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Break Up Google

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Re: Break Up Google

#81

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #13

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 world needs Google Cloud to be viable?" That's an argument AGAINST breaking up Google.

The "argument" appears to be that if GCP were a separate company, instead of just a bunch of products inside Google, it's not going to get randomly axed like Google Reader was.

The article also goes on to undermine its own argument by noting that a) GCP is now important enough to be broken out in the financials and b) GCP serves a very different class of enterprise customers.

Re: Break Up Google

#82

Post by wise_young_man »

kats wrote: post #38

Yeah, let's break up Google! I've been depending on their software for almost 15 years now, I use something they made practically every hour that I'm awake, and never paid a cent for it! I'm really getting a raw deal here!

How would breaking it up affect that in the slightest? Also being an unpaid user doesn’t mean your data you generate is valueless.

Re: Break Up Google

#83

Post by elorant »

nabaraz wrote: 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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Break Up Google

#84

Post by harry8 »

kats wrote: post #38

Yeah, let's break up Google! I've been depending on their software for almost 15 years now, I use something they made practically every hour that I'm awake, and never paid a cent for it! I'm really getting a raw deal here!

You paid. You were just asleep and didn't notice.

Google, facebook etc. They don't pay tax. Do you? What do you get for your tax? What do they get from tax revenue to which they don't contribute their share?

The kicker is going to be when you think "What if I didn't want to use any google product. And I was willing to pay real money to achieve that. Could I?" Then you realise google still have all your mail and browsing history. Paying. Yep. How? Through the nose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Re: Break Up Google

#85

Post by mythz »

searchableguy wrote: post #59
aliante wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Maybe people should just pay for it? Oh no. How could they make us pay for the software services. Imo, this mentality needs to go. People spend $$$ in cafe, buy expensive branded clothes, transportation, hanging out with their friends, outside food, and so on. All of those are not necessary but they pay for it. They should pay for the digital services they spend most of their time on now a days. What's different?

Everyone has the option for an ad-sponsored or ad-free YouTube for a monthly fee.

Which is how I've been watching YouTube, ad-free for years.

Re: Break Up Google

#86

Post by Kiro »

nardi wrote: post #61
MattGaiser wrote: post #15

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…

> Let’s force Google to be like every other company in needing to constantly extract money from every project quarter by quarter. I think you're actually making the argument for breaking up Google. Their search monopoly is so powerful and so profitable, that they can afford to just throw money away on hundreds of terrible side projects.

> that they can afford to just throw money away on hundreds of terrible side projects

How is that a problem? I'm glad we have companies that can afford to experiment.

Re: Break Up Google

#87

Post by jimbob45 »

jaspax wrote: 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.

I strongly agree. I find it telling that no competitor has ever been successful despite YouTube making every wrong design choice possible.

Re: Break Up Google

#88

Post by keith__talent »

searchableguy wrote: post #59
aliante wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Maybe people should just pay for it? Oh no. How could they make us pay for the software services. Imo, this mentality needs to go. People spend $$$ in cafe, buy expensive branded clothes, transportation, hanging out with their friends, outside food, and so on. All of those are not necessary but they pay for it. They should pay for the digital services they spend most of their time on now a days. What's different?

I pay for Youtube premium, I see no ads, it's amazing...

What is your point here? You want Youtube to be like a cable television company and make money off ads and subscribers?

How does this relate to YouTubes 5BN in revenue?

Re: Break Up Google

#89

Post by Aissen »

zerocrates wrote: post #37

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…

Keep innovating the same way it's doing now, and break-off the next thing that reaches monopoly status ?

Re: Break Up Google

#90

Post by SirLotsaLocks »

MattGaiser wrote: post #15

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…

I get what you're saying but what if because of this people start to use decentralized alternatives? Open source programs with sufficient support don't take as much money to run and develop as a proprietary service would. Obviously not everything would work but I imagine if we moved social media to something like the fediverse which has already proven sustainable enough it might even be better. Also with android dead, people would focus on more innovative alternatives like linux mobile or the late windows mobile. The few services for the public that google runs that are objectively good and free is google earth, the google search engine (to an extent), and maybe youtube. I like how they innovate but as it is if you tried to cut out google entirely from your life your quality of life would drop substantially to the point where it might affect your job and well being. That is the main problem with google and that's why people think it needs to be broken up.
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