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

#211

Post by AniseAbyss » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:38 AM 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…

Google search ranking is critical and Alphabet knows it.

If I google search for "koop ebike" and you're not on the first page you might as well close your shop.

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

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Post by doukdouk » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:32 AM UTC

theptip wrote: post #204

doukdouk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your point is that "monopoly" has a different meaning in a colloquial/political context and in a legal context, that it relies on non-obvious definitions of what the relevant market, what dominant is, and that it varies by country, I do not think it strongly supports the assertion that it does not have a loose definition.

I was mainly arguing against > "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice). -- there is a much more rigorous definition of Monopoly than the other ones you listed. You're claiming that it is some undefined concept that varies from person to person, but I think that's only true in the sense that "encryption" or "space-time" has a loose definition; most lay people don't under…

Fair point.

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

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Post by nix23 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

photonios wrote: post #96

nix23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The internet the way is currently design It's not the design but the users and to a extend Europe itself. The US is one problem, but that Europe is not even capable to create it's own "cloud" is a sign...just look at Germany they really think 4600 euros is a good payment for top-IT personnel...that says everything. Having Internet-speeds like in the year 2000 too. It's impressive how slow, complicated and lame Europ…

Depends on where in Europe you live. The more east you go, the faster it gets. Fiber and 1 Gbps is standard and cheap here. I pay €15/month for that (TV included). 4G is everywhere. I pay €8/month for unlimited data usage and phone calls.

It's not about in which part the net is fast, it's about that the biggest economy in Europe is sleeping.

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

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Post by andromeduck » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 12:36 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #47

andromeduck wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also because our pyramid shaped tax structure favors vertical integration.

Can you explain/expand your reasoning behind that a little more? This is the first I've encountered such a point.

Tax pyramids occur when the total value is taxed at each point of sale instead of the value added. This results in taxes being taxed which effectively increases the tax paid on earlier stages. For example, very few would find it reasonable for a 100% excise tax to be applied to alcohol or automobiles but less would object to a 30% tax and legislating a certain structure for the sale of alcohol, for example farm -> brewery -> distributor -> retail or manufacturer -> dealership, that effective results 185% or 69% whilst only having the appearance of charging 30%.

The easiest and most effective way to reduce this tax burden is simply expanding your vertical. This is why tesla is so staunchly against third party dealerships or why hyperscalers and apple, google, microsoft, and amazon are all starting to make their own chips. Breaking up big tech won't accomplish anything in the long term without fixing the broken tax system and the incentives it creates.

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

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Post by boogies » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #209

boogies wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translate at least seems to have some people ignorant of the alternatives convinced that they have a clearly better product — “no competitors that even come close in terms of quality” when they objectively don’t. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975001

The claimed “objectively” better translator is DeepL. You need to read like 8 paragraphs deep to get to that and there is no real explanation as to why it is objectively better - just a link to an article where some journalists apparently thought it was better. https://www.deepl.com/en/translator

The bottom of the page you linked shows ten articles, six of which praise DeepL as better than the competition and four which praise it without comparison. The least positive is probably Wired’s: “WIRED's quick test shows that DeepL's results are indeed in no way inferior to those of the high-ranking competitors and, in many cases, even surpass them. The translated texts often read much more fluently; where Google Translate forms completely meaningless word chains, DeepL can at least guess a connection.” — which is a long-winded way of saying that DeepL’s worst translations are as bad as Google Translate’s, but many of them are better — making DeepL strictly better overall. Of course, any individual review must be made by subjective humans, but you can find as many corroborating comparisons as you like and every review I’ve seen has either described DeepL as better or at worst as bad as Google Translate, and the former is exactly my personal experience after using each for years. We can also compare the results of sending your comment on a round trip through the top language on each:

DeepL German: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.”

Google Translate German: “The alleged "objectively" better translator is DeepL”

DeepL Spanish: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.”

Google Translate Spanish: “The best translator "objectively" that is claimed is DeepL.”

As a native English speaker, the DeepL results seem clearly clearer and cleaner to me. If broad consensus isn’t evidence to you, you could also compare quantity of languages instead of quality of translations, in which case you’d find that Google Translate is missing languages that Microsoft Translate has. Either way, Google certainly doesn’t have “a pretty clearly better product.”

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

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Post by seanhunter » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #157

I find it ridiculously disingenuous of the DOJ to pursue Google for "monopoly" of the advertising market, while allowing Sinclair Broadcasting to do literally the exact same thing to local TV stations and the related local advertising markets. While this may not be a political witch hunt - it sure quacks like a duck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

The DOJ should pursue both companies if they think they are illegal monopolies. They don't need to do things serially. There may be a non-obvious reason that Sinclair isn't (visibly) being pursued.

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

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Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #126

Nasrudith wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I am saying is that Tiktok's treatment was clear capricious abuse of power and shouldn't be taken as a standard or baseline.

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

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Post by qtplatypus » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:35 AM UTC

tboyd47 wrote: post #166

deepstack wrote: post #8

The internet the way is currently design will resulted in centralisation and end up with monopoly or oligopoly.

It already happened, but the fix is simple and remains possible at any time: repeal the CDA.

That would kill almost every internet company. For example if the CDA was repealed then this site would go away almost overnight.

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

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Post by apahwa » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

switch11 wrote: post #183

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…

Excellent Comment Let's consider a few more examples of abuse of market dominance 1) Retail Me Not Google through Google Venture secretly invested in them and didn't disclose that Then for next 3 years, Retail Me Not was #1 for EVERY SINGLE deal and coupon search term on Google Is that an abuse of market dominance? Pretty Sure Is it illegal? According to US Anti Trust Law - not sure. A lawyer can step in 2) A market…

this comment acts like there is some person on Google's side manually curating the search results. why is it Google's fault that your competitors have better SEO teams?

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

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Post by dwild » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

acituan wrote: post #185

dwild wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have exclusive access and control over the source of data that bring you that effectiveness though. I'm not saying anyone else should have access to Google data, but the fact that this is what make it effective and that essentially no one else can reproduce it, that kind of make it a monopoly. At a point when the cost of entry is too high and it's not humanly possible to beat it, isn't it essentially impossib…

> They do have exclusive access and control over the source of data that bring you that effectiveness though And what data would that be? All search engines crawl the same web.

What data? We are talking about ads. It's not the crawling data which help in targeting, it's what people click on, it's what people read, it's what people do.

Being the search engine, if I search Asus computer, do you think it's the fact that there's Asus computer in the crawled content that will be used for targeting, or the fact that I searched Asus computer? When I click on the first link that say "Asus computer for cheap", do you think it's the existence of the page "Asus computer for cheap" that will help in targeting my ads, or the fact that I clicked on a page where it's about the value of Asus computers?

What matter isn't the content, it's knowing what each individual click and read. That data come from Google Analytic and Google Ads.

Why do you think Android exist? Why do you think Google Chrome exist, why do you think 8.8.8.8 exist. You are really mistaken if you believe they are for the good of customer (even though it's true they do bring some good), they are there to get that data and be the one that exclusively get that data.

If you want to compete with them, you'll need to beat Android, beat Chrome, beat their search engine, beat EVERYTHING that make Google what they are. Not saying it's not possible, but the cost of it make it nearly impossible.