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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

#391

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rightbyte wrote: post #383
oldgradstudent wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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: Why would you even think that after the whole salary fixing scandal? There's no enforcement of antitrust law and no incentive not to collude freely and egregiously. Had Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Paul Otellini, and everyone el…

Is fixing wages illegal, like price fixing?

Do we have law and order?

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

#392

Post by hyperpallium2 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #381
hyperpallium2 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, but try to consider google whenever a question forms (even in your head). Some questions are curiously resistant to this. https://www.google.com/search?q=People+of+the+same+trade+sel...

I knew the quote before hand, I wanted to make it clear for others that you were quoting something and not just coming up with an opinion. I phrased it as a question to sound more polite, which seems to have backfired a bit.

Yes, the question mark makes it sound like a question. An option is "by Adam Smith". Trying to "sound more polite" may be the problem - I prefer either brutal directness or genuine kindness to sounding polite.

It's a very well-known quote. IMHO the language and phrasing are too archaic to come across as an opinion, even to someone it isn't well-known to. The curious will google (though it doesn't hurt for you to add attribution).

I hope you'll appreciate that my reply was helpful and charitable - though it too seems to have missed the mark!

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

#393

Post by dalbasal »

arcturus17 wrote: post #239
dalbasal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>business' has naturally high margins $8bn in revenue might not mean profitable. Google certainly spend a lot more than this on search and advertising, and well... software scales. In any case, whether they make $1bn in profit, losses or something in between... This is profits . Apple is making $8bn-$12bn, all profit, just on defaults.

GP is saying naturally high margins because it is a pure software play with close-to-zero marginal distribution cost and massive scale. We don’t know if Bing’s profitable but GP is merely saying that with the circumstances above it is an interesting market for Microsoft to pursue.

Perhaps, but I think it's marginal in practice. Whether MSFT makes an internally accounted 10% margin or 10% loss on their $8bn in revenue, Apple collect >$8bn which is entirely profit.

Cooperating and accepting a slice of Google's monopoly profits is far more profitable that competing would be, in all but the most bullish scenarios.

IE, MSFT would need to be outright challenging Google's 1st place position in search marketing to have a hope of earning more than Apple do by doing nothing, spending nothing, investing nothing and taking no risks.

Also, what would it take for MSFT to compete with Google in earnest? For one thing, Microsoft would need to outbid Google for such deals. They'd need to pay Apple, Telcos, and such more than Google do now.

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

#395

Post by ipaddr »

solarkraft wrote: post #223
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

There have been reports and speculation that they’re doing just that. Of course it’s worth it for the negotiation threat alone, but Apple also really doesn’t seem to like depending on Google. I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.

The tide has shifted this year and ddg is returning better results

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

#396

Post by Frost1x »

rightbyte wrote: post #383
oldgradstudent wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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: Why would you even think that after the whole salary fixing scandal? There's no enforcement of antitrust law and no incentive not to collude freely and egregiously. Had Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Paul Otellini, and everyone el…

Is fixing wages illegal, like price fixing?

If it's not it should be. You can't push free markets for everyone else then controlled markets for yourself (I mean you can, but it's hypocrisy). I'm tired of the double standards businesses and the capital ownership class have.

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

#397

Post by dalbasal »

frabcus wrote: post #330
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree: Shatter monopoly platforms with extreme prejudice, jail the CEOs of Google and Apple, and the market with self-correct. Investors will be wary of harmful business models and CEOs will hesitate to make monopolizing decisions. Right now, tech companies are massively overvalued because the risk of government regulation is viewed to be nonexistent. A market correction is overdue.

For Standard Oil, splitting it up actually increased shareholder value massively. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/break-ups-and-stock-price... The same could happen with big tech. The market correction could be upwards, just spread across lots of new stocks.

I really don't think it's likely, but I suppose what "break up" means in practice is a crapshoot.

Many of our current, data & user centric monopolies are more complex. Price setting, monopoly rents and economies of scale exist, but they're often not the main point.

"Economies of scale," for example, tends to work backwards these days. Google & FB have access to a ton of advertiser-relevant data, and a ton of users. That makes one unit of Google output better, not just cheaper. The dollar value of a Google of FB ad is much higher than MSFT's or a 2nd tier social network.

It might also be cheaper to run, because of economies of scale. Often though, that's very "in theory." IRL, FB probably spends more per user than most of their competitors. They have it to spend. Reddit is a competitor to FB, for example. The defining aspect of "scale" in their rivalry is not that FB can spread their costs across more users. FB makes many times more revenue per user, because they are bigger.

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

#398

Post by dijit »

pacija wrote: post #373
dijit wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ubisoft and Epic have their own game stores inside of the playstation store? No. Sony PlayStation is almost identical to the Apple App Store in that there’s only 1 way to get your software working on retail units. In fact it’s a lot worse in many ways, you need two specific types of hardware to even develop software- Sony is quite old school and draconian when it comes to testing, validation and communication. At U…

I buy my Sony PlayStation games on physical media in six brick and mortar stores owned by three different brands in Belgrade, Serbia. There are also a few online retailers who will send you the disc and you pay the delivery guy with cash. Sometimes I find a game at half the price at one store as compared to the others. I bought PS4 game three years ago in Oslo, Norway, and two years ago in Nicosia, Cyprus, both in di…

All copies of those games were produced and sold by Sony.

It doesn’t really matter who resells them, unless it’s a used copy then Sony has been paid — and it doesn’t mean that I as a publisher have an alternative “store” on the PlayStation or that I can print my own disks, which is what the parent stated.

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

#399

Post by oblio »

bostik wrote: post #322
oblio wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember the no poaching agreement started personally by Steve Jobs? They have been a cartel for decades. They share board members, they compete only as much as not to threaten the status quo.

Nitpick: more than a decade. Google as a company has existed for less than 25 years. Doesn't absolve them of terrible business practices, just shows that they caught up with them pretty fast.

Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google starting between 2001 (so 2 decades ago) until 2011 and Apple board member between 2006 and 2009. He wouldn't have gotten the position in 2006 of Google and Apple weren't cooperating.

We're verging or even past 2 decades.

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

#400

Post by dalbasal »

adam_arthur wrote: post #262
dalbasal wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint. Let's make a point of starting here. There's room for the legalistic standpoint, especially if we're trying to understand legal processes... but this isn't a law forum. It's near impossible to discuss antitrust usefully from a mostly-legalistic perspective. The laws, precedents, legal doctrines and economic doctrines they…

Yes, exactly. The law needs to be updated to account for this new world of "platforms". By platform, I mean an ecosystem a private entity creates which they monetize through content created/uploaded/deployed by external parties. AWS and others fall under this definition too. The truth is, cloud computing should be a low margin industry in the long run. Yes, software has close to 0 marginal cost of production, but the…

>> The truth is, cloud computing should be a low margin industry in the long run.

The free market ethos, IIRC, suggests that all industries should be low margin in the long run, no? Innovators and shuch are supposed to be compensated with high margins, but not perpetual high margins. The whole idea is that 25%> margin do not exist in perpetuity.

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