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Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

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Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#91

Post by mark_l_watson »

savanaly wrote: post #56
CottageCarry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love an actually decent competitor to Youtube.

I mean, I want the improvement in quality that usually comes with competition, but I don't actually want there to be competition. Does anyone really relish the idea of having to search multiple sites for a given video because you don't know or can't remember which one it's on, and having to have an account and different set of uploader subscriptions for Youtube A, B and C? And remember where the subscribe button is o…

Good point. I split the eBooks I buy between Kindle, Google Books, and Apple iBooks. I do this to not put all my digital purchases in one basket, support competition, and sometimes take advantage of sales. It is a nuisance.

But, even though you make a good point, I disagree in the sense that I would like to see other services like Vimeo gain market share to balance things out. Trouble is, it is difficult for other services to compete with ‘free.’

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#92

Post by blarrrble »

CottageCarry wrote: post #16
fishcolorbrick wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. I use a mix of Google services and non-Google services, and I've never had a hard time finding a good competitor for a Google tool.

I'd love an actually decent competitor to Youtube.

Youtube isn't doing anything incredible or unique on the UX side. The myriad high quality pornography video sites readily prove this, by competitively offering pretty top notch experiences on a diversity of platforms.

It's just that Youtube has an immense gravitational pull, that everyone likes and comes back for. At scale, no less, which is pretty tough when streaming video is such a demanding high bandwidth product.

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#93

Post by beams_of_light »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #3

I haven't read Axios before, but I really appreciated that summary. I got the gist of what the lawsuit concerned and what the ulterior motive might be and there weren't 10 more unnecessary paragraphs with no real information padding it out. It's almost exactly the right amount of concise.

I'm very wary of Republican politicians doing anything like this. They're the primary enemies of Net Neutrality thanks to lobbyists, and the big telecoms that spend money lobbying them tried to drive a narrative that Google was "getting a free ride" on their networks. Combine those factors, and you can imagine a very simple diagram of telecoms applying legal pressure to Google via the politicians they've purchased.

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#94

Post by wavefunction »

ikiris wrote: post #75
CottageCarry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love an actually decent competitor to Youtube.

It's as if twitch, amazon, and 5 million porn sites didn't exist.

Those aren't really Youtube though. I can go on youtube to listen to music or watch a video on rebuilding a carburetor self-published by some random guy, or catch a movie trailer, or even publish my own videos.

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#95

Post by chiefofgxbxl »

scarface74 wrote: post #90
chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't like Google don't use it. What happens when people don't know they're using Google? I have an Android phone and one thing that is bugging me is how the default browser on the bottom "toolbar" is in fact named "Internet". This may be fine for techies like you and me, but I'm concerned for the older folk who may have difficulty with technology or non-techies. In this case, if one just went with the defau…

Remember that old story back when Internet Explorer was dominating the market, and most people surveyed couldn't tell the difference between the web and a web browser? They pointed to the "e" browser logo and said, "That's the internet!" How did that whole trying to use their monopoly to dominate the market work out for Microsoft in hindsight? There was time that AOL was the number one ISP and MySpace was the number…

It didn't work out for Microsoft, namely because lawsuits and coverage brought attention to the issue of market dominance. That's what people on this HN article are proposing we do today. And it's about time, given that our current economy is vastly different from the one a century ago when anti-trust laws started springing up.

You haven't addressed the core of my previous comment though, regarding how big tech companies today are obscuring their branding to mislead (in my opinion) users to be completely unaware they are even using a (insert big tech company name here) product. The part of my comment you quoted wasn't me trying to talk about the rise and fall of Internet Explorer's monopoly. Rather, it was me pointing out what I believe to be a nasty dark pattern of tech today, where tech companies are building black-box products.

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#96

Post by CodeWriter23 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #44
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A politician elected on a populist platform doing things to stand up for his people is an "ulterior motive"? To me, an ulterior motive would be getting elected on a populist platform, then taking actions to benefit his own commercial interests.

Why does your definition of an "ulterior" motive require commercial benefit? Are you suggesting that, if this man had a secret reason for going after Google, and that reason was that it was part of his plan to boost his popularity and name recognition with local conservatives by shitting on "liberal" companies in order to boost his chances of winning a seat in the Senate, it would somehow not count as an "ulterior mo…

My definition doesn’t require a commercial interest. It’s just amazing to me in an age where politicians are typically benefitting their or their crony’s commercial interests that a guy who is elected on a populist platform is accused of having an ulterior motive for defending the interests of the people as he promised, because that might cause his constituents to elect him to a different office and serve them further.

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#97

Post by indigo0086 »

wavefunction wrote: post #94
ikiris wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as if twitch, amazon, and 5 million porn sites didn't exist.

Those aren't really Youtube though. I can go on youtube to listen to music or watch a video on rebuilding a carburetor self-published by some random guy, or catch a movie trailer, or even publish my own videos.

You can get money directly from the viewers with twitch, therefore making it far superior than YouTube. The idea that YouTube is monopoly because people are to afraid of moving to other options is silly

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#98

Post by indigo0086 »

thephyber wrote: post #35
maxxxxx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should make life difficult for companies from a certain size on. These large companies kill competition and innovation.

I would prefer we "make life difficult" for companies based on their behavior, not their size. At the risk of sounding like a libertarian, I'm of the mind that monopolies aren't inherently bad until they start buying politicians and bills that reinforce their hold on the market. Tesla is huge for electric-only car companies, but I don't hear the average person screaming that they should be shut down in states where t…

As someone who identifies mostly as a libertarian, monopolies are inherently bad and almost exclusively caused by government. If a company has nothing but market share and reputation to keep users or prevent competition from stepping up that is not a monopoly. I think you meant simply that being a popular service is not a bad thing. Corporatism and government kick backs and protections cause the economic issues and stifle small competition.

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#99

Post by tacomonstrous »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #96
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does your definition of an "ulterior" motive require commercial benefit? Are you suggesting that, if this man had a secret reason for going after Google, and that reason was that it was part of his plan to boost his popularity and name recognition with local conservatives by shitting on "liberal" companies in order to boost his chances of winning a seat in the Senate, it would somehow not count as an "ulterior mo…

My definition doesn’t require a commercial interest. It’s just amazing to me in an age where politicians are typically benefitting their or their crony’s commercial interests that a guy who is elected on a populist platform is accused of having an ulterior motive for defending the interests of the people as he promised, because that might cause his constituents to elect him to a different office and serve them furthe…

Among other things, this seems to carry the implicit premise that prosecuting Google for antitrust violations is a populist issue. I would wager that if you polled it, you would find the exact opposite.

Re: Missouri Attorney General launches investigation of Google

#100

Post by ajdlinux »

savanaly wrote: post #56
CottageCarry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love an actually decent competitor to Youtube.

I mean, I want the improvement in quality that usually comes with competition, but I don't actually want there to be competition. Does anyone really relish the idea of having to search multiple sites for a given video because you don't know or can't remember which one it's on, and having to have an account and different set of uploader subscriptions for Youtube A, B and C? And remember where the subscribe button is o…

Indeed.

Really I want a decentralised system where I have my cake and eat it too, with a single mechanism for accessing my content while also not giving a single company control over and profit from the entire industry.

Oh, and this hypothetical decentralised system has to, well, not completely suck. Which means it's never going to happen.

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