Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it • Hacker News Board

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#121

Post by Spivak » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

tomlue wrote: post #109

nova22033 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is the ONLY ad provider that give results, all others don't even get any clicks. Being effective doesn't make you a monopoly.

I don't think he meant that other companies are bad at getting clicks. I think he meant his company relies on search engine driven ads. Google has a monopoly on the search engine. There are many companies that need to rely on search engine traffic, not social media, for online advertising. Keep in mind that search engine traffic is enormous, and can fairly be called a "trade" or "commodity/service" that can be monopo…

But I don't think this tracks unless you treat search as something special. If I own a billboard then I have a monopoly on that billboard. Presumably I built/bought that billboard because I knew that the ad space would be valuable and that companies would need to pay me for it.

Google owns extremely valuable ad space but that to me doesn't make a monopoly just because Bing or Facebook's ad space isn't as good for certain companies.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#122

Post by qppo » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #94

sn41 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No... If I recall right, that was Steve King. Steve King was a congressman, not a senator. Maligning a single congressman does not invalidate the basic point that a lot of senators are making.

Or the entire Senate calling the wrong CEO in to testify? https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/27/media/att-time-warner-senat... Can you name one positive law with regards to tech that the government has passed in the last 20 years? During the last hearing, many of the representatives were more concerned about Google and Facebook being “unfair” to conservatives. Well that and grilling Zuckerburg about Twitter’s practices.

That's not what the article you linked says. To the question though there really haven't been many federal laws regarding tech at all. It's kind of hard to find an example of anything that directly focuses on tech and has been around long enough to make a judgement whether it was good or bad.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#123

Post by wasdfff » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #27

qaq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would people actually vote for them?

Combining brains and charisma is very rare in a politician. Obama being the textbook example - senior law school lecturer but also has the emotional depth and natural charm.

I’d think the list is shorter of charismatic politicians who hadn’t gone to a top notch law school. Plenty use brains and charm. Even spineless hacks like Mitch McConnel know how to be charismatic around wealthy republicans, and are brilliant, just brilliantly evil.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#124

Post by wasdfff » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

branchesncheckz wrote: post #19

curiousgal wrote: post #6

Same senators who thought Google made iPhones? Not defending Google but I am saying that most of those senators are not the holders of truth when it comes to technology.

Ironically enough, I think that's the problem that lobbyists were intended to mitigate. You can't expect legislators to be experts on every technical topic, but in an ideal world you could retain subject matter experts to give good information to any congressperson who needed it. It's not a bad idea in theory, but you run into the classic problem of deciding how to define "good information".

Congresspeople do have access to experts. Their staffers are brilliant. The issue is that ultimately what motivates any politician is moneyed interests, and not collective good.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#125

Post by Spivak » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

doukdouk wrote: post #87

dustingetz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duopoly?

Again, mindless arguing what exact word fit or does not fit the situation detracts from the real issues.

If the only thing the word "monopoly" does is spark a discussion about the word then why use it? Why is it so important that Google be a monopoly for their behavior to be bad? Do we really have no other words to describe business practices that we don't like?

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#126

Post by tannhaeuser » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #112

tannhaeuser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too relativistic. If only AMZN, GOOG, and FB gain during coronavirus, this clearly means there's need for action considering the perspective of online-only advertising going forward. Especially if the success of TikTok as the only competitor in the space has resulted in government influence.

That sounds like an attempt to maintain "never my fault" consistency akin to stating we need to beat all people at traffic stops instead of admitting that beating people at traffic stops to look good on crime in the first place was criminally wrong.

Not sure if I understand what you're saying, but it's not about criminal law, whether anyone did something wrong, or punishment; rather it's about maintaining market access.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#127

Post by animationwill » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #99

doukdouk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words get abused a lot, and for some of them, they do not have a clear-cut, universally agreed upon meaning. "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice). When random person X complains about, say, Google having a monopoly, there are two possibilities: - Person X means something along "Google has a dominant market position and abuses its power", slightly abusing the meaning…

> Somehow a lot of people choose to believe interpretation #2 is true, and spend a lot of time debating whether this or that company is a "monopoly" as if it is somehow more important than the substantive issues Not to accuse anyone here of this, but intentionally doing what you describe is an disingenuous but effective way of shaping the conversation to discourage scrutiny of more general kinds of anti-competitive b…

Are you saying OP is a Google PR insider accusing Google of abusing market privilege while ensuring the perfect definition of “monopoly“ isn’t marred by inaccuracy?

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#128

Post by Aunche » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #66

What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries t…

> google subsidiary gets a custom tool at the top of google results (such as Flights) above both organic and ads.

Searching for flights is still a search. You wouldn't expect the first result of "cat pictures" to be Bing's search results for cat pictures, so it's also natural that the first result of "flight nyc la" would return actual flights as its first result would return actual flights rather than a link to Expedia.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#129

Post by tgtweak » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #66

What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries t…

Not just web search, also android, google home, google/android pay, gmail (even if you're not on gmail you send to/from), youtube, 3rd party android apps running analytics, 3rd party websites running analytics, chrome... the list goes on. Far more reach than any other competitor could hope to have when making a competing service.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#130

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #114

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The winner-takes-all positive feedback loop exists because social networks are held in silos built on IP regulations. So I guess that's another reason the existing concept of intellectual property needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Would winner-take-all effect be so strong if all user-provided data was owned by users , and data processors (like social network) were forced to implement protocols allowing for easy and…

If they depend upon another entity for doing the task they aren't competitors in the first place. That is like calling me a competitor to Exxon Mobile because I can get gas in my car at a gas station. The data siloing concept doesn't make any sense on a networking and design level in the first place. It would call for the user to implement all data desired by the service in their form and pass it back and forth - whi…

> If they depend upon another entity for doing the task they aren't competitors in the first place. That is like calling me a competitor to Exxon Mobile because I can get gas in my car at a gas station.

I'm thinking more of "your car only accepts Exxon's gas", or even more accurately, "your car's engine only runs on a very specific type of fuel, and Exxon has a complete monopoly on producing and distributing it".

> especialally if everything was designed to be stateless by making websites not store any data permanently!

That doesn't follow. Websites should be able to store the data from the moment I give them consent, process it within the scope of my consent, and delete it when I revoke my consent. That doesn't imply they need, or should, be stateless.

> Indeed the only point to the design is as a passive aggressive way to tell them to "fuck off, if I wanted you to have it I would give it to you".

It's not about them having it, but about them taking ownership of my data and siloing it in.

And it's not (just) about telling them to fuck off, but about mitigating the strong positive feedback loop that causes centralization of the web - which is the topic in this subthread.

On a more abstract level, I'm thinking of ways in which "data intermediaries" could be made more transparent. For instance, I see no reason why Facebook should own the social network - which is defined fully by the graph of connections between its users. So e.g. if I friend you on Facebook, that edge in the graph is data that belongs to us both. If I share some photo to "friends only", you should be able to see it through an interface of your choosing. What happens instead is that it's Facebook that decides what interface you can or cannot use, and trying to disagree can cause them to terminate your account (and take away access to your data) or even sue you.