Break Up Google
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Break Up Google
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Re: Break Up Google
#2Break Up Amazon & Facebook too.
Re: Break Up Google
#3Unfortunately, this is not going to be nearly good enough.
I'd adopt a salt the earth policy with respect to the spying parts of Google. That'd be a start.
Sadly, there'll be plenty of companies that'll fill its shoes to continue spying on people, and many more that already do.
So much of the modern internet is built on a foundation of spying on users, and most companies will not willingly give up all the dollar signs they see when they think of spying and even more spying on their users and everyone else they can gather data on.
It's super depressing.
Re: Break Up Google
#4How do we decide which companies to break up ? Similar argument can be made for any big conglomerate. Look at Reliance in India or Samsung in Korea, they sell anything and everything possible. Could it make companies hide businesses as well, just to not want to break up.
Re: Break Up Google
#5Generally interesting article. Makes his case pretty well
"But YouTube definitely has to be its own thing; it’s got no real synergy that I can detect with any other Google property."
This is a funny observation because YouTube was originally an acquisition and its integration with other Google products is very strange. It has at most points in time had its own rules about anonymity, privacy, multiple accounts, etc. Supposedly the gender setting (now google-account-wide) was originally a YouTube piece of data that got repurposed for use in G+ and other services that needed it.
Re: Break Up Google
#6How do we decide which companies to break up ? Similar argument can be made for any big conglomerate. Look at Reliance in India or Samsung in Korea, they sell anything and everything possible. Could it make companies hide businesses as well, just to not want to break up.
Well, this is not a new problem. Antitrust enforcement and breaking up companies has been a thing for decades (if not at least a century)
Starting with companies that make over a billion dollars a year and are in multiple markets seems like an uncontroversial place, though.
Re: Break Up Google
#7Break Up Amazon & Facebook too.
A lot of his arguments make sense for amzn, facebook, ms, all the big tech players I think. He indirectly mentions this in a couple cases, even if his focus is on Google. I think it's reasonable to focus on them because of the huge impact services like Maps can have on commerce.
Re: Break Up Google
#8These type of posts are now starting to sound like propaganda. Just emotional catharsis of some sort.
There are plenty of large companies on this planet.
Why do you focus on Google?
and why do we see these posts frequently making it to top ten of hacker news?
Re: Break Up Google
#9Here's the rub: I strongly suspect that YouTube is not profitable, or is just barely profitable, such that it would be difficult to run as a separate company from the rest of Google. This is even more true for Maps. Breaking apart Google would substantially risk those businesses.
On the other hand, maybe that's a good thing.
Re: Break Up Google
#10> When? · The best time would have been sometime around 2015. The second best…
This makes sense.
Maybe then we would see some attention directed back to search quality and to delivering a quality alternative smartphone os (I finally caved and went for iPhone last year after 8 years of waiting for another good Android. Yes, that means I used to like one or two of the early models.)