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To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

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Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#71

Post by mthoms »

shadowgovt wrote: post #67
mthoms wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. See also "barriers to entry". But the one that irks me the most is — > "We’ve got lots of competitors, so don’t assume we control or dominate any market." So basically... lie ?. In search (their bread and butter), they certainly don't have "lots" of competitors and they absolutely do "dominate" the market. It's one thing to discourage the use of certain phrases. It's quite another to encourage blatant dishone…

An awful lot of Googlers don't work in search.

Right, and they seem to be encouraged to be dishonest about Google's position in search.

Anyways, a majority of Google's non-search products are intrinsically tied to their search product so it's still relevant.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#73

Post by mathattack »

jackfoxy wrote: post #69
Afforess wrote: post #8

Google (okay, Alphabet) is the only big tech company that I can imagine would ultimately _benefit_ from an antitrust breakup. Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools because it can't spin them off successfully. Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, et…

It is worth noting when Standard Oil was broken up John D. Rockefeller's net worth went up. The sum value of the new oil companies soon exceeded the value of the old monolith. Also for reasons I cannot explain, investors happily watch the failed conglomerate model re-invented time and time again, even though history shows conglomerates running their divinions into the ground.

Same with breaking up Ma Bell. Sometimes it’s that M and A helps the CEOs more than the investors.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#74

Post by imeanth00 »

Afforess wrote: post #8

Google (okay, Alphabet) is the only big tech company that I can imagine would ultimately _benefit_ from an antitrust breakup. Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools because it can't spin them off successfully. Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, et…

[dead]

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#75

Post by tyingq »

I immediately thought of mafia code words they would use to defeat wiretaps. Like:

Among the lines used were: "The sheep need shearing ... the shears need sharpening" or "The hay is ready." The Italian police said they do not believe the mafia members were discussing agricultural matters.

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-head-of-the-sicilian-maf...

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#77

Post by nitrogen »

shadowgovt wrote: post #68
jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we originally had an IETF and RFC's were publicly commented on and why standards are supposed to be company agnostic. The whole proprietary-APIs-over-HTTP was a giant step back. Before we did that interop between internet based applications was far more common and supported. Now every company treats 'their users' as their own private little walled garden when before 'your users' were not so much cows to mi…

I'm not convinced, though there are, obviously, advantages to RFCs and IETF. The primary disadvantage is speed. A private corporation innovating on its full stack can come up with a faster and more secure HTTP alternative for their use case in the time it takes the RFC process to get up in the morning and find its shoes. Google has a streamed cloud gaming service running in its web browser right now; how long would i…

There are already RFCs for realtime streaming of data. Also IIUC the RFC process often starts with a draft based on am existing implementation.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#78

Post by FrojoS »

nojito wrote: post #56
Afforess wrote: post #8

Google (okay, Alphabet) is the only big tech company that I can imagine would ultimately _benefit_ from an antitrust breakup. Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools because it can't spin them off successfully. Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, et…

Google will likely go under if they are broken up. The prevailing theory is that their ad success is solely due to data sharing throughout their service offerings.

The search engine alone is a money printing machine even without sophisticated ads.

As an example, if I search for 'nike' right now, the first result is an ad payed by Nike leading to nike.com, the second is an ad for an independent webshop selling Nike products and the third is the first actual search result (almost not on the screen anymore), again leading to nike.com

So, effectively Nike is paying Google (a lot) to get the result they would have if there were no ads, or if people would type 'nike.com' into the address bar instead of 'nike'.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#79

Post by LanceH »

II2II wrote: post #65
shadowgovt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. The key idea of the training is that rank-and-file SWEs don't realize that words have legal meanings separate from their colloquial meanings, and they can cause undue trouble for the company and for themselves with poor word-choice. It's more about "Don't say the product is 'dominating the market' when you don't have any idea what your product's percent share is in the market or, for that matter, how 'ma…

On the other hand, couldn't the document be used to suggest that the company is complicit in anti-competitive behaviour? Keep in mind, it is addressing the use of language rather than discussing the company's motivations or objectives. To use one of the less inflammative examples from the the first excerpt, they aren't claiming that the company's objective is to "improve our product/service". They are claiming that t…

I think this effort reflects the reality that anti-trust is ill defined and matters are decided by circumstantial "evidence".

The speculation of a rank and file employee on market share should have exactly zero bearing on antitrust, but it will be trotted out there for headlines anyway.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#80

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jackfoxy wrote: post #69
Afforess wrote: post #8

Google (okay, Alphabet) is the only big tech company that I can imagine would ultimately _benefit_ from an antitrust breakup. Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools because it can't spin them off successfully. Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, et…

It is worth noting when Standard Oil was broken up John D. Rockefeller's net worth went up. The sum value of the new oil companies soon exceeded the value of the old monolith. Also for reasons I cannot explain, investors happily watch the failed conglomerate model re-invented time and time again, even though history shows conglomerates running their divinions into the ground.

His wealth increased but his power decreased. In Google’s case, their monopoly drives tremendous value to management at the expense of society and its shareholders.
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