To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by kristianc » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

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 Reader could not be spun off because it assumed things about Google's infrastructure + libraries.)

The reason to not spin it off Is less because of Google’s infra and libraries than it not fitting with Google’s revenue model. It existed only to tie user preference data to an identity, and sharpen Google’s ads business. Divested of that, it doesn’t make sense. Google has no interest in joining the hobbyist $5 a month RSS reader market.

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

#122

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

FrojoS wrote: post #78

nojito wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) t…

DHH talks about this. https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonfried/status/116898696270498...

Edit oops: it’s not DHH, it’s Jason Fried - Basecamp’s other cofounder.

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

#123

Post by spanhandler » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #113

FrojoS wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) t…

I am shocked this isn't illegal yet. Basically what Google is doing in your example is selling Nike it's own trademark, with the subtle threat that if they don't, Google will use Nike's trademark to direct to a competitor instead. The idea that Google can charge Nike to be the top result on a search for Nike is a form of subtle extortion, and I'd have to imagine trademark infringement. It's definitely a form of rent-…

I have a suspicion a significant amount of their income comes from exactly that kind of extortion, and (very much relatedly) from tricking people who aren't Good at Computers into clicking ads that they think are search results, not from any machine-learning magic. At least as far as search ads are concerned.

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

#124

Post by ocdtrekkie » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #64

I'll help out here with a much simpler definition: A monopoly is a company that you can not avoid doing business with. Microsoft, Google -> monopolies. Apple -> not yet. That way we can save us all some time debating how many angels can dance on a pin. Note that both Google and Microsoft have worked very hard to make it that way, it is only fair that they should accept the flip side of that coin. If you break email t…

I think Apple is probably the least-worst-offender amongst the FAANG group right now, but I'd definitely argue Apple is a monopoly by this definition. Nearly every business industry has to have an app these days. Imagine a bank not having mobile banking available from iOS in the United States. They'd literally lose customers over it.

So for many industries, you must have an iOS app, and to have an iOS app, you must go through the App Store, and you must give 30% of your app revenue to Apple.

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

#125

Post by nikolaipaul » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

The day a company makes words taboo, is a good day to leave.

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

#126

Post by spanhandler » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #122

FrojoS wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) t…

DHH talks about this. https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonfried/status/116898696270498... Edit oops: it’s not DHH, it’s Jason Fried - Basecamp’s other cofounder.

I like all the proposed solutions in that thread involving brandname keyword bans and giving ad accounts time-outs for violations and such when the actual fix is to go back to putting ads somewhere other than inline with search results, and making it very clear that they're ads. The move away from that was pure evil, but I'm sure it's made Google a lot of money. It's crazy it doesn't count as some sort of fraud.

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

#127

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #113

FrojoS wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) t…

I am shocked this isn't illegal yet. Basically what Google is doing in your example is selling Nike it's own trademark, with the subtle threat that if they don't, Google will use Nike's trademark to direct to a competitor instead. The idea that Google can charge Nike to be the top result on a search for Nike is a form of subtle extortion, and I'd have to imagine trademark infringement. It's definitely a form of rent-…

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by ocdtrekkie » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

spanhandler wrote: post #123

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am shocked this isn't illegal yet. Basically what Google is doing in your example is selling Nike it's own trademark, with the subtle threat that if they don't, Google will use Nike's trademark to direct to a competitor instead. The idea that Google can charge Nike to be the top result on a search for Nike is a form of subtle extortion, and I'd have to imagine trademark infringement. It's definitely a form of rent-…

I have a suspicion a significant amount of their income comes from exactly that kind of extortion, and (very much relatedly) from tricking people who aren't Good at Computers into clicking ads that they think are search results, not from any machine-learning magic. At least as far as search ads are concerned.

I am very, very confident that this is true. I do not think people who actually know how the ad revenue is generated would like the public to know what percentage of Google's revenue is built on exploiting senior citizens' tendency to click on scammy ads, and trademark squatting such as this.

I spoke to a Googler a few days ago here about how a scam ad was being constantly perpetrated against seniors on Google's ad platform, screenshots included, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24044837

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

#129

Post by Nginx487 » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

I know this is not much, but when I joined de-Googlefication initiative, I felt it's a right thing to do. Firefox with uBlock Origin, DuckDuckGo, Lineage OS on the smartphone. When I have to use Google products, say Maps or YouTube,I do it from separate "compartment". It's not that much. But when I stopped feeling like I'm a victim of strangely sophisticated, odd and dystopian evil, openly claiming "we are the internet", killing companies and products, I felt like I'm a part of a small, statistically insignificant, but determined and well-informed resistance.

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

#130

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #51

shadowgovt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even so much about protecting the secret sauce as protecting user data. Every tool interfacing to the Google backend is a potential attack vector. When the time comes that nobody's willing to bear the cost to keep it updated as the core infrastructure changes, the product dies. In a world where Google is split up, that'll still be true; it'll look more like "Google CoreCloud has just changed API foo to prote…

> Who pays for search in a world where the government has stepped in and divested ads and search from each other? Since most of the revenue from Google's ads are from ads on search , presumably the broken-up ads company would be buying the ad space on the broken-up search company's SERPs. All the search company's revenue would still come from the ads company.

Is most of Google's ad revenue from ads on search? They have a huge display ads business also.