In my opinion the main reason the Soviet economy collapsed (apart from outside pressure), was the state owned sector wide monopolies.
It is also in the webs own nature to nurture monopolies for two seemingly contradictory reasons:
1.) Switching to a competitor is just a few clicks away. Moving everyone to the one that provides the most for free (dumping laws ignored as per usual).
2.) Switching to a competitor is hard, because all my social contacts use :thisService:. (now that the competition is dead, you turn the screw on the user: enact subscriptions, censor information, selling of private data, increase ad noise, etc.).
Not breaking up monopolies will inevitably lead to the same result - people will be exploited to the point of real harm and will eventually revolt.
EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
191–200 of 361 posts
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, fyi
its obviously sarcastic. some people have "forgotten" what healthy competition and competent regulation of markets means.
Any companies that aren't Apple or Microsoft that compete with Google do not have healthy competition at all. What are you talking about?
Google uses www.google.com, the most popular website in the world, to push Chrome. Chrome, the most popular browser in the world, uses www.google.com as the default search engine. Google controls the largest ad marketplace and analytics tool, so they use Chrome to harm the ad landscape to stifle ad-tech competitors (third party cookies) and completely hinder the development of ad blocking software (FLoC and web bundles). Google uses Android, the most popular mobile operating system in the world, to push Google services and has Chrome as the default browser.
Anti-trust regulation must step in when a company uses its market dominance in one area to gain an advantage in another. Here, we have an entire feedback loop. We haven't had competent regulation of markets since the early 1900s.
Google needs to divest Doubleclick and Chrome. This is completely untenable.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and that's great. They don't want surveillance Capitalism.
99% of the people don't care. That's why there are 2.1 billion people on Facebook. Without surveillance capitalism, prices for services would go up or would cease to be free. The ad-driven business model is a legitimate one. I assume that you use a free service from Google/Facebook/Microsoft? So you must not care about surveillance capitalism either. At least not care enough.
Maybe businesses without a legitimate business model shouldn’t be in business?
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and that's great. They don't want surveillance Capitalism.
99% of the people don't care. That's why there are 2.1 billion people on Facebook. Without surveillance capitalism, prices for services would go up or would cease to be free. The ad-driven business model is a legitimate one. I assume that you use a free service from Google/Facebook/Microsoft? So you must not care about surveillance capitalism either. At least not care enough.
I'd be happy to pay 250€ a year for an OS that I actually own and control. I'd be happy to also pay that amount to browse without being spied on. I'm actually worth less as a target for advertisement. These products not existing is just a failure of the market and maybe of our education, which is why it is important for governments to step in at that point.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 liq…
> Yes, being able to read smart contracts and audit transactions on the blockchain is how everyone knew FTX stealing customer funds from years ago.
Yes in fact! Anyone who looked into it knew. Maybe Wall Street and VCs were duped, but the crypto industry itself saw the train wreck coming from a mile away and distanced themselves from the start. That's why when the inevitable happened, the mainstream were pumping out articles about FTX disproportionately to its importance -- they were the ones that got played.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/the-collapse-of-ftx-was...
https://twitter.com/BitcoinIsSaving/status/15396053464692531...
> There are a huge number of ways crypto exchanges pull of scams
There are a huge number of ways Google pulls off scams too. That's what this entire thread is about and the reason for the European Commission's complaint. Hence the comparison.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What is the metric you're using to measure how important an industry is?
To some people, Google is more important. To others, LVHM is more important.
There are a ton of people who depend on the luxury goods industry. LVHM itself is a $500 billion company.
I know plenty of people who go crazy for luxury handbags, clothing, jewelry but could careless about which search engine to use.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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).
"Google has publicly committed not to use them for ad targeting" 1 - Why would I trust anything Google says? 2 - What else could they use that information for apart from ad targeting that they're not telling us about?
1: Publicly saying one thing and then turning out to have been doing something different when someone blows the whistle or it comes out in a lawsuit would be far more damaging to them than just not making the commitment. (Also, I worked at Google until a little over a year ago and if we'd been using fingerprinting for ad targeting I would have seen it.)
2: Detecting fraud and abuse, which is generally interpreted as not requiring consent under the GDPR (though I think that may not be correct: https://www.jefftk.com/p/can-ads-be-gdpr-compliant).
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#198Earlier 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.
I don't think the GDPR is specifically about cookies, is it?
Any form of user tracking without opt in is not permitted.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#199>EU is “concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack.” There are plenty of competitors in the ad tech space. China created TikTok. Korea created KaoKaoTalk. Even Japan created Line. Meanwhile, the EU, for all it's antitrust regulation, hasn't created anything substantial. Perhaps, it's the burdensome regulation that's the problem.
EU is repeatedly shooting itself in the foot. Same old story.
So, you are saying, the most advanced tech out there, the on the EU wont have, is ad tech? Well, I don't really see the problem with that.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 liq…
> Yes, being able to read smart contracts and audit transactions on the blockchain is how everyone knew FTX stealing customer funds from years ago. Yes in fact! Anyone who looked into it knew. Maybe Wall Street and VCs were duped, but the crypto industry itself saw the train wreck coming from a mile away and distanced themselves from the start. That's why when the inevitable happened, the mainstream were pumping out…
That's a load of revisionist history.
FTX's schemes were only exposed AFTER they couldn't handle withdrawals.
Anyone who follows crypto closely knows that every crypto exchange is crooked. Even crypto bros will tell you that. I can say that Binance is shady and likely stealing from their customers and I'll more likely to be correct than not. Saying FTX was shady before they were exposed was not a bold statement.