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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

#251

Post by freeflight »

joshuamorton wrote: post #234
freeflight wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Google has all the "checks&balances" in place, and corporate managed to turn them into a flawless and perfect system? And the source for that claim is not even a Google engineer, but apparently somebody who heard how Google engineers are "notoriously loose-lipped". From which loose-lipped Google engineer did you get that information about "needing approval", "breaking glass" and "audits"? > The only way I would be…

[I work at Google] Your first link explains how Google doesn't actually give your data to anyone else. Your second link is about a company that Google Ventures invested in. The equivalent would be that some company claims a YC-backed startup stole some of their IP, and that somehow YC is at fault, which is silly. Google isn't even a party to the lawsuit (further, it's not clear that the company who sued even won and…

> Your first link explains how Google doesn't actually give your data to anyone else.

Nobody said Google "gives data away", the article explains how Google monetizes the data.

> Access Approvals allows a cloud customer to prevent Google from accessing their data without approval from the company

All Access Approval does is prevent individual Google employees from accessing the data, which is not the same as "Google as a whole". It also seems to have a long list of Google services were it does not apply as no AT logs are created or other exceptions apply.

And while that might be nice, it's neither special, nor does it change the nature of Google's business, it's just virtue signaling and building plausible deniability along the lines of "We really do care about privacy! At least in as so far as we don't want to get regulated!"

You know, just like claiming how Google "doesn't give data away", when in reality it very much sells all the useful insights, said data gives, to the highest bidder.

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

#252

Post by VRay »

extropy wrote: post #207
judge2020 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most businesses on Google Workspace don’t see the US government as an adversary. If they do, they encrypt things or don’t use Workspace.

This. If US government on your things to worry about list, you host in Russia Cloud or China Cloud. Or roll your own data center in some non US allied country.

The whole point of the thread is that a shady executive could use the same backdoor processes to get whatever he wants in an untraceable fashion, the same way that our trustworthy and noble government does

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

#253

Post by charcircuit »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #250
charcircuit wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it's not an option for 99.999% of app makers and it would be bad for consumers. Then you will just have to live with being disadvantaged to a platform's creator when competing on their platform. They have the home field advantage. >No. It's more than just useless. It is a great demonstration of how every ideology becomes insanity if you take it to its extremes. You are the one making it extreme. If you think the…

Ah so now you have changed your position from "it's competitive" to "it's not competitive but it doesn't matter". But you're wrong about me just having to live with being disadvantaged. Apple is built on top of a platform as well. It's called society. And society makes some rules that govern what advantages platform operators like Apple can enjoy as a benefit of having created a successful platform and what advantage…

>Ah so now you have changed your position from "it's competitive" to "it's not competitive but it doesn't matter".

I never did that. Take for example the capture the flag game made. Some parts of maps are stronger for one team than the other. That doesn't mean the game is not competitive it just means that it is something you need to take in mind. What I described is a spot on the map where Apple has an advantage.

>But you're wrong about me just having to live with being disadvantaged. Apple is built on top of a platform as well. It's called society.

Sure, but it's with existing base ideas like freedom of association Apple can just not work with Netflix at all.

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

#254

Post by salawat »

philjohn wrote: post #137
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upholding the law? Having a functioning market and economy perhaps? It's the government's job to regulate the market. Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out competition is illegal.

There seems to be other equally pressing market capture targets to go after - Sinclair broadcasting being one example. It seems interesting that "Old Media" is coming off unscathed and the ire is all directed at "New Media".

At least in my case I've had an interest in deconglomerating Old Media for a while. When you start finding out how more than half of the work journalists do gets thrown into the can for content/narrative/audience engineering purposes, it's time to reevaluate the incentives of the folks running the presses.

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

#255

Post by [deleted] »

freeflight wrote: post #251
joshuamorton wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[I work at Google] Your first link explains how Google doesn't actually give your data to anyone else. Your second link is about a company that Google Ventures invested in. The equivalent would be that some company claims a YC-backed startup stole some of their IP, and that somehow YC is at fault, which is silly. Google isn't even a party to the lawsuit (further, it's not clear that the company who sued even won and…

> Your first link explains how Google doesn't actually give your data to anyone else. Nobody said Google "gives data away", the article explains how Google monetizes the data. > Access Approvals allows a cloud customer to prevent Google from accessing their data without approval from the company All Access Approval does is prevent individual Google employees from accessing the data, which is not the same as "Google a…

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by mabbo »

niyikiza wrote: post #249
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…

>>a single company cannot be trusted to operate a marketplace while also being a participant. Like the government?

The government is not a company, and does not have an overall goal of maximizing profit. That's what makes it different.

If the government is not meeting the demands of the people, we elect a different one (in theory).

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

#257

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

endisneigh wrote: post #240
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of online revenue does Walmart make? How much does Amazon make?

7% vs 40%. Definitely a huge difference, but the majority of commerce in the USA is non-Amazon. If you do worldwide it's way worse. in no way is it a "monopoly." If you look at growth rates Amazon is slowing and others are gaining not to mention the comparison is foolish to begin with as Amazon doesn't have physical locations. a better comparison is total amount of sales, in which Amazon isn't even the plurality.

You're moving the goalposts. I only meant to highlight that Amazon has no real equal online and that is it. I'm not talking about physical stores and I'm not saying they're a monopoly.

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

#258

Post by endisneigh »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #257
endisneigh wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7% vs 40%. Definitely a huge difference, but the majority of commerce in the USA is non-Amazon. If you do worldwide it's way worse. in no way is it a "monopoly." If you look at growth rates Amazon is slowing and others are gaining not to mention the comparison is foolish to begin with as Amazon doesn't have physical locations. a better comparison is total amount of sales, in which Amazon isn't even the plurality.

You're moving the goalposts. I only meant to highlight that Amazon has no real equal online and that is it. I'm not talking about physical stores and I'm not saying they're a monopoly.

No, I’m not. I already showed you that Amazon isn’t the majority in the USA. Prior to Covid, when everything was shut down, Amazon was only like 20ish percent.

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

#259

Post by mancerayder »

rapnie wrote: post #102
winternett wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just think about all the development and financial data and ideas that google has a direct untraceable back door into through running gmail, android phones, and chrome browser alone... I have resorted to using an old school notepad for my development ideas pretty much. A software company I used to work for got shuttered just 3 months after a big software company paid the startup a visit to observe operations back in…

It always completely astounded me how countless professional businesses are casually and mindlessly handing over their most private internal communication and metrics to Google on a platter. And aren't Google's privacy policies and ToS's stating that all collected information can be used to "improve their own services" or something along those lines? Does that include 'extract business advantage' from your data? I do…

Infosec teams that are competent tend to push back on that.

If there's no infosec and it's just infra and developers and CTO's signing contracts with vendors, even Google, you have an issue.

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

#260

Post by diggan »

dlubarov wrote: post #217
diggan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, reminds me when Google purposefully blocked Firefox from accessing Inbox. Changing the user-agent revealed that they did that for no other purpose than "performance wasn't what we wanted" while the application worked fine as it was, proved by just changing the user-agent. They also let people use other applications that are slow in Firefox, like Google Photos, but somehow Inbox was different. Gist: https://gist…

If you believe Google blocked Firefox for competitive reasons, how would you explain - The Google engineer's explanation ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498 ) - do you think he was just plain lying? - The Firefox performance bug he mentioned ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963 ). Do you think Google engineers went out of their way to search for new performance bugs in Firefox, then figur…

I believe that once you've decided to be able to justify something, you can come up with loads of reason that justifies that course of action.
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