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Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

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Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#71

Post by willis936 »

seanhunter wrote: post #13
DeathArrow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean 5 monopolies. I would split them in 5 parts, each owning 20% of all current businesses.

There's a very clear conflict of interest between ads and everything else google does, and the documents alledge some abuses of the monopoly position around that conflict. So any kind of antitrust breakup is very likely to start there. Personally, I think it would be quite interesting to split ads from everything else and then split ads itself into a few competing entities. I'm not sure you get a benefit to the consu…

But the ads are how google exists. They keep the lights on and the campus hedges trimmed. If you spin off a google without ads then would it even succeed or would the google with ads just take its old monopolistic position as soon as society allowed (forgot) it?

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#72

Post by bawolff »

triska wrote: post #25

What a read. Almost every single paragraph in the document leaves me speechless. For example, quoting from the document: "Google likes to claim that it will “never sell your personal information to anyone,” with Google CEO Sundar Pichai deceptively claiming that such a policy is “unequivocal.” But Google leverages intimate user data and personal information to broker billions of daily online ad impressions between pu…

I don't think the first one is a bombshell. It was always clear google was using personal data to target ads.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#73

Post by bawolff »

djrockstar1 wrote: post #26

159-169, about Google being able to decrypt end-to-end encrypted WA (WhatsApp) communications is terrifying. The fact that Google has known this for over 5 years and made no effort to notify the public is what really got me. What's fucked up is that Google Drive backups are the only ones WA offers, and naturally everyone wants their messages backed up so they turn it on, not knowing the implications.

Google clearly should have communicated this better, but also not exactly shocking.

How would you make a backup end-to-end encrypted without asking for a passphrase or relying on on device storage? I don't think its technically possible.

Maybe google could have tied it to your login credentials, but then no more password resets.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#74

Post by KennyBlanken »

mrtksn wrote: post #49
selsta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found AMP to be an awful experience. It messes with native scrolling physics, pages are often incomplete or straight up broken. It also disables Reader mode on iOS so I'm always forced to load the full web page anyway. Luckily iOS 15 web extensions have solved that problem.

> It also disables Reader mode on iOS so I'm always forced to load the full web page anyway. I agree. It's one of the imperfections of the AMP. I like AMP for quickly skimming between the results and then load the original page if I find something lengthy ro read.

It's not an imperfection, it's by design. Reader mode removes ads.

It also strips out all the crap the site's UX/UI people use to try and keep you on the site.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#75

Post by d3nj4l »

matsemann wrote: post #50
mrtksn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP does have better experience from the users perspective. The backlash is from the techies only. I assumed that the non-amp websites were slower due to the JS bloat, I still despise what the Web pages has become, however it turns out Google wasn't a honest broker here and instead of providing a tool that helps them and the users, they provided a tool that helps them and harms the users and bullies the website owner…

AMP had an (intentional..?) bug on Firefox for years, making it impossible to scroll in the internal page. Luckily it wasn't a big problem, since Google also intentionally gimped the search results to an old mobile version when using Fx, so one didn't get amp links.

> Google also intentionally gimped the search results to an old mobile version when using Fx

I guess this is my reminder to mention once again that using a Chrome useragent on FF mobile gets you better search results. It's one of the extensions you can download on FF for Android right now, in fact.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#76

Post by KennyBlanken »

jclulow wrote: post #63
lordofgibbons wrote: post #62

I hope we can keep politics out of this thread, but I couldn't help but notice all of the plaintiff states are dominantly Republican states. Any ideas why that would be and why the "blue" states aren't present?

I assume it's because Republicans are, on average, more butthurt about technology companies of late because of the bare minimum level of fact checking some of the social platforms have engaged in during the most recent election cycle. Regardless, Google should be nailed against the wall, and though there is little doubt in my mind they will in absolutely no way be appropriately punished for their poor behaviour, it's…

I assumed it was because of the major tech industry presence in the states that are conspicuously absent. Offices and datacenters, and thus lobbyists on retainer.

I admit I'm not very current on this stuff, but isn't Texas one of the few states in that list that has a sizeable number of datacenters?

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#77

Post by mrobot »

They lobbied on some antitrust bills:

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/bills?c...

An interesting one is the "1 Agency Act", which was "To transfer antitrust enforcement functions from the Federal Trade Commission to the Department of Justice, and for other purposes." -- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2926...

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#78

Post by tjpnz »

onion2k wrote: post #55
robin_reala wrote: post #7

249. The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling. Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a “nice comparative boost.” Throttling non-AMP ads slows down header bidding, which Google then uses to denigrate header bidding for being too slow. “Header Bidding can often increase latency of web page…

You do have to wonder what impact this will have on the employment prospects of Google engineers in the unlikely event that it all blows up for Google. Having a toxic company on your resume is never a good thing.

Not nearly as bad as Facebook.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#79

Post by mrobot »

jclulow wrote: post #69
willis936 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expound on "bare minimum level of fact checking "? It seems to me that one tribe was proportionately de-platformed for their violations of ToS and is unhappy with not having the power to do something about it. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then maybe the road to heaven is paved with bad intentions?

Don't be taken in by the idea that balance for the sake of balance is some kind of absolute good. If I say that the earth is flat, and you say that the earth is round, the newspaper headline probably shouldn't be that nobody can agree on what shape the earth is. One tribe, as it happens, says rather a lot more daft and dangerous things than the other. It's not possible to _hope and good cheer_ someone into doing some…

Except both tribes put out slightly difference flavors of the one major falsehood: that US foreign policy helps anyone, anywhere, for any reason, ever.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#80

Post by robbedpeter »

makeitdouble wrote: post #43
DeathArrow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean 5 monopolies. I would split them in 5 parts, each owning 20% of all current businesses.

A monopoly is fine if it doesn’t hamper competition and doesn’t use its position to impact unrelated markets. Shimano has a near monopoly on bike parts, and it’s mostly fine. DJI dominates the pro drone market, and it’s fine. All monopolies aren’t evil.

Context matters. With the intellectual property situation as bad as it is right now, the monopolies those companies hold give them a nearly unbeatable advantage in squashing competition. Their IP holdings let them immediately tangle up any new businesses with massive legal hurdles, regardless of the merits of their claims.

DJI being in China means they will lie, cheat, and steal from competitors such that meaningful competition becomes impossible.

Innovation and consumer value suffer. Monopolies automatically and unavoidably hamper competition and have secondary impacts on unrelated products through inflation of pricing, e.g. if a cog is overpriced it's taking spending away from other markets.

Corporations are not people, they are constructs that act toward to goal of self preservation at any cost. Once they exceed a certain size, individual humans in the loop lose meaningful control over the behavior of the company as a whole.

The international legal situation we find ourselves in automatically places Chinese companies outside the reach of accountability to any rules by which most of the rest of the world have to abide.

By themselves, monopolies could be functional participants in a healthy economy, but there are too many factors making that position completely untenable right now.

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