Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

United States vs. Google

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 353 posts

Re: United States vs. Google

#281

Post by arcticbull »

munk-a wrote: post #206
arcticbull wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FPTP doesn’t enforce two parties. Canada uses FPTP and has 5 major parties (Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, Bloc Québécois and Greens) that end up with seats. One of the first two ends up in power for the most part but minority governments often lead to de facto coalitions, the way the NDP is currently propping up the Liberal minority while the conservatives form the official opposition. I would love to see IRV in both…

Just a note - in Canada there is a party generally called the Liberal party and another called the Conservative party - I've been careful in the text below to differential Liberal from liberal and Conservative from conservative - it can get a bit confusing (especially when the Liberals aren't liberal) but that's just Canada being confusing. As a Canadian - Canada is slipping into a two party system. There are, weirdl…

I think there's an important further distinction to be made here. The US has voting directly for the head of state, whereas Canada's head of state is of course the Queen, but the PM is selected incidentally to the vote via parliamentary procedure.

The Canadian system has you pick your local representative for your riding (MP) and the party with the most MPs, traditionally™, gets to make their leader the Prime Minister. The popular vote is irrelevant because the popular vote is not how Canadian elections are 'scored.' At all, really. Each race is a race for your specific representative. That it's correlated with the PM-ship is ancillary, since even a plurality of seats doesn't guarantee your party ends up picking the PM. A coalition of two smaller parties can band together and unseat a plurality party for the PM role. A Conservative-NDP coalition (haha) could have installed Scheer as PM after the last selection. A Conservative-Bloc coalition could have done so too. And a Liberal-NDP coalition could have installed Trudeau as a majority leader in the last election.

In the US, they have FPTP voting specifically for their head of state, which is where the rub lies. You have a poll for who should be in charge, but you weight the votes differently depending on which state those voters happen to reside in, and throw some of them away (via FPTP). This is intentional, to ensure that rural states have outsize representation. A good idea? Maybe not, but it's no mistake.

[edit] Re: the BQ, they've started campaigning not on separatism but on social issues, it's cool to see honestly.

Re: United States vs. Google

#282

Post by 205guy »

TuringNYC wrote: post #215
205guy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the fact that the Youtube ideal has let independent creators make so much good content for the world. And after some haggling, Youtube has let the creators retain full ownership. But the various de-monetization and search algorithm changes show that Youtube retains full control over distribution (and ability to make said living). The creators are totally at the mercy of Youtube and their advertising. Imagine i…

>> Imagine if there were Utube, Vtube, and Wtube, and a creator could shop around for the best placement and ad deal. Except there is already a Utube, Vtube, and Wtube and they have been around for 50 years. They are called ABC, NBC, CBS, and there are also like 50 others. You can "shop around" your product to them, but you have to: 1. Have to gone to the right schools to meet decision makers 2. Have the right connec…

Clearly, I was mimicking the TV network model in my proposal, but the "Utube" naming was meant to imply they all follow the YouTube model (free video hosting website) not become broadcast media with all the elitism that entails. There would be 3 choices when you create your own videos, each offering different ad/placement deals (as opposed to accepting YouTube's or perish).

As the sibling comment states, Twitch is an alternative, but I think that however big the gaming and live video market is, it doesn't generalize to most YouTube content. I'm not sure if Vimeo has ever reached the same level, every time someone on HN mentions them, a creator has said they tried and got no traction/views on Vimeo.

Patreon is odd, they host some exclusive content, but it seems nearly all creators retain their YouTube channel for discovery and Patreon is mostly for processing the donations. I guess in a way, they have siphoned off some YouTube functionality, taking the cream off the top (paying subscribers), and letting YouTube do the expensive part of hosting the content.

I suppose that short of the feds swinging the anti-trust hammer and breaking YouTube into 3 equal companies that compete in the same market, the YouTube monolith is here to stay by market forces alone.

Re: United States vs. Google

#283

Post by dragonwriter »

arcticbull wrote: post #281
munk-a wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note - in Canada there is a party generally called the Liberal party and another called the Conservative party - I've been careful in the text below to differential Liberal from liberal and Conservative from conservative - it can get a bit confusing (especially when the Liberals aren't liberal) but that's just Canada being confusing. As a Canadian - Canada is slipping into a two party system. There are, weirdl…

I think there's an important further distinction to be made here. The US has voting directly for the head of state, whereas Canada's head of state is of course the Queen, but the PM is selected incidentally to the vote via parliamentary procedure. The Canadian system has you pick your local representative for your riding (MP) and the party with the most MPs, traditionally™, gets to make their leader the Prime Ministe…

> The US has voting directly for the head of state

No, it doesn't. The US has indirect elections for the head of state, but the body which directly elects the head of state literally does nothing else.

Re: United States vs. Google

#284

Post by jabbanobodder »

munk-a wrote: post #103
jabbanobodder wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're not cornered in. You might think they have a large influence over what is happening online (and they do), but you as an individual have a choice if you want to use the services they provide. Also this large influence is additionally strengthened by the fact that no other company can offer services (above mentioned) that match the quality of the product Google is giving.

I can't speak to all of the points but when it comes to video hosting - no you don't. Content creators can't move off of youtube since it's more of a discovery service than a hosting service and it has locked viewers into its platform - it doesn't offer any way for dailymotion, vimeo, nebula, acorn, amazon, netflix, twitch or dlive to promote videos on their home page and due to their enormous market share content cr…

In regards to video hosting; Should they? When you go to Mcdonalds, should they provide (or be force to) the option for you to buy a Whopper, if not, why should YouTube be forced to? Nothing is forcing users or content creators to use the platform, they simple do because they know that is where the customer base is, and user know that is where content is.

