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Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

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Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#181

Post by matheusmoreira »

lozenge wrote: post #177
matheusmoreira wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This unencrypted file is then provided to drive if you select back up with Google drive in WhatsApp. Why can't they just encrypt the data?! It makes no sense. I manually back up my messages because of this. After some time WhatsApp will start nagging me to enable cloud backups. I suppose this fits into the "annoy users until they give up their privacy" theme in the litigation document.

Encrypt it with what key? WhatsApp doesn't have passwords, it's fully based on phone number verification. Do you want WhatsApp to hold the key for you? Or prompt you to create a key which they won't be able to recover?

> Or prompt you to create a key which they won't be able to recover?

Yes. I have a YubiKey I could use for this.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#182

Post by pphysch »

conception wrote: post #60
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.

For a market to be free it must be well regulated. If a market is controlled inordinately by a few, it ceases to be free.

Then it's not a truly free market, because central planning (regulation) is sometimes overpowering the price mechanism.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#183

Post by IdiocyInAction »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #130
colejohnson66 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know as well as I do that that will never happen and would probably destroy the economy. As bad as these companies are, flat out killing them is not a good idea.

If the economy can't survive the loss of these abusers, it deserves to be destroyed. If we do something, we gotta go all the way. Half-measures do nothing.

You do realize what the destruction of the economy would entail? That it would mean that many people would lose their livelihood and suffer?

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#184

Post by eoo »

I think this will potentially be the lawsuit of the year. Really interesting read.

A lot of the monopoly advantages seem to focus on AdX. I wonder if demanding that Google shall not participate in the ad exchange business could slowly open up competition in all the other markets...

For example, they were concerned that header bidding would make AdX fees go down to 5% instead of 22%, thus they used their advantage in the ad server market to stifle this (plus the FB deal). They are able to do this because they control both markets and can modify the data protocols between these two pieces. Same applies to scrambling IDs (ad servers and display markets)

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#185

Post by TheColorYellow »

jfoster wrote: post #5

I've seen lots of comments recently in response to the Google & Facebook advertising issues suggesting that Google should be split into X, Y, and Z. Most of the proposed splits seem like they would do absolutely nothing to address the issue at hand, though. The problem in digital advertising seems to be that Google controls the marketplace, as well as both the buy & sell sides. Even a "breaking apart" that proposes s…

My view is that this is an issue finance has already solved. Just regulate ad exchanges for fair practice, require disclosure or transparency to identify anticompetitive behavior, and then license the fuck out of everyone who participates in the market. Seems like the industry has grown enough and clearly is suffering due to lack of sufficient management of externalities and monopoly powers.

The harder part is executing on the above strategy. You will need new institutions or see an expansion or extension of existing institutions. Imagining the FCC trying to do this seems both a likely approach and an incredibly ineffective one.

I would add too that improved regulation of consumer and private data would help significantly. This is probably more likely than the above.

This lawsuit seems like the perfect timing and impetus to get serious about regulation in the digital ecosystem. Just hope we don't fuck it up.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#186

Post by colinmhayes »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #130
colejohnson66 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know as well as I do that that will never happen and would probably destroy the economy. As bad as these companies are, flat out killing them is not a good idea.

If the economy can't survive the loss of these abusers, it deserves to be destroyed. If we do something, we gotta go all the way. Half-measures do nothing.

It turns out that people actually prefer getting products for free with ads to paying for products. As bad as google and facebook are, they are providing what people want at the exact price point they want.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#187

Post by dang »

unknownOrigin wrote: post #141
magicalist wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me this is yet another validation That's just what I mean. There's a tiny amount of validation and a lot of rhetoric. It would be preferable to be able to see the actual sources they're quoting from.

It would be preferable if people paid by Google wouldn't astroturf this site every time Google is caught doing something dirty.

You can't attack others like this here. We ban accounts that post flamewar comments, such as this one and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28733439. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

I appreciate and share your desire to protect the integrity of the site but we need to do it in a way that doesn't do even more damage.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#188

Post by IdiocyInAction »

jeffbee wrote: post #144
Jensson wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am…

Yep. You'd expect a community like HN to understand that the newspaper industry is a gigantic evil cabal, but I guess we're just not collectively smart enough.

I don't think it is necessarily about being "smart" - a story like this simply confirms many biases people have about big, "evil" corporations and even very smart people are prone to confirmation biases.

Mind you, I am most certainly sure that Big Tech has tons of shady shit going on, as would any industry of that size, but a politically charged lawsuit championed by a competing industry is not what I would use as proof.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#190

Post by reilly3000 »

gerash wrote: post #178

There are a lot of allegations here and I'd like to know which ones turn out to be true. That said, I'd also like to understand the motivation behind the fact that only red states AGs are in the plaintiffs. I rarely associate red state AGs with any form of integrity and in fact red state governments generally represent the frontiers of kleptocracy. So color me skeptical

I've worked in advertising/media buying, at a header-bidding at network that (obligitorily) used DFP/Ad Manager, and an enterprise publisher. Its all true. Their hegemony of ad serving (which isn't free), their bid preference, their rigging of AMP ads, and also search promotion of AMP properties are all extremely real and monopolistic dynamics. I wish this action came sooner.
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