Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#381

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #251

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your Amazon receipts go to Gmail, Google collects not just all of that data, but from every other site you've bought stuff from: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/google-gmail-tracks-purchase...

Google stopped mining Gmail two years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html Any aggregation or segmentation of emails by ML/AI algorithms, as your article talks about, is analogous to having smarter filters in your inbox. It's tech illiteracy to confuse these perception NNs with data mining for business purposes.

Your employer is collecting this data right now, as my link points out. And it's actually gotten better at it in the last few months, as I purged all of my purchases from Gmail that it detected, and then a few weeks later, it found more, as they'd refined their ability to mine more transactional emails.

It is absolutely mining email, and it's extracting purchase data from it, that isn't even used in Gmail or revealed to users in any visible context, it's buried in settings. What Google uses it for? I don't know, as you said, they claimed they stopped using Gmail data for ad targeting purposes two years ago. But they're definitely working on extracting this very valuable and marketable data... for some reason.

Is it possible that Google generically collects user purchase data, including from Gmail, and then whilst not using "Gmail data" for ad targeting, it does use the "purchase data" which has been generically made part of a user's Google profile? That'd be splitting hairs real close, but it'd probably be good enough for the lawyers.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#382

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #197

threezero wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice that no Googlers have a good response to this or the Eric Schmidt / Hillary Clinton connection. Google’s ties to the Obama administration were deep.

Which raises deep suspicions about the political motivations of this "investigation". Anti-trust is about companies using their market power to exclude rivals, raise prices, and hurt consumers. It's not about consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product because they like it more. Can anyone really say that Google's practices are more anti-competitive than, say, the dominant players in broadband or health insurance or…

Can anyone really say that Google's practices are more anti-competitive than, say, the dominant players in broadband or health insurance or wireless telecom or household appliances?

I guess, "not exactly exonerating, but not exactly damning" is à la mode in 2019.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#383

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #279

panarky wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which raises deep suspicions about the political motivations of this "investigation". Anti-trust is about companies using their market power to exclude rivals, raise prices, and hurt consumers. It's not about consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product because they like it more. Can anyone really say that Google's practices are more anti-competitive than, say, the dominant players in broadband or health insurance or…

It does look like their is a strong partisan element here - but that isn't a bad thing in this instance. I think this is an interesting tangent to take. From a health-of-the-system perspective it really should be intolerable that a few large closed-garden platforms control the flow of information. Information monocultures are a threat to everyone, even if one partisan group feels more threatened than the other at any…

They appear to have a political bias in their employee base and are under pressure to make judgements about fact v. fiction (might even be an inherent requirement of choosing a sort order for search results) - that is a position somewhat similar to a conventional media organization.

Apps and games are media. In 2019, that's a glaring truth which is obvious to many in the industry. It's just that society and the culture haven't caught up with technological reality yet.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#384

Post by bduerst » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #381

bduerst wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google stopped mining Gmail two years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html Any aggregation or segmentation of emails by ML/AI algorithms, as your article talks about, is analogous to having smarter filters in your inbox. It's tech illiteracy to confuse these perception NNs with data mining for business purposes.

Your employer is collecting this data right now , as my link points out. And it's actually gotten better at it in the last few months, as I purged all of my purchases from Gmail that it detected, and then a few weeks later, it found more, as they'd refined their ability to mine more transactional emails. It is absolutely mining email, and it's extracting purchase data from it, that isn't even used in Gmail or reveale…

Again, last time you doxxed me on HN I told you my profile on HN, which you looked at, says my opinions are my own and do not reflect any organization.

It's technical illiteracy to confuse parsing and filtering with data mining for ads. Read the article, or don't, this is just a comment.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#385

Post by jsilence » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

fyoving wrote: post #69

justinph wrote: post #44

Dear Justice Department: Take a look at google AMP and how they use it to strong-arm publishers by linking it to search placement. You'll find some stuff.

People don't seem to understand how this stuff works in the US, Google has full editorial control over their search results protected by the first amendment and that right was affirmed in court time and time again: https://searchengineland.com/another-court-affirms-googles-f... If you don't like their free no lock in service go elsewhere, and that's why there is no sherman act case here, which is why if the DOJ actua…

Yeah, this is simply capitalism.

Remove the cause and not the symptoms!

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#386

Post by bduerst » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

_hl_ wrote: post #355

bduerst wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if AMP is antitrust then so is Facebook's Open Graph. Despite the hate for both on HN, neither format is targeting competitors or hurting consumers in this case.

I think the antitrust argument against AMP is a bit more subtle. The argument seems to be that Google is abusing it's market dominance to push sites into using AMP. This in turn prevents them from using third party trackers, while the pages will be served via Google caches when accessed from Google search. Hence Google gets to track the visitor, while third party tracking from other providers is prevented. I.e. Googl…

Maybe - is Amp rendering blocking third party tracking from GTM tags?