And I agree that most "common" users could use Bing and not know the difference, but then again that destroys the U.S's whole case of a "monopoly" market.

Re: United States vs. Google

#285

Post by Osiris »

bun_at_work wrote: post #199
Osiris wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe your comment is a bit tongue in cheek about Microsoft's settlement over IE. The concern here is that government, especially lawyers, are not good at coming up with remedies. If the court rules Google is a monopoly, then what? What changes will be demanded, and will they "fix" the issue that the government is trying to solve?

Did you read the article? Or any of the lawsuit? The fix the gov't is pushing for seems obvious - in this case it would prevent companies in Google's position from making exclusive deals that promote their product over competitors. A specific example - Google pays Apple billions of dollars each year to make Google the default search engine. That wouldn't be allowed. What Apple does in response isn't outlined.

The complaint is purposefully scant on remedy requests.

I was trying to say that lawyers aren't good at solving business problems, not that they don't try to do it. The question I was posing is: Will the remedies that government asks for, actually solve the problem?

The parent comment mentioned that one of the remedies for Microsoft was just to ask people which browser to use as their default, which seemed to be too little too late, so to speak.

Re: United States vs. Google

#286

Post by arcticbull »

dragonwriter wrote: post #283
arcticbull wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an important further distinction to be made here. The US has voting directly for the head of state, whereas Canada's head of state is of course the Queen, but the PM is selected incidentally to the vote via parliamentary procedure. The Canadian system has you pick your local representative for your riding (MP) and the party with the most MPs, traditionally™, gets to make their leader the Prime Ministe…

> The US has voting directly for the head of state No, it doesn't. The US has indirect elections for the head of state, but the body which directly elects the head of state literally does nothing else.

By "directly" for the head of state, I mean, they vote, directly, for the head of state. Americans are picking on the ballot between "Trump" or "Biden," not "Republican Elector Steve Ruralson" vs "Democrat Elector Bill City-Slicker."

The results are passed on via electors, but most electors are bound by law to vote alongside the popular vote of the state. Even when not bound, they have almost exclusively done so, making this particular fact more of a technicality.

An indirect analogy based on the Canadian system, for instance, would be whichever party in the House has the most seats gets to put their leader in the President role. I would consider that to be "indirectly."

Canadians are never asked "Who should be Prime Minister: Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh, Elizabeth May or Yves-François Blanchet?" Parliamentary procedure dictates that.

Re: United States vs. Google

#287

Post by mjevans »

jcfrei wrote: post #35

The article mentions that the real focus of anticompetitive behaviour in Google's case should be the acquisition or integration of additional aggregators. In this case the Android app store. I think one of the most blatant anticompetitive behaviours is how Google has integrated the play store framework into lots of applications which means disabling it breaks them (or causes apps to show warning notifications). At th…

Google's search results are probably (I speculate for lack of data) as good as they are because of all of the privacy problems.

Surely Google either knows who I am, or has cross referenced my interests over the years to similar individuals.

Google also knows my emails.

On mobile Google probably knows my GPS position, and anything with a maps context benefits from that.

==

The search has a lot of implicit input that, apart from just the keywords alone which would still be problematic enough from a privacy standpoint, would be insanely consumer harming to share at all.

Re: United States vs. Google

#288

Post by hyperpallium2 »

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 became world dictator fair and square!

Re: United States vs. Google

#289

Post by username90 »

d1zzy wrote: post #157
munk-a wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to all of the points but when it comes to video hosting - no you don't. Content creators can't move off of youtube since it's more of a discovery service than a hosting service and it has locked viewers into its platform - it doesn't offer any way for dailymotion, vimeo, nebula, acorn, amazon, netflix, twitch or dlive to promote videos on their home page and due to their enormous market share content cr…

Twitch, however, seems to be doing great without being able to advertise their videos on Youtube. This is more of a discussion of walled gardens than typical monopoly abuse.

I'm pretty sure Youtube will overtake Twitch as a streaming platform within a year now. They have implemented the features they lacked a couple of years ago like premium subscriptions for channels. And since they advertise streams in your watch next recommendations in youtube you will get a lot of spontaneous people watching them easily, while you only go to Twitch if you specifically want to watch a stream.

Some video game streamers on youtube reach 50k+ viewers regularly and donations of $10+ just keeps raining in with that audience. That isn't any less than top Twitch streamers, and the Youtube will only grow since it is so much easier for people to discover Youtube streaming than Twitch streaming.

So really I don't see Twitch being a major player in a few years. There is no reason for content creators to stay with Twitch once youtube gives them a bigger audience and more money.

Re: United States vs. Google

#290

Post by mjevans »

mjevans wrote: post #287
jcfrei wrote: post #35

The article mentions that the real focus of anticompetitive behaviour in Google's case should be the acquisition or integration of additional aggregators. In this case the Android app store. I think one of the most blatant anticompetitive behaviours is how Google has integrated the play store framework into lots of applications which means disabling it breaks them (or causes apps to show warning notifications). At th…

Google's search results are probably (I speculate for lack of data) as good as they are because of all of the privacy problems. Surely Google either knows who I am, or has cross referenced my interests over the years to similar individuals. Google also knows my emails. On mobile Google probably knows my GPS position, and anything with a maps context benefits from that. == The search has a lot of implicit input that,…

I as a consumer find value in the quality of Google's results and consider that the bigger harm is probably worsening this index on the repository of all knowledge we know.

Therefore as competition in this space is naturally limited I would rather see a third option than status quo or break-up; recognition as a natural monopoly and regulations to benefit consumers.

Post reply on HN