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Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

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Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#221

Post by magicalist »

tyingq wrote: post #165
ethbr0 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to keep revenue graphs going up and to the right, because that's the primary KPI your unit is judged on, at some point it's technically easier to handicap competition than improve your own offering. I think this gives us a timestamp on when Google got there.

It does seem like the GOOGL shareholder expectation of compounded perpetual YoY revenue gains of > 25% leads to bad places. The YoY growth of end users is much smaller. Something like 5%. So at some point, the inflated expectations have to mean a dirty playbook.

> It does seem like the GOOGL shareholder expectation of compounded perpetual YoY revenue gains of > 25% leads to bad places

Yeah it seems bizarre that they would try to hold on to that big of growth and not moderate it if this is the method to get it because there's no way it can be sustainably grown for long, but I guess if you're a VP only focused on this quarter's goals and the bonus you'll get out of it, it doesn't really much matter if growth craters a year or two out. You can cash out long before then.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#222

Post by LordDragonfang »

ricketycricket wrote: post #168
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. 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. This is not an editorial document, it’s a legal complaint by the Attorneys General of 17 U.S. states and commonwealths demanding a jury trial (among other things). The al…

>This is not an editorial document, it’s a legal complaint by the Attorneys General of 17 U.S. states and commonwealths demanding a jury trial (among other things).

While I agree that Google is anticompetitive, I don't think that specific detail gives as much weight as you think it does (or indeed should). The courts have had a notoriously bad history with understanding tech, and being part of a formal legal process is only weak evidence that a complaint has merit.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#223

Post by kbenson »

nkingsy wrote: post #208
billylindeman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always blows my mind seeing the things people who work at google/fb are willing to "walk out" / "protest" over, and then these insidious things they're willing to just sit back and let happen. When I moved to the bay area working at FB/Google was something I held in high regard and was a career goal of mine. Now I get hit up by recruiters from them often... and I don't message them back. It hurts thinking about ho…

I work in big tech I selected all my previous companies because they seemed to have a worthy mission from the outside. Each disappointed me immensely. At startup scale you have to see the sausage be made or at least sit next to it. I know big tech companies have too much power because every other company I’ve worked at would be most accurately described as an unscrupulous Rube Goldberg machine for moving money from V…

The problem is that "worthy mission" is incompatible with being a public company for the most part. Once your mandate is not profitability but growth, some cohort of people at the company will push for that growth in ways that others think is unacceptable, and they will hide these programs because they know some will objects and those that would object are incentivized from all sides and from themselves to not want to see them.

Private companies have a much better chance of actually following those missions(at least if not struggling). At a minimum, not as many incentives are aligned against you.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#224

Post by LordDragonfang »

tyingq wrote: post #137
magicalist wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/defau…

>Or more accurately, the analogy would be if [redacted] were a monopoly financial broker and owned the [redacted] which was a monopoly stock exchange.

Can someone who has a better understand of legal proceedings explain what purpose these redactions serve?

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#225

Post by pphysch »

ddingus wrote: post #192
pphysch wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The idea of a robust, enduring free market itself needs to be questioned. Complete economic freedom leads to monopolies, who then act to preserve and benefit from their position. They do this because they know everyone else both wants that position and would do the same thing to maintain it. All this happens because growth is seen as necessary. Always necessary. Markets with rules can check those behaviors, but come…

> In the end, why do we even allow markets?

Because it's the best we got, historically. Decentralized price mechanism outperforms wetware planning at allocating resources efficiently. Now software has changed that and central planning is much more capable.

Truly pure free market economies are virtually impossible, because as soon as the first firm is formed, it becomes a mixed economy. That is, economic transactions done within the firm are not done according to the global price mechanism, but to other rules and conventions. And the only way to prevent firms from being formed would be some extreme regulation i.e. central planning...

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#226

Post by windexh8er »

magicalist wrote: post #128
windexh8er wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit meter? It seems to me this is yet another validation that Google is an ad sales company hell bent on preventing competition, controlling the market and lying to end users and integrators. All of these pieces are adding up - what was conjecture is finally being validated and I, personally, believe that Google is not in it for the good of the customer, but are only in it for a profit. Death to Google by thousa…

> 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.

