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Web by Google (TM)

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Re: Web by Google (TM)

#401

Post by alexyz12 »

bambax wrote: post #261

The real mystery is why nobody has ever been able to do better search than Google, or at least just as good. Of course search is really hard, but how is it possible that huge companies with nearly infinite money and talent (MS / Apple / Amazon) were never able to do it? MS actually tried; it's unclear if the others even gave it a thought. The rest of Google is different. I use Gmail but could easily switch. I've not…

according to the innovators dilemma you would have to find a market that google isn't serving with its search, use relatively lame search technology to serve it, then scale upwards into google's market from there.

Maybe because google's market is everyone, disruption can no longer exist?

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#402

Post by millstone »

Thorncorona wrote: post #389
dmitriid wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about "creative freedom". It's about Google forcing its will on the internet. - You want to be at the top of our search, in the search carousel? You must implement AMP. We don't care how fast or beautiful your website is. Oh, and only news sites may apply. - You want to show people the canonical URL? To show the source of the website? No. We will show that it comes from Google, we will actively try to discou…

That’s all and great, but as a user I simply don’t care. It’s like asking users to care about HTTP/2 or HTTP/3. Theoretically it matters, but in practice the only thing I care is that I can actually browse the web on my phone. And AMP for all it’s faults does a damn good job of making an ad infested web browsable on crappy internet connections. Having it enforced by Google actually makes it easier to get funding by o…

I agree on this perspective but not the facts. AMP on iOS is buggy as hell. Pinch to zoom, Reader Mode, URL bar hiding, rotation are all routinely broken.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#403

Post by Ericson2314 »

alangibson wrote: post #134
kristopolous wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you have said the same thing 20 years ago and used "AOL" instead? There seems to be a large group of users who consistently fit this trend and the company names just get swapped occasionally

AOL died off because the world shifted to the open web. The only way Facebook or Google die off is if a similar paradigm shift occurs.

AOL died off, but also Microsoft was faced with antitrust. The combination is best, and our efforts on each are in fact complementary: we need the politicians to understand how the status quo is not workable outcome, and there is a budding alternative ready to flourish if given some breathing room. That will embolden them.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#404

Post by leppr »

codemonkey-zeta wrote: post #203
Mary-Jane wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centralization is clearly bad in the private sector. I'm curious why people here don't see centralization of government as similarly bad. With 3.5T in revenue, the US federal government is the single largest entity in existence, and it's scope is vast, covering things as disparate as mail and health care. There are plenty of examples of them abusing their position (and occasionally their people...), yet this forum ra…

I'm supposed to be represented by my government, which we collectively give power to through the constitution. There's no constitution for Google. We don't talk about centralization of government because we figured it out ~250 years ago. We are just figuring out how to curtail the power of internet giants today. There is no inconsistency.

Tech companies are a direct product of your government's structure. If your constitution didn't allow lobbyists from megacorps having more power over legislature than the collective mass of its citizens, these companies would not be in the position of monopoly they are in.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#405

Post by JadeNB »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #391
JadeNB wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't talk about centralization of government because we figured it out ~250 years ago. I know that your parent explicitly mentioned the US, but let's not pretend either that the US found the, or even a, right answer to structuring government, or that no other country has found their own answers.

Eh, the USA is working okay all things considered. There's not one right answer here.

> Eh, the USA is working okay all things considered.

For many people, it probably is—the key to its longevity (and it's very young on the global stage) is working well enough for enough people enough of the time—but there are plenty of people for whom it's not working—me and plenty of other people in the US, but also the global victims of the international policies of the US. (Before the whataboutism comes in, this is not to say that other countries don't also have dissatisfied residents or bad international policies. I was responding specifically to a comment whose wording could be read as saying that the US, rather than any other country one might want to discuss, had found the right answer to government.)

> There's not one right answer here.

I agree, and that's why I was urging against wording that seemed to imply that the US's answer was the answer to 'correct' government.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#406

Post by walrus01 »

harpratap wrote: post #155
JPLeRouzic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good time for Amazon or Google to buy a Telco, Telcos valuations have lost between 25 to 45% since the beginning of 2020 [0] I guess that a state owned company would willingly be sold by its owner because states urgently need money. For example Orange sa (ex France telecom) is owned at 25% by the French state and French state just had passed a budget which is financed at half by debt (2021). Selling a company…

There's no point in buying a Teleco today, with 5G any of the FAANGs can create one with the money they have. Infact Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook have proven experience in web scale, so 5G will be right up their alley

If you think "5G" will replace medium and long haul DWDM fiber networks, as a backbone, you have some very great misperceptions about what real internet infrastructure looks like.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#407

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

jacquesm wrote: post #340
nqzero wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This And I'd argue that google's about the only thing propping up the internet. Chromium's a reasonably open platform (certainly more so than internet explorer, which not that long ago looked destined to become the dominant platform), gmail has kept email viable, android is somewhat open (and without it, apple might own that space entirely), etc Every other player that's gotten traction has set up a walled garden

Gmail is actually a major force in further consolidation of email to a very few number of players. Ever increasing rulesets to be able to send to Gmail from other email servers increase the barrier to entry step-by-step until even the last holdouts will have to pick between a very limited number of parties to host their mail.

Gmail consolidation is happening not because of some evil plan, it's happening because of the economics.

In fact it's exactly the same reason why Mozilla is increasingly not sustainable. Email hosting is simply not a lucrative business. That's why it's all run by large portals like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, etc. which use them not to make money but to collect information about people, and monetize through ads or other indirect methods. Of course, this only becomes profitable at scale, and there are not that many companies at that scale.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#408

Post by stjohnswarts »

why_only_15 wrote: post #343
jdietrich wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spin off the major parts of their business into genuinely separate companies - search, cloud compute, advertising, SaaS, Android and Chrome. With Google as a monolith, it's far too easy for them to bundle products and cross-subsidise unprofitable parts of their business to achieve dominance. Those independent companies can make deals that are mutually beneficial, but they'll have to answer to their shareholders and t…

Of all the tech companies people advocate breaking up Google is by far the most reasonable.

Yeah I'm not even sure how you would break up facebook, other than facebook/instagram . It would make you extremely unpopular if they forced FB to break up it's userbase into thirds or something as they'd all just flock to one third and it would just be the same thing again within a few months

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#409

Post by bshanks »

Anti-monopoly legislation is important, but it is also important to create a mechanism for funding public goods. Browsers are necessary to keep the web open, and there should be a mechanism for society to fund that, even if it does cost $400 million a year. Current funding mechanisms for this sort of thing are focused on the creation of new scientific knowledge, but we also need funding focused on widely used open software.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#410

Post by stjohnswarts »

Mary-Jane wrote: post #187
simias wrote: post #84

The problem is that, IMO, centralization of the internet is simply the natural course. Especially when people seem to care so little. Centralization is cheaper, easier to monetize, easier to control, easier to update and upgrade. That's why people prefer Discord to IRC, that's why people prefer Slack to SMTP or Jabber, that's why for many people these days the distinction between git and GitHub is blurry. I suspect t…

Centralization is clearly bad in the private sector. I'm curious why people here don't see centralization of government as similarly bad. With 3.5T in revenue, the US federal government is the single largest entity in existence, and it's scope is vast, covering things as disparate as mail and health care. There are plenty of examples of them abusing their position (and occasionally their people...), yet this forum ra…

Because there is no alternative; how would the state of Texas defend itself from an invasion from China? If we split up the USA into just the states they would all eventually be taken by a foreign power. There is big value in doing things at scale that can't be accomplished in little anarchy/federalist nodes
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