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#387

Post by themacguffinman » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

_hl_ wrote: post #355

bduerst wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if AMP is antitrust then so is Facebook's Open Graph. Despite the hate for both on HN, neither format is targeting competitors or hurting consumers in this case.

I think the antitrust argument against AMP is a bit more subtle. The argument seems to be that Google is abusing it's market dominance to push sites into using AMP. This in turn prevents them from using third party trackers, while the pages will be served via Google caches when accessed from Google search. Hence Google gets to track the visitor, while third party tracking from other providers is prevented. I.e. Googl…

Third party trackers are not prevented.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#388

Post by dsswh » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

dvtrn wrote: post #52

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Googler, that's a sentiment I have never heard expressed, nor have I felt anything even remotely like it myself. My guess would be that most people would feel a lot better about the company if they could see how the sausage gets made. At least, judging by the reactions of my family members when they ask me concerned questions and I explain how things work, that's what would happen. That being said, it will be in…

As a Googler, that's a sentiment I have never heard expressed I've seen a lot of Googlers coming here lately, professing to be Googlers and stating "this hasn't been my experience". Asked genuinely: as someone inside the company-with much better access to sentiment, opinion and company culture than I could ever hope to have, is Google truly that open and transparent to employees that you actually had an expectation t…

No, it isn't. Think of G as an oil company that owns and operates a pipe from the oil source (user data) to countries that need gas and other oil products (companies that pay for targeted ads). G employees have access to a lot of knowledge about how this pipe works, but make no mistake: any attempt to look into the pipe will be retaliated viciously. Employees are strictly not allowed to look at personal user data, even though they can do so by writing a simple SQL query. I really doubt that G sells raw user data. Not because it's kind or nice, but because an oil company makes more profit margin by selling oil products, rather than crude oil.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#389

Post by writepub » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

1. I fully agree with an investigation into Google.

2. Why hasn't any federal agency looked into Apple's behavior, where they sell hardware (and here bestow it's ownership to the consumer), but continue to play middleman in what apps the user is allowed to run. It's contrary to the fundamental concept of ownership, and worse, to the tenets of decades of general purpose computing

And before regurgitations of "it's unit sales aren't a majority" gets thrown at me as a justification for monopolistic behavior, please note the truth [1] that iOS install base/usage in the US is almost 10% more than Android, AND iDevices constitute a majority.

[1]: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-stat...

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#390

Post by summerlight » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 8:25 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #256

summerlight wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I work for Google as well and I have a somehow opposite opinion here. Working here means you gotta fight through extremely complicated, thorough (and sometime bureaucratic) privacy, security and legal reviews by daily basis. Those teams have a real power to block any launches they don't like; Google give them the power not because of good-will but it's more about decreasing a risk of significant revenue…

"You got a fancy design which may give you a big revenue boost at the cost of compromising user privacy or legal risks? Good luck with upcoming privacy and/or legal review sessions; they don't care about your product since they have no motivation to do that." From the outside, it's doubtful that this team exists at all. Or if they do, they must watch YouTube all day instead of doing their jobs, because Google is gett…

> because Google is getting better and better at compromising privacy, thanks to fancy designs/dark patterns

You're suggesting that the situation is getting worse, which I don't really see much clues from the linked report, though I don't want to spend my weekend on scrutinizing 44 pages report. I don't work for Maps, but AFAIK it used to track you silently and didn't give you control on user history. But now at least it tries to get a consent (even though it's admittedly just a nominal action) and give you some amount of control on your data, which is better than typical web practice on average. Can you explain why this should be considered as going toward "dark patterns"? All those works were strongly pushed by Privacy team. I don't expect you to praise their works, but you still don't have to use that level of derogatory words as well.

I don't necessarily deny that Google's previous (and probably current) business practice has been done in a quite privacy-invasive way. That needs to be corrected. But there's much more things to be considered as well, which slows down the pace for a good reason. So the best thing Google can do is improving the situation carefully rather than breaking everything by changing the fundamental at once.

Let me give you a super simplified example of ads; which privacy invasive practice has gone too far. But it's also true that this has powered the web ecosystem for a decade. Any kind of significant updates would lead to direct revenue impacts on not only Google but publishers and advertisers. This is real existential threats to them; surprisingly many publishers and creators solely depends on ads revenue. There are also indirect impacts on users via garbage ads and more pay-walled contents. Of course, I know what would typical HN user's answer be; "I would rather choose garbage ads than tracking and I will pay money!" But the history shows that most of attempts to prove this kind of people are significant has miserably failed (except very few examples, such as NYT) including Google's own.

BTW, one irrelevant stuff; is there anyone who have a concrete, feasible business proposal to materialize this no-ads-willing-to-pay demands into the reality? Then try a business and be the next Google/Facebook/Amazon. I'm serious. I always have been thinking about a way to do this so the web can run without ads, but because of Dunning-Kruger effect, I'm getting less and less confident about this idea :)