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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

#161

Post by vasachi »

aurareturn wrote: post #142
Mistletoe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Holy cow. People are comparing Google to crypto exchanges now. Blockchains are public, yes. But the entities behind them are completely and utterly cryptic and centralized. Most of them operate out of Cayman Islands/Bahamas, etc. Comparing Google to crypto exchanges is insane.

Well, yeah. At least I can read the smart contract and audit transactions on the blockchain, if we are talking about decentralized exchanges. Google is faaaaaaaaaar less transparent. As in, not transparent at all.

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

#162

Post by _vere »

aurareturn wrote: post #57
_vere wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing a giant supercorperation to exist is generally not in the interest of the public. Google has been using the incomparable amount of money they have in many ways that do not serve the interests of anyone but themselves. Allowing one company to own the most visited websites, the most used browser, the most used advertising tools + marketplace, half of the mobile market and much more has not really brought us a…

You can say the same about LVMH in the luxury goods market. I don't see Europe trying to break up one of their own companies.

The luxury goods market is not infrastructure. Not to say they shouldn't be broken up, but google is owning the roads you drive on, your car, everyone else's car and every parking space. The scale of the issue is just MUCH worse. Its not good that if you want the expensive child labor clothes, you have little choice but to buy from LVMH, but like, you can get other clothes. If you want to rid yourself of googles influence in your life, you have to abandon basically every tech item you own and live in the woods.

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

#163

Post by delfinom »

gumballindie wrote: post #77

And microsoft is walking scot free. They can happily control operating systems, office tools, a slice of search, ides, ads within their os, are allowed to buy large game makers and soon ai. As a bare minimum they should be forced greater compatibility with running their software on linux and ideally be banned from doing ads, ai and gamedev.

>are allowed to buy large game makers

Didn't get the memo that both the UK and now US are blocking the Activision purchase?

>As a bare minimum they should be forced greater compatibility with running their software on linux

They do where it makes sense? PWA seems to be the main route they are taking, Office is slowly being migrated to PWA, Outlook is the first application being converted and is already available for testing by end users on Windows for now. It's sad because it's losing native functionality in exchange for PWA :(

Otherwise native desktop apps are already a difficult endeavor for anyone, Linux is an absolute fucking nightmare when it comes to packaging for everyone's NIH distro and I say that as a maintainer of a popular OSS package ;)

>ads within their os

The "ads" within their OS are only for upselling their own products. They are hardly ads and both Apple, Google and every other company does it. But somehow it's a problem if Microsoft throws a banner telling you trying OneDrive.

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

#164

Post by t0mas88 »

aurareturn wrote: post #142
Mistletoe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Holy cow. People are comparing Google to crypto exchanges now. Blockchains are public, yes. But the entities behind them are completely and utterly cryptic and centralized. Most of them operate out of Cayman Islands/Bahamas, etc. Comparing Google to crypto exchanges is insane.

Google the company is less shady than most crypto companies, but Google's market place for ads is a lot more shady than crypto exchanges.

Not only is Google on each side of the trade, there is also zero transparency to other participants and it has been proven in this lawsuit that Google is using back doors in their exchange to give their own tools (DoubleClick / Google DV360) access to data that other market participants don't have.

Frankly, their ad marketplace is a lot worse than even the shadiest crypto marketplaces.

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

#166

Post by aurareturn »

vasachi wrote: post #161
aurareturn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow. People are comparing Google to crypto exchanges now. Blockchains are public, yes. But the entities behind them are completely and utterly cryptic and centralized. Most of them operate out of Cayman Islands/Bahamas, etc. Comparing Google to crypto exchanges is insane.

Well, yeah. At least I can read the smart contract and audit transactions on the blockchain, if we are talking about decentralized exchanges. Google is faaaaaaaaaar less transparent. As in, not transparent at all.

Yes, being able to read smart contracts and audit transactions on the blockchain is how everyone knew FTX stealing customer funds from years ago. Oh wait.

There are a huge number of ways crypto exchanges pull of scams without anyone noticing including straight up transferring customer funds to their own accounts, wash trading, trading against their own customers, having timely "maintenance" that lead to automatic liquidations, listing securities, taking bribes to list and promote a shitcoin, and the list goes on and on.

FTX drained $8 billion of customer funds over its lifetime without anyone noticing on chain until its sudden collapse.

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

#167

Post by Aunche »

emanuele232 wrote: post #104
senttoschool wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. Europe creates a high amount of regulation. The startup industry gets completely stifled and unable to compete with US nor China. So all they do now is add more regulation.

profit is the most important thing in history ?

You'd think as such if you're observing the EU. They happily encourage monopolies that they profit from like LVMH and Luxottica.

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

#168

Post by hfkwer »

shadowgovt wrote: post #145
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The split Google "Services" part can still contract other ad networks for revenue, including AdSense if competitive. They just won't be able to bundle.

I think people underestimate how deeply intertwined Google's services and apps are. I don't think a split off "Google Services" could survive. Google's fabric is designed to run Google's apps and vice versa. You can't just cram some other company's software into Google's core fabric and you can't just run AdSense on someone else's cloud. ETA : this is partially because of historical accretion and path dependence, but…

That sounds like a problem for Google to solve, not the public. "We setup our business so that it's too difficult to comply with the law" isn't an excuse in any context.

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

#169

Post by Detrytus »

bee_rider wrote: post #93
Detrytus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and that's how you get Ireland's GDP per capita artificially inflated to $114k, when in reality it should be maybe a third of that...

Eh, we can’t really complain. The international capitalist system owes Ireland a bit more; its predecessor, colonialism, screwed Ireland over for generations.

But the point is that Ireland does not really benefit from this money - it is only an accounting trick. Google funnels money through Ireland, but does not employ many people in Ireland, and does not pay much taxes there. In the end, the living standard of typical Irishman is closer to countries with $40-45k GDP, such as Italy or France, than to countries with $100k GDP, such as Norway or Switzerland.

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

#170

Post by Yujf »

aurareturn wrote: post #119
piaste wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that LVMH-type products are irrelevant to 98% of the population, and have a highly questionable impact to the top 2%. De Beers had an iconic monopoly on diamonds for over a century, but as far as I know the only time a major government really went after them was for colluding over industrial diamonds, which are actually important. Ensuring that jewelry diamonds and checkered handbags are available a…

I knew it someone would reply by saying Google's industry is somehow more important so Europe should regulate them but ignore their own monopolies.

The commenter explains why that is and instead of reacting to his argument you are implying that it is just Europens who want to regulzte Americans while it is clearly not the case.

Not every monopoly is created equal and if you can not acknowledge that you are not arguing in good faith.

Edit: also I am looking into De Beers a bit more and it seems the EU has made steps to improve competition in the past.

Also if you want to argue that LVMH is a monopoly and that it has a bad impact, go ahead. I just think that since this is HN it is natural that most people do not feel the impact and do not really care. I do not know exactly how monopolistic they are and what the bad impact of that is but feel free to enlighten me.

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