Just because the floodgates haven't opened with all of the insight you may want doesn't mean it's not valid - re: "bullshit meter".

Google has an army of the best in legal and part of their play is limiting this information from ever being seen. I'm curious, what would be enough validation to pass your sniff test? And are you saying you think this is being overblown?

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#227

Post by LordDragonfang »

tyingq wrote: post #112
cupcake-unicorn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were people defending AMP? Everything I've heard about it was backlash

AMP was a historical irritant for me, and I do recall the tide turning over time. It was initially hard to criticize it here without your comments being downvoted pretty hard. There were a set of defenders that believed it was solely about page loading time, and that any "trojan horse" accusations were from conspiracy theorists. I think part of it was that the AMP team members were active here, and seemed genuine and…

>I think it also had defenders because it forced sites like news organizations to re-think their 20MB+ ad and tracker laden story pages. So it wasn't all bad.

This was mainly it. Modern basically-just-text-content sites are hilariously bloated and slow, and this seemed like a genuine attempt to fix it. I remember I defended it for those reasons. It didn't pan out that way, though.

Also, I definitely remember AMP critics, or at least skeptics, getting plenty of upvotes from the very beginning, I'm not sure it was that hard to criticize.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#228

Post by kbenson »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #64
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…

In case anyone reading is unaware Google already inserts artificial delay into page loading times, to allow for header bidding. Online advertising proponents would argue this delay is below human perception. But the perceptibility of the wait should be for users, not Google, to decide; it is artifical and undisclosed delay, for the benefit of advertising. If users were told about it and could avoid it, no doubt they…

> Google already inserts artificial delay into page loading times, to allow for header bidding.

How does this allow for header bidding? Anything needed could be done in page or with a connection that delays the response until some condition is met.

The browser adding an artificial delay seems like it's just a way for the browser to control the process, and when the browser is controlled by an ad network, that makes me very suspicious as to the motives for an artificial delay.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#229

Post by kbenson »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #222
ricketycricket wrote: post #168

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. This is not an editorial document, it’s a legal complaint by the Attorneys General of 17 U.S. states and commonwealths demanding a jury trial (among other things). The al…

>This is not an editorial document, it’s a legal complaint by the Attorneys General of 17 U.S. states and commonwealths demanding a jury trial (among other things). While I agree that Google is anticompetitive, I don't think that specific detail gives as much weight as you think it does (or indeed should). The courts have had a notoriously bad history with understanding tech, and being part of a formal legal process…

I don't think that was necessarily meant to convey weight towards a position of belief, but instead to just clarify the situation. They immediately followed up with "the allegations are unproven" and "we'll eventually see".

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#230

Post by jsiepkes »

acomar wrote: post #205
billylindeman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always blows my mind seeing the things people who work at google/fb are willing to "walk out" / "protest" over, and then these insidious things they're willing to just sit back and let happen. When I moved to the bay area working at FB/Google was something I held in high regard and was a career goal of mine. Now I get hit up by recruiters from them often... and I don't message them back. It hurts thinking about ho…

> It always blows my mind seeing the things people who work at google/fb are willing to "walk out" / "protest" over, and then these insidious things they're willing to just sit back and let happen. symbolic action is always easy. but you're asking them to strike (refuse to work) in response to unethical demands, without the collective backing of their peers, in an industry that views union activity with - at best - s…

> but you're asking them to strike (refuse to work) in response to unethical demands, without the collective backing of their peers,

We are not talking about some poor sod blue collar worker here. We are talking about techworkers with 6 figure salaries who can get a job anywhere. No one is asking them to start some movement. They can simply think: "I don't want to be a part of this", leave the job and get a new job that same day.

> don't judge the people who are doing what they have to in order to survive. they were compelled by people who had leverage over them and our ire should be for those people.

Tech workers with 6 figure salaries who can get a job pretty much anywhere they like are doing these things to survive? Seriously...? Google had leverage over these people? How?

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