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Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

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Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#341

Post by tsimionescu »

echelon wrote: post #257
heavyset_go wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." They're literally a cartel.

It's time to split the Famgopolies. Apple and Google shouldn't be in so many different businesses, killing everything in their wake. Why the hell does Apple have a film studio? Why does Google have a game studio and cloud? If they keep going, they'll be the MGM and Whole Foods too. (Oh, wait!) Famgopolies also shouldn't be allowed to dictate their payments stacks, software distribution systems, app approval processes…

To be fair, the breadth of FAAMG markets pales in comparison to companies like GE, Samsung, Mitsubishi and similar. The major difference is that those companies don't have a complete choke-hols on any one market, and definitely not on something as important as the modern public square, or something as insidious as PR.

Personally, and I know that this is a very controversial opinion, I believe that the biggest problem is the concept of advertising itself - an attempt to distort consumer behavior, whose natural endpoint was always what we're seeing today: massive data collection, use in politics, manipulation on all available channels.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#342

Post by guerrilla »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #160
giantrobot wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sibling comment pointed out that you're wrong about the Microsoft case. You're also seemingly under informed about monopolies. One of the core issues in the Microsoft case was that they're a horizontal monopoly. Microsoft's monopoly affects all players in the market because a majority of the players use Microsoft's OS. They used that leverage against Netscape and many other companies. Apple on the other hand has a…

Apple and Google control almost everything. Horizontally.

Yes, HN has had to constantly remind itself that a monopoly doesn't mean literally 100% control of the market and is legally defined in terms of market power.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#343

Post by Hokusai »

summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

Google and similar get 30% of all sales. Many companies will lose money in games and apps published in the store meanwhile Google profits. It seems an unsustainable model.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#344

Post by Popegaf »

I'm reading the comments here and it seems like quite a few people are disgusted but not surprised by this behavior. My question to them: has it changed / will it change your behavior and what you buy?

It's easy to complain, but if that's all that ever happens, how do you expect anything to change?

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#345

Post by jobigoud »

xyzzyz wrote: post #307
Renaud wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible I would like someone to make some objective research on that. My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing. I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something. I very ra…

There is not much interesting stuff on the internet these days outside closed FB etc, so search is just not as important as it used to be.

I think it's opposite. There is as much good stuff as before but it's drowned in crap, and that's exactly why search engines are so important.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#346

Post by sunshinerag »

summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

Force?

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#347

Post by rewq4321 »

summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

The evidence of collusion between Apple and Google coming out of the Epic case is amazing to me. I'd always thought it was a sort of unspoken "game theoretic" type of collusion (which I'm sure it is in part), but it looks like they've had very explicit communication about it:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428417681351348...

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

Just incredible.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#348

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #241
bushbaba wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s likely the payoff is also to prevent apple from building its own search engine to compete. As googles payoff is so lucrative

If I were Apple, I would spend at least $1B of that $7B on developing a secret new search engine :)

[deleted]

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#349

Post by tsimionescu »

Santosh83 wrote: post #12

Cartelization is nothing unexpected. Just like governments cut all sorts of deals to form geopolitical blocks, so do leading companies in any industry. It's win-win for them. As for "regulators", they tend to drag their feet for a long time, take even longer to build a case, and after all that time, their action tends to be more show than substance. I wonder why that is. True decentralization is impossible without dr…

> Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.

I have also wondered the same, especially seeing not just the massive spying, but also the shoddy quality and extortionate prices that characterize government software auctions all over the world. Especially as multiple regional and local entities often pay for exactly the same management software. It would seem a no-brainer that a national/regional software institute would produce huge savings, better quality, and strategic advantages if it created a national/regional software stack that could be used everywhere.

Alas, I believe that cronyism, market veneration, lack of understanding of software, and the high initial costs are acting to prevent any such effort from even seeming a thinkable idea.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#350

Post by _laiq »

geocar wrote: post #333
amelius wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Apple, I would spend at least $1B of that $7B on developing a secret new search engine :)

I think a lot of people overestimate how easy it is to make a search engine, and underestimate how hard it is to sell search to advertisers. I think this is closer to a 50B problem than a 1B problem. Not impossible, but I don’t know anyone who has 50B that they would want to spend fighting uphill to kill google.

I find this really hard to believe.

Say, you manage to recruit the top-30 engineers who know all the in-and-outs of the google search engine. Add to that, their recent replacement of trad AI methods with full NN I believe, and I can't realistically believe it's not more than a 1B problem.

One of the reasons Google is going horizontal because their search engine can't be "magical" forever, this applies to their ad platform too.

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