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United States vs. Google

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Re: United States vs. Google

#261

Post by redisman »

tsycho wrote: post #222
shliachtx wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they purchased their way into many of these. Their advertising business was built on a number of acquisitions (DoubleClick, AdMob) - strategic acquisitions, surely, and they improved on them since - but it is not as if they bult the business from the ground up. The same goes for video streaming (YouTube - after attempting to create their own), and mobile OS (Android). With Android in particular it can be argue…

I see this oft repeated comment about Google acquiring YouTube, DoubleClick and Android. Yes they did. But the companies they acquired were tiny upstarts, which might have even died on their own. Google built them into what they are today, and deserve 90% of the credit for their current significance. The same applies to FB and Instagram as well, fwiw. Though imo, not as much for WhatsApp, which already had 400MM user…

I'm sorry are you joking? You do realize DoubleClick had it's IPO 10 years before Google bought them?

Re: United States vs. Google

#262

Post by richardwhiuk »

residentfoam wrote: post #62

If I were the US authorities, I'd start asking/demanding Google to stop SSO across Search/GMail/Browser. Just because I am a GMail user does not automatically mean that you can trace all my web search. In addition, I'd demand removing Captcha-alike when using VPN services, to avoid them from tracking my IP. I mean, even if you are not logged-in, they can still correlate IPs across products.

> In addition, I'd demand removing Captcha-alike when using VPN services, to avoid them from tracking my IP.

This feels like a random, irrelevant complaint.

Re: United States vs. Google

#263

Post by cj »

edoceo wrote: post #104
speeder wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a Google costumer, as in, I pay Google to show my ads in search. To me a literal monopoly is obvious, no other competitor comes even close to Google in performance of search ads, but Google keep increasing in hostility too, they do everything they figure out they can get away with, like blatantly allowing click fraud, making fighting fraud harder, allowing people to use it's tools for extortion via fraud, and so…

And google blocks my cannabis related business from advertising. But allows my direct competitors to advertise. Including the word Cannabis in the ad! Why is google allowing one cannabis play but not the other? I'm the ad consumer being harmed. My prospects are possibly harmed because my product is hidden.

And since you're not able to bid on your brand name, Google is allowing your competitors to bid on your brand name while preventing you, which clearly is unfair to you and potentially very misleading to consumers trying to find your site, but being tricked into clicking to a (potentially less trustworthy) competitor.

Re: United States vs. Google

#264

Post by Judgmentality »

athms wrote: post #240
john-radio wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube was delivering an average of 100 million video views per day in July 2006, months before the Google acquisition for $1,650,000,000 that same year. It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup."

>It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup." YouTube had 65 employees when they were acquired. I do agree that they were not a startup. This word should only be used for companies that are starting up; getting their legal structure together, hiring, and initial R&D. Once you are offering widgets (ad space), you are no longer a startup. Profitability is immaterial to startup status.

Why does the number of employees matter? If anything that's a testament to how valuable they were, to be able to do so much with so little.

Re: United States vs. Google

#265

Post by philjohn »

dsabanin wrote: post #47

I think Google is the best search engine. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with them being the best search engine, top online ad platform and a developer of the top mobile OS, top video streaming service, top internet browser, top mapping/navigation service, among other things, at the SAME time. Their assets give them undue and unsupervised influence over a very big chunk of what's happening onli…

I think all of those things are fine, in isolation, but it's pushing them all into the big draw, which is the search engine.

Putting their own hotel/rental metasearch above the fold on mobile when searching for a hotel.

Buying ITA and freezing out other users.

Re: United States vs. Google

#266

Post by olladecarne »

alex_young wrote: post #251

Consumer harm is easy to demonstrate IMHO. Google monopolized search with the great product they developed, and then tied it to an ever increasingly aggressive ad product which in turn makes all of the web practically unusable without filtering. There’s noting inherently expensive about serving http, and it should be getting ever cheaper as Moore’s Law progress along its merry way, but for this middle man we’ve all g…

I think you've got the causality wrong here. There’s noting inherently expensive about serving http -> makes all of the web practically unusable without filtering -> Google monopolized search with the great product they developed

Serving http is getting cheaper, therefore the filtering problem is getting harder, therefore it's harder for new competitors to emerge.

