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EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

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Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#131

Post by aurareturn »

tpm wrote: post #69
Fyrezerk wrote: post #10

These rulings for a company of Google's stature/importance are always funny to me. How quickly would public opinion change if Google decided to just shut off their service in the EU for a day? Monopolistic breakups that serve the public's best interest are one thing. But how many people actually care that Google might represent a monopoly? Does it actually affect people negatively if the result is a positive online u…

The quality of google's search results going downhill is for me one of the signs that (as all monopols eventually) at some point they stop being a net positive for the society. > The world runs on Google Until it doesn't. No individual and no company is indispensable.

>Until it doesn't. No individual and no company is indispensable.

Agreed. That's why another company or multiple companies will outcompete Google. I don't see a reason Europe needs to break Google up.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#132

Post by master-lincoln »

pb7 wrote: post #60
holoduke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see Google leaving Europe. I bet within a few weeks proper maybe even better replacements appear in Europe. Maybe even one of mine :) Google is an ad company. None of its services are critical to maintain a stable society. I would even argue that Europe would be better of without the American tech giants.

Europe would return to the dark ages if all American tech companies pulled out overnight. But it is a humorous thought that the only way there can be European alternatives is if there are no American companies to compete against. What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation? >None of its services are critical to maintain a stable society. Except Android, Maps, Search, Gmail, YouTub…

>What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation?

Maybe governments that act in the interest of the population? Predatory capitalism isn't regarded as highly in Europe.

>Except Android, Maps, Search, Gmail, YouTube, Docs...

Android is open source. Maps, Search, Gmail and Docs have competitors that are already being used. Not sure if Youtube is necessary to maintain a stable society...

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#133

Post by shadowgovt »

donatj wrote: post #28
flexie wrote: post #2

Before anyone makes the argument that the EU should have no jurisdiction over an American entity, please remember that Google sells its services in Europe. It's well within the jurisdiction of the EU to regulate how anyone does business here. Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legisl…

> breaking up of monopolies What’s the monopoly here? There are tons of successful ad companies.

You've hit the nail on the head regarding the difference between the EU concept of antitrust and the American one.

EU antitrust law is grounded in harm to companies. If there are many companies, but one has sewn up the market so strongly that others can't really have a chance to prosper, the EU will step in.

American antitrust law is grounded in harm to consumers. The US regulators won't go after a successful ad company because other ad companies say it's too hard to compete with them; it'll go after them if consumers say "We don't have any choice but to do business with X, and X's prices are too high / X is too exclusive / X is only doing business with us in market sector A if we agree to use them also for market sector B."

That additional bar to regulation means the EU may very well have cause to act before the US does if Google is big enough to muscle around other ad agencies and set the terms by which they can exist, even if they do exist.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#134

Post by delfinom »

gylterud wrote: post #67
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that company breakups should happen automatically when they reach 1% of the country's GDP. There are lots of ways companies could avoid having the government decide how to break them up such as issuing dividends instead of hording cash, spinning off non-core businesses, setting up independent IP companies that would license back IP to the core company (and as an indpendent company, be required to li…

How about an automatic nationalisation in stead? Where you take companies which have grown too big out of the private ownership’s hands.

Too dangerous unless it's a service that should be a vital government service.

You do not want your government to basically have a permanent monopoly on everything. This just gives power to authoritarian to rise.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#135

Post by pb7 »

hnbad wrote: post #116
pb7 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe would return to the dark ages if all American tech companies pulled out overnight. But it is a humorous thought that the only way there can be European alternatives is if there are no American companies to compete against. What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation? >None of its services are critical to maintain a stable society. Except Android, Maps, Search, Gmail, YouTub…

> What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation? The US barely produces enough illegal drugs for its own market. If all illegal drug manufacturers cut off the supply lines to the US, the illegal drug trade in the US would tank overnight. What is it about the US that puts it so far behind South American countries in innovation?

You're comparing your populace to drug addicts? Ok then.

