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U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#221

Post by Nasrudith »

thow-01187 wrote: post #132
monkeydust wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's been involved in developing financial exchanges this concept is bizarre. There is regulation and participant agreements that would prevent NYSE for example from running its own market making firm and abusing it's position as exchange to benefit over other participants for profit, if it did this others would leave and the exchange would eventually die.

The notion of: "it's a little bit like X, a little bit like Y - but it's neither X nor Y, therefore we it's a wild-west anarchy without any rules or regulations" - this is such a glaring loophole in our legal system that it must be intentional. Derivatives bubble, ad-tech, gig-work, crypto-mania, AirBnB, and many other socially-parasitic enterprises exist solely because our legal code is missing "try-catch-finally" c…

It is intentional - the legal system defaults to absolute freedom in absense of laws. Besides have you seen how goddamn inept just rulemaking is when done based upon the old standards which have nothing to do with the advantages and limitations of the new medium?

Look at attempts to prelegislate things which do not really exist yet and you get utter embarrassments of law at best and at worst hamstring your nation by laws which assume that a TI graphing calculator has the potential to go rogue and start deliberately killing people.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#222

Post by thebean11 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #182
eoo wrote: post #176

Breaking down Google is not gonna work. I guess that the simplest solution is to forbid Google from being in the ad exchange business. Take down AdX and most of the monopolizing effects they have on the ecosystem would be dampened.

Splitting Android and Chrome would be good enough for a start.

Better to split off YouTube so it has to compete with search for ads.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#223

Post by Nasrudith »

ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #5

What incentive is there for states to sue over monopolies? Is it simply to advocate for their constituencies?

Standard careerism demagoguery (remember Backpage?) and trying to bully for favorable coverage for themselves. The ignorants see "Big Tech" as a traditional media company and are mad they aren't playing ball.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#224

Post by Nasrudith »

perth wrote: post #141

Not sure if this was mentioned but does anyone else think it's sleazy that Google tries to poach employees from other companies via Foobar[1]? [1] https://foobar.withgoogle.com

No - fuck anybody who thinks employers own their employees. We want "poaching" - that is a healthy labor market.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#225

Post by Nasrudith »

krono wrote: post #34
dantheman wrote: post #27

It'd be great if states actually focused on real problems like education and medicine instead of going after tech which provides services for free and is generally liked. No one is blaming tech for debt or financial ruin.

You cannot be serious. Where do you think all that money went?

Serious zero sum financial thinking there - assuming profiting from a transaction means the other party must be worse off. And implicitly applying the thieves's syllogism too that is "you have it, I want it, therefore you stole it from me".

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#226

Post by Nasrudith »

Bellamy wrote: post #57
mabbo wrote: post #53

As more data comes out about Google, Apple, Amazon, one simple underlying thing becomes clear: a single company cannot be trusted to operate a marketplace while also being a participant . Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then makes knock-offs which they promote over…

Another example: FDA is funded by pharma companies.

No wonder people think businesses run governments when they use bad metrics of control like that. The earth itself controls oil companies and is therefore responsible for global warming by that logic!

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#227

Post by danielmarkbruce »

krono wrote: post #218
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars, free email, free docs, sheets etc. It is a serious point. Protecting advertising companies from each other is a perplexing choice of resource allocation given the alternatives.

So big tech gave all this stuff away without asking or taking any sort of compensation (i.e. free), and yet they've managed to accumulate levels of influence and wealth previously only beholden to sovereign states. Coincidentally, around the same time big tech came into being, the nation that birthed, nurtured, and protected them started losing its world dominance to rival sovereignties that took the opposite approac…

They took the money they made in search ads and built a lot of products they give away, yes. The wealth is all from search ads.

