abuse of their dominance in search and ads.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Microsoft was ruled an abusing monopoly (though the remedies were exceedingly limited).

Google is presently operating under a US DoJ consent decree. I'd have to check what the status for Facebook is. IBM saw its court actions. AT&T was a regulated, monopoly-abusing entity from the 1910s, and the only reason you're making heavy use of Unix-based systems today is that AT&T's 1949 consent decree (one of several in the company's history):

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/should-we-thank-...

There were similar battles involving Westinghouse, Edison Electric, RCA, NBC, Xerox, and Land, in the tech field, and Standard Oil, numerous railroads, etc., in other fields.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#273

Post by usaphp »

quadrangle wrote: post #267
usaphp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But online advertisement is what drives sales of the companies which produce products. You won't sell your product if you don't advertise them. Especially for new businesses that sell products it's almost impossible to get noticed unless you advertise

Naw, we have an attention economy here. This is a zero-sum situation. Newcomers have to compete on the same terms specifically because all the advertising noise from others drowns them out unless they advertise too. Google lists plain facts like the existence of a business without any advertising even. If all the restaurants in a town decided in solidarity to never advertise on Google, people could still look up the…

> people could still look up the restaurant directory and learn about the options.

Then you will have premium listings in the directory. Businesses will always try to increase their revenue and advertising is and will be a tempting option for them.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#274

Post by h1d »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #104
jondubois wrote: post #14

I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. If you were to analyze Facebook as if it were a country, the wealth gap among employees would be atrocious - The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value t…

Disclaimer: I work at Google > The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. [citation needed] A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, y…

How are gmail, maps and chrome not profitable? It's a gold mine for data mining. As long as personally identifiable data is out of public's reach, Google is free to trace part of people's life and sell anonymized data to ad targeting or whatever company let alone the gov that's interested.

If you're not paying, you're selling yourself.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#275

Post by h1d »

43224gg252 wrote: post #129
TulliusCicero wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Google > The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. [citation needed] A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, y…

>gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze I think there are alternatives for all of those, many open source.

Make quality comparison?

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#276

Post by raarts »

friedman23 wrote: post #131
rdlecler1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google doesn't have an effective monopoly then I don't think I understand the word. The only search engine relavant to my search results is Google and I don't here to many people talking about optimizing their SEO for bing.

Google is not a search company they are an advertising company. Their search product is a value add, it is the reason people go to google but it is also not what they sell. A business with a monopoly can raise the cost of their product to the price the market can bear. Google cannot raise the cost of their ads because advertisers will simply go to other ad platforms. TLDR: Google is selling space on its website for a…

They do have a monopoly in search. If they decide to delist you, you're f*cked.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#277

Post by h1d »

joshuamorton wrote: post #206
0x737368 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you need to consider the amount of data Google is amassing from people using solely their services. And then sells that data to advertisers. If this trend continues eventually they'd be able to know more about you than even the closest of your friends. Is this really such a great price to pay for your privacy? For it to be easier to look up your friend's phone number from your email list?

I'm just curious, what data do you believe google gives to advertisers? I work at google, and I see this trope on HN a lot, and I always like to see what data people think is given away, since a lot of the time they seem to be under the impression that either Google's privacy policy is different than it actually is, or that Google's privacy policy isn't actually something that Google follows, or that it doesn't prote…

Aggregated?

They can cross reference one's data across all their services.

So, let's say your Android phone let's Google know where you live, work and hang around by checking maps history and gps records, and they accumulate all the search words and they know who you are, really and check every email for finding who is related and they can really come up with a model of what kind of person you are at any specific moment.

Group together, see what the citizens are like in a certain area, I think that alone is already valuable for targeting.

And they surely randomly get hidden gems where it can't possibly go public but use for their own merit.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#278

Post by quadrangle »

usaphp wrote: post #273
quadrangle wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naw, we have an attention economy here. This is a zero-sum situation. Newcomers have to compete on the same terms specifically because all the advertising noise from others drowns them out unless they advertise too. Google lists plain facts like the existence of a business without any advertising even. If all the restaurants in a town decided in solidarity to never advertise on Google, people could still look up the…

> people could still look up the restaurant directory and learn about the options. Then you will have premium listings in the directory. Businesses will always try to increase their revenue and advertising is and will be a tempting option for them.

Yeah, but maybe you missed my point. In principle, like a union / cartel, a whole sector of businesses in a market could decide together to never advertise, and the reduced overhead for everyone would mean more profit. In practice, it just takes a few deviators / scabs etc. to undermine this for everyone.

Reality is more complex. Organizing in solidarity is hard, deviation is easy… the whole non-cooperative games theories etc. Markets aren't all zero-sum.

But a bunch of restaurants in a town could all just promote the idea of eating out and promote their directory, and if no premium access or other advertising happens, then it will be best for everyone.

The core point is to reject the simplistic argument that ads are all just information and somehow fine and productive. Maybe you just meant that, in practice, businesses need to advertise. But if we get rid of a whole form of advertising, it can just help businesses rather than harm them. Each additional means to advertise creates yet more burden in a zero-sum race-to-the-bottom fashion.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#279

Post by h1d »

cidibe wrote: post #202
0x737368 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you need to consider the amount of data Google is amassing from people using solely their services. And then sells that data to advertisers. If this trend continues eventually they'd be able to know more about you than even the closest of your friends. Is this really such a great price to pay for your privacy? For it to be easier to look up your friend's phone number from your email list?

I trust Google for privacy a lot more than I'd trust 10 different little specialized services that are fighting for their lives financially and don't have the decade of experience as the biggest target on the planet with no bad breaches.

You mean Google would give up digging deep into their gold mine data just because they have another steady revenue stream? Hell no. They know about you better than you do. You don't remember what you were interested in on each month, Google does.

They may not sell all of those to third parties but what does it matter if they know all of it.

What is a privacy anyway after you've already revealed who you are constantly on multiple Google products.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#280

Post by h1d »

dandelion_lover wrote: post #269
friedman23 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many open source please. Name the open source alternatives that don't require my grandma to set up her own VPS.

Email provider: https://posteo.de ; online maps: https://openstreetmap.org . More on https://prism-break.org (no affilation with those).

It's not even funny to compare the quality of Google maps to anything else.
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