Either way, I agree that ads are the root of the problem because it makes serving garbage http so cheap or profitable. Force people to make informed decisions about where to spend their time and money. Right now people just click away on anything so garbage clickbait is one of the most profitable models.

Re: United States vs. Google

#267

Post by will_pseudonym »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #231
kelnos wrote: post #137

> At the same time, whatever an Aggregator chooses to do on its own site or app is less important, because users and third parties can always go elsewhere, and if they don’t, that is because they are satisfied. This always strikes me as a weak argument. Facebook users can't go elsewhere because their friends aren't on other platforms. It doesn't matter if there's a more privacy-focused social network out there that p…

Friends' choices to use Facebook are also consumers' choices. What is the alternative? Either persuade your friends to move, or remove their choice via legislative action. Are there other options?

How much choice did customers of the Bell System have?

There was nothing stopping another company from stringing wires across the country and building their own telephone network separate from the Bell System. But they don't just have to build all that infrastructure, they have to have the customers that are already under the Bell System. So they would have to pay gigantic amounts of money to people to switch, because if they didn't, there wouldn't be a value to switching for that consumer.

There are a lot of analogues to these two companies. And the argument against breaking up Facebook would be similar. It's wrong that they're being punished for building something that so many people have found useful. They spent billions building the network, and now they're shattered into multiple companies because of it?

It's hard to know what the right thing to do is, in terms of benefitting the public, maintaining the incentive for future new technology & infrastructure to be built, and being fair to Facebook & its employees, shareholders, and customers. There's a lot to balance out, and it doesn't seem like there will ever be a right answer. But, I find the similarity to the Bell System very striking, and I do think that it being broken up was on whole the right thing to do for the country and its citizens, which is what a government is ultimately tasked with doing.

Re: United States vs. Google

#268

Post by [deleted] »

wwwdonohue wrote: post #75
dsabanin wrote: post #47

I think Google is the best search engine. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with them being the best search engine, top online ad platform and a developer of the top mobile OS, top video streaming service, top internet browser, top mapping/navigation service, among other things, at the SAME time. Their assets give them undue and unsupervised influence over a very big chunk of what's happening onli…

I sort of agree, but part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service and internet browser and mapping service... well, good for them! They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it. It's different if a company like Google establishes its dominance via one great product…

[deleted]

Re: United States vs. Google

#269

Post by Supermancho »

wwwdonohue wrote: post #75
dsabanin wrote: post #47

I think Google is the best search engine. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with them being the best search engine, top online ad platform and a developer of the top mobile OS, top video streaming service, top internet browser, top mapping/navigation service, among other things, at the SAME time. Their assets give them undue and unsupervised influence over a very big chunk of what's happening onli…

I sort of agree, but part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service and internet browser and mapping service... well, good for them! They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it. It's different if a company like Google establishes its dominance via one great product…

> They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it.

No it's not. The best XXX run by a single company, is super-effective! Allowing it, we know from all of human history, is anti-consumer.

Re: United States vs. Google

#270

Post by gretch »

bogwog wrote: post #200
VikingCoder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) best search engine 2) top online ad platform 3) top mobile OS 4) top video streaming service 5) top internet browser 6) top mapping/navigation service Okay, you listed 6. What should the law say is the new limit for how many they should be able to have?

Think about it like this: what are the chances any other competitor will be able to challenge those products and succeed? If some other innovative company “started in a garage” or whatever does challenge one of those, Google has the power to kill it before it becomes a threat, cripple it while they copy the technology or poach the development team, acquire the company with a truckload of money, etc. So in the end, Go…

This is often repeated, but historical evidence does not support it.

Today, Google shares the majority of it's presence in online ads market with Facebook.

Did Google try to "kill" facebook? Yes, they tried super hard in 2011 with the launch of Google+. And that completely flopped and now Facebook is a major rival for Google.

If we look at Facebook - facebook probably tried to kill snapchat and tiktok, major rivals to Instagram, and look how well those services are doing.

Microsoft couldn't stop iOS or Android.

The list goes on...

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