The US had a little moment of time where it was the dominant power. It wasn't the dominant power in 1900 and it won't be in 2050. The idea that the decline is because of Google etc defies a much simpler explanation. As soon as China moved off of straight communism they were bound for dominance due to their population and general work ethic. There is no reason that over the long term China should have lower GDP per person than the US. Hence they'll have about 4x the total GDP and be able to spend 4x as much on military due to their 4x population size v US.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#228

Post by epistasis »

mabbo wrote: post #147
epistasis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then makes knock-offs which they promote over the originals. And now, reading into this, Google is manipulating their ad markets using inside knowledge. This is nothing new, as brick and mortar retailers have store brands for popular products as well. While I'm glad that the move to the internet lets us reevaluate some of the social relations, I have a reeeea…

Maybe it was never right that those stores were also doing that. There's also a matter of the level of dominance that the platform has. Something like half of e-commerce takes place on Amazon; most online ads are via Google; and Apple literally invented the name "App Store". As for consumer harm, when the market is manipulated to remove competition, we are all harmed. Not today, not directly, but every day after that…

I think the solution is two fold: 1) strong anti-monopoly law, and 2) holding brick and mortar retailers to the same standard that we apply to online retailers.

I think that you'll find that most grocery retailers have nearly as large a monopoly inside their geographic area as Amazon does in the retail space.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#229

Post by cute_boi »

moonchrome wrote: post #171
eitland wrote: post #139

Still waiting for investigators to look into Chrome. In 2009 we were finally getting rid of IE and the web browser market was a healthy ecosystem with lots and lots of innovation happening. Today we are soon back on a browser monoculture with the owner of the most popular product being a company that has enormous interest in killing certain parts of the ecosystem and also has a long history of killing of their own pr…

Safari/WebKit on iOS is a far worse offender. Part of the reason you can't escape the app store tax is because WebKit intentionally gimps webapps. Even Microsoft wasn't this dirty with IE, you could always install other browsers.

There is one good aspect of safari. Because of fear of loosing ios customer many website still works and doesn't shouts at you "This website only works on chrome".

And Microsoft is worst company than apple in browser till today. Their product Skype doesn't even work on Firefox. And in macos you can easily switch firefox but in win11 good luck.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#230

Post by waterloosong »

zulban wrote: post #193
vrc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article explains it somewhat [1]. Still not much more detail, but more nuance than the Reuters piece. I guess the claim was that they manipulated where bids were placed based on who had the highest bid. So that if a non Google advertiser was going to win the auction, they removed the second highest bid if it was a Google advertiser s.t. the price paid for the slot dropped (second price auction). So in effect, th…

I think you may have missed the mark on "explain like I'm five".

Who wouldn't.

This is a second price auction that we speak of. Every ad company is polled to send no more than two bids. Naturally those would be the two highest bids from thousands that they handle. So let's say that Google first and second bids are G1 and G2, Facebook F1, and F2, some other company C1 and C2 and so on. So if those bids are sorted in descending order it may look like, for example,

  A1 > B1 > A2 > C1 > B2 > C2 > ...
In this example, the ad belonging to A1 gets served, the price is the value of bid B1.

That's why it is called "second price" auction. If it was a first price auction, the A1 advertiser would pay A1 bid price, and could save some money by bidding slightly lower, but still more than B1. Neither of these companies know up-front what the other bid will be, but with a second price auction there is no need for it, the A1 advertiser pays the amount of B1 bid.

Same goes for bids G1 and G2, they don't know what other bids will be. It could end up like this:

  G1 > G2 > C1 > ...
From time to time Google overhauls their AI. Let's say for simplicity that the two highest bids from Google are the same ads, the new bid for G1 is G'1 and the new bid for G2 is G'2. Though it could change who wins the auction, for instance if it ends up like this

  G'2 > G'1 > C1 > ...
or C1 > G'1 > G'2 > ...

Or it could change only what the price is, for example if it ends up like this, the price will lower from G2 to C1

  G'1 > C1 > G'2 > ...
Or if there is some minimum bid value Z required by publisher and it it would be G'1 > C1 > Z > G'2, it would be only G'1 that is passed to the auction. "Google allegedly dropped the second-highest bids from publishers' auctions".

The "inflate only the bids belonging advertisers who used the company's Google Ads" is a mixture of G'1 > G'2 > G2 > ... and G'1 > C1 > G1 > ... and that sort of stuff

There is no accumulating money in a pool, keeping it to spending later on something; there is a need for balancing the two effects above, so that the overhaul won't go overboard either way.

The case of C1 > G'1 > G1 > ... is missing from the Reuters snippet. If it is in the lawsuit, it would end up as "secretly forcing the advertisers who used competing ad network to pay more", I guess

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