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Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

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Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#131

Post by tyingq »

magicalist wrote: post #118
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…

People are being awfully credulous of two sentence fragments quoted in an editorial paragraph. Much of this could certainly be true but my bullshit meter is going off on the level of narrative they're reconstructing in all the non-quoted portions. I dislike AMP because the UX is bad and Google strong armed it in the news carousel anyways instead of focusing on performance for all sites, but this would be a lot more c…

>"People are being awfully credulous of two sentence fragments quoted in an editorial paragraph."

The pdf that this page links to includes much more than two sentence fragments on the topic.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#132

Post by amelius »

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…

> 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.”

That's it. Webmasters should give all visitors with a Chrome user agent a loading penalty of 1 second and a popup saying that the website runs faster on Firefox.

I said it before on HN, but the idea was condemned, and I partially agreed, but now it seems (at least to me) a fully justifiable strategy to make users win back power.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#133

Post by msabalau »

seaman1921 wrote: post #45
DeathArrow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should be sliced horizontally, not vertically. Each resulting company would own a percentage of current business.

sure lets slice the computers, engineers and offices horizontally as well

You say this as if it were a bad thing.

And while it may be hyperbolic to literally slice engineers, anyone who engaged in a criminal conspiracy (from coder to CEO) could be tried and, if convicted, jailed. Having this happen broadly would certainly be illuminating for anyone working in this space in the future.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#134

Post by jeffbee »

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…

It's sort of amazing how people are boosting this lawsuit up to the front page of HN dozens of times over three days, without really seeming to grasp that it is one side of a civil law suit, and that anyone would be a fool to take a filing like this at face value. It's a little thin on evidence, don't you think?

Normally when the attorneys general of Kentucky and South Dakota put their heads together about something, the rest of us point and laugh. But when they put together a document that looks like the top 1000 most-unhinged HN comments from users like `ocdtrekkie`, critical thinking gets thrown under a bus and it's 100% pure credulity.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#135

Post by magicalist »

tyingq wrote: post #131
magicalist wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are being awfully credulous of two sentence fragments quoted in an editorial paragraph. Much of this could certainly be true but my bullshit meter is going off on the level of narrative they're reconstructing in all the non-quoted portions. I dislike AMP because the UX is bad and Google strong armed it in the news carousel anyways instead of focusing on performance for all sites, but this would be a lot more c…

>"People are being awfully credulous of two sentence fragments quoted in an editorial paragraph." The pdf that this page links to includes much more than two sentence fragments on the topic.

But not the documents these quotes come from, as far as I can tell.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#136

Post by jeffbee »

dmw_ng wrote: post #125
mavhc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How centralised is AMP in theory and in practise?

Every client everywhere donates Referrer: logs to ampproject.org, which Google run. It's another centralized web log in disguise

So it's not centralized at all in other words? Because it's an open standard that anyone can implement, both client and server, right?

100% totally decentralized.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#137

Post by tyingq »

magicalist wrote: post #135
tyingq wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"People are being awfully credulous of two sentence fragments quoted in an editorial paragraph." The pdf that this page links to includes much more than two sentence fragments on the topic.

But not the documents these quotes come from, as far as I can tell.

I agree, but this seems pretty typical for an initial filing. They don't typically show all their cards. So snippets like:

>Internally, Google employees grappled with “how to [publicly] justify [Google] making something slower.”

Could be more, or less interesting, when the actual source document is published.

There's some more detail in a highly redacted document here: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...

"In Google’s words, the [redacted] program [redacted]. Next, Google tried to come up with other creative ways to shut out competition from exchanges in header bidding. During one internal debate, a Google employee proposed a [redacted]. A second employee captured Google’s ultimate aim of destroying header bidding altogether, noting in response that [redacted]"

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#138

Post by dmw_ng »

jeffbee wrote: post #136
dmw_ng wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every client everywhere donates Referrer: logs to ampproject.org, which Google run. It's another centralized web log in disguise

So it's not centralized at all in other words? Because it's an open standard that anyone can implement, both client and server, right? 100% totally decentralized.

AMP requires you load all JS assets from cdnproject.org, which is owned by Google. It is as centralized as it comes

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#139

Post by Jensson »

jeffbee wrote: post #134
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…

It's sort of amazing how people are boosting this lawsuit up to the front page of HN dozens of times over three days, without really seeming to grasp that it is one side of a civil law suit, and that anyone would be a fool to take a filing like this at face value. It's a little thin on evidence, don't you think? Normally when the attorneys general of Kentucky and South Dakota put their heads together about something,…

Newcorp and the other media's anti google campaign has worked flawlessly. Even techies boarded the train and now think Google is worse than Microsoft or Apple. At worst Google is as bad as Microsoft or Apple if all the things the articles accuse them of is true.

I don't work for Google nor own Google stocks, but among the things I am afraid of Google using its position to capture a bit too much of the ad-market is among the least of those, and that is ultimately what all these accusations boils down to. User data is for ads, these anti-competitive practices are for ads etc. If ads is the peak of their evil then I'd say they aren't terribly evil.

Google's biggest sin was to sit in the way of news media profits, that caused a barrage of articles written by news media companies targeted at them. I'd say that is evidence of news media being evil, not Google being evil.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#140

Post by mahogany »

throwaway4good wrote: post #82
paulluuk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But would it still be a "free market" if governments just go around splitting up companies once they get (too) big? Not defending the idea of a free market here, I'm leaning pretty far past socialist myself, but I know that the US in general cares deeply about free market philosophy.

It is about making sure that the free market is actually working not so much about freedom as in freedom of expression - any course about economics will have section about monopolies and its societal cost - showing charts like this: https://college.cengage.com/economics/0538797274_mceachern/s... The cost is real but so is the national security advantage.

So in order to keep the free market working, we have to make it... less free?

I thought the definition of a free market is one that is free of government/outside regulation and interference. But it's also a market that is free of monopolies, apparently, and the only way to get rid of a monopoly is via government/outside regulation and interference. Isn't that a contradiction?

Perhaps we should use another name for a market where we restrict monopolies -- that site you linked talks about "competitive markets".

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