Producing (recreational) drugs isn't innovation. Drugs don't improve your daily life. Absence of them doesn't make life resemble that of the 1900s. They don't increase productivity allowing you to achieve more with your life. And most importantly, the number of people consuming recreational drugs from SA is a rounding error. Every single person in Europe consumes some type of software created by American companies, directly or indirectly.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#136

Post by Mistletoe »

samwillis wrote: post #120

Google operates an exchange for a digital asset, is a major vendor/trader of said asset on that exchange and operates an algorithmic trading platform to enable people to buy and sell on that exchange. On top of that the algorithmic trades are a "black box" with no audit trail, and no public insight into how it operates. If that sounds familiar, think illegal crypto exchanges... Obviously "ads" are not "securities", b…

Crypto is much more transparent than Google Ads due to the fact that most of them at least have a public blockchain. Is there any way to know if Google Ads purchasing isn’t a giant Ponzi of ads? Is there any way to verify they aren’t bidding up the auctions and that any of it is based on reality and competition at all?

Crypto also has price discovery through shorting and selling. How would one short a Google Ad or sell one in their marketplace? There’s only one supplier and it’s “trust me bro” for the price discovery. I think it will be very funny if the past decade or so was not only based on a foundation of sand caused by zero interest rates, but also an ad ponzi from the tech giants. We sent our best and brightest not to the moon or to cure cancer, but to find new ways to keep that ad ponzi going.

https://www.adexchanger.com/commerce/meet-performance-max-th...

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#137

Post by Longhanks »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #103
flexie wrote: post #2

Before anyone makes the argument that the EU should have no jurisdiction over an American entity, please remember that Google sells its services in Europe. It's well within the jurisdiction of the EU to regulate how anyone does business here. Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legisl…

There are real questions about how much authority the EU has over an American entity. Can the EU only regulate activities in the EU or does it have global jurisdiction? On one hand, if Google simply restructured, spun off or sold its EU ad business the competitive landscape wouldn't change that much. I'm not sure whether a new European competitor could ever become a peer to Google if it could only compete in the EU m…

What makes you think the EU would have the slightest jurisdiction at all over any entity outside of its member states?

The only reason they speak about Google is because Google does business in the EU.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#138

Post by jefftk »

pmoriarty wrote: post #91
wongarsu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU already made multiple attempts to get that under control, notably first with the Cookie Law and later with GDPR. The problem is that those have mechanism that allow the user to accept tracking, and Google does its best to get website owners to make their user agree by any means nessesary. In analytics there's some competition, and I can run self-hosted cookieless Maomo or plausibly.io if I want to get actionab…

Cookies have not been necessary for user tracking for decades. Browser fingerprinting and countless other techniques can and are being used as well. The outrage over cookies is quaint, and only demonstrates that people who freak out over them don't understand modern tracking technology at all.

> Browser fingerprinting and countless other techniques can and are being used as well.

Those work, but Google has publicly committed not to use them for ad targeting. Hence all their work on privacy sandbox (attempting to preserve as much of the economic effects of cross-site tracking while fixing the privacy leak).

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#139

Post by donatj »

tremon wrote: post #128
donatj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's rampant tracking and hoarding of information, both of which have had very real negative real world consequences Namely? I can’t imagine any real world consequences that aren’t positives? I am better served for my preferences?

There's very little need to imagine anything. Does e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36300410 sound like a positive consequence to you?

The government is already listening to all your phone calls and reading all your text messages. There's likely very little in there they don't already have.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#140

Post by jefftk »

endisneigh wrote: post #99

break every company up! Each "bet" in Alphabet needs to be broken. Each business unit within Google needs to be broken. Same with Apple. Break that up to between services and hardware. Force them to open up their new silicon. Why can't other companies use the H1 or H2 chips for their headphones? why are we letting Apple have the competitive advantage? Open up the App Store and force new payment methods. Microsoft als…

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, fyi
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