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Break Up Google

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Re: Break Up Google

#41
post #34

Is anyone else tired of seeing the same hate Facebook, Zoom and Google narratives every single day. So, we want to break up Google because it has gotten too big. What about Luxottica? It has over 80% market share on eyewear brands. What about Pearson? It has over 60% market share on testing market? What about Paypal? It has over 80% market share on online payments. What about Aetna (merged with Humana) on health care…

Aetna shouldn’t be broken up - it should be nationalised!

Re: Break Up Google

#42

These 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?

I agree, a lot of very large companies should be broken up.

At the same time, why can't someone's blog focus on one? Why can't a given company be held under the spotlight for something? Being asked to criticise all of them, or none of them seems like an unfair criticism. This post being about google doesn't preclude another one being written about all companies, or Facebook, or amazon, etc etc. Getting the ball rolling on even one of these companies would be a good start, so I don't see the harm in people writing posts focusing on one.

> and why do we see these posts frequently making it to top ten of hacker news?

Presumably because a lot of people agree with the proposition?

Re: Break Up Google

#43

I know that there's a quota of at least one "Google bad" article at the top of Hacker News each day, and that's fine and all, but I feel like the bar for them is getting lower. There's a pretty good case for breaking up Google, but this article doesn't make it. The word "monopoly" doesn't appear once in the whole article, which is pretty weird in an article about how to break up Google and the justifications for doin…

"The word 'monopoly' doesn't appear once in the whole article"

You're correct on that! It appears three times.

Re: Break Up Google

#44
post #32

Yes, let’s destroy one of the few large companies which has found a viable method of long term innovation instead of endless cost cutting and outsourcing. Let’s force Google to be like every other company in needing to constantly extract money from every project quarter by quarter. Not to mention that it is not clear that any except advertising are viable businesses by themselves. YouTube wasn’t profitable for a whil…

> YouTube wasn’t profitable for a while. Even if it is now, it is probably barely so. First search result... "YouTube generated nearly $5 billion in ad revenue in the last three months, Google revealed today as part of parent company Alphabet’s fourth quarter earnings report." [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

Sure, but how much did that $5B cost?

Re: Break Up Google

#45

Funnily it doesn't actually say where the broken-off Search is supposed to go. Along with the ads division? Doesn't really feel in line with the break up idea... Disconnected from the other stuff it subsidizes, what is the massively profitable search business actually supposed to use that money for? Massive dividends? Diversifying into anything just gets them into the same kind of problem immediately, no? It sort of…

Break Google's ad business and their other products. Imo, that is the way to go.

Re: Break Up Google

#46
post #32

Yes, let’s destroy one of the few large companies which has found a viable method of long term innovation instead of endless cost cutting and outsourcing. Let’s force Google to be like every other company in needing to constantly extract money from every project quarter by quarter. Not to mention that it is not clear that any except advertising are viable businesses by themselves. YouTube wasn’t profitable for a whil…

> YouTube wasn’t profitable for a while. Even if it is now, it is probably barely so. First search result... "YouTube generated nearly $5 billion in ad revenue in the last three months, Google revealed today as part of parent company Alphabet’s fourth quarter earnings report." [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

That doesn't demonstrate that it turned a profit though. Video streaming is costly and they pay over 50% of that to creators.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21121370/youtube-advertisi...

Re: Break Up Google

#47
post #34

Is anyone else tired of seeing the same hate Facebook, Zoom and Google narratives every single day. So, we want to break up Google because it has gotten too big. What about Luxottica? It has over 80% market share on eyewear brands. What about Pearson? It has over 60% market share on testing market? What about Paypal? It has over 80% market share on online payments. What about Aetna (merged with Humana) on health care…

Because this is HackerNews and we are more affected by Google than those other companies.

Re: Break Up Google

#48
post #9

Here'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.

How could that be? Server costs? Seems like YouTube would be raking in the cash.

Like others have said, their storage needs are staggering. I would not be surprised to find that YT's storage is bigger than the entirety of Google's web archive, which is mostly text. Possibly much bigger.

If YT were not part of Google, they would still need Google-scale infra in order to handle the insane number of pixels they're streaming every second of every day.

Re: Break Up Google

#49

How 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.

[dead]

Re: Break Up Google

#50
post #34

Is anyone else tired of seeing the same hate Facebook, Zoom and Google narratives every single day. So, we want to break up Google because it has gotten too big. What about Luxottica? It has over 80% market share on eyewear brands. What about Pearson? It has over 60% market share on testing market? What about Paypal? It has over 80% market share on online payments. What about Aetna (merged with Humana) on health care…

If the ball gets rolling with breaking up one of these companies and the rest follow, isn't that a good outcome? Arguing for all-or-nothing feels like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

For what it's worth I do think those ones should be broken up as well, no reason to confine our attention just to popular tech companies.

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