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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

#301

Post by emanuele232 »

Aunche wrote: post #167
emanuele232 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

well, not questioning that the market makers are not encouraged to make the market "fair", they wants to make the market "favorable" for its own people but i see a difference between companies that sell luxury goods (not relevant for humanity) and companies that permeates every single aspect of your life, mostly in sublte and sketchy ways, selling data of people that don't even know they generate.

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

#302

Post by cmrdporcupine »

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…

I'm sorry, but Google has already dealt with this issue, and they can deal with it again. Quota is a thing there, and they already have process for billing and managing access to Google resources by entities which are quasi-internal because during the "Alphabet" transition many things that were formerly internal -- such as the e.g. "Access & Energy PA", which became "Access", mostly Fiber ... which I happened to work at the time -- became quasi-external, and they started having to pay Google-proper for Borg usage, etc.

It's not impossible at all for Google to set up process, billing, and data access boundaries. They just naturally have an interest in avoiding this completely. Which is exactly the point -- right now their ads products in particular have way too much insight into both the buy and sell side of the equation, and Google has gone out of its way to dominate the entire ad supply chain using this knowledge.

Forcing an infrastructure separation and an organizational separation for the ads businesses there would do a lot of good for the market as a whole.

And not sure we should care too much about how Google does out of it. They're swimming in ad revenues.

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

#303

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#304

Post by nisegami »

ceejayoz wrote: post #59
nisegami wrote: post #39

As expected, the comments here seem generally in support of such a move. But, it is really unclear to me how such a move would improve my life or the lives of most typical users. Genuinely open to having it explained to me.

> The EU has previously found Google guilty of “systematically favoring” its own shopping comparison service, abusing its Android market dominance by bundling its search engine and Chrome apps, and preventing AdSense customers from accepting advertising from rival search engines. The sites you frequent are more likely to stick around if they have more revenue options, and we all benefit from competition in the search…

>and preventing AdSense customers from accepting advertising from rival search engines

This one makes sense to me and is pretty tangible.

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

#305

Post by golemotron »

bantunes wrote: post #286
golemotron wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll applaud the first large US company that leaves the EU market entirely and makes a claim of non-jurisdiction. It's overdue. In fact, I don't think they have to go that far. Other countries are free to block internet services or sanction their own citizens for using them. It should not follow that placing a service on the web makes you subject to the jurisdiction of anyone who chooses to use it.

Why should it not? If you're providing a service (presumably for profit), shouldn't you be bound by rules other commercial service providers have to follow in that jurisdiction as well? If not, you'd be at a massive advantage.

It's not being provided in that jurisdiction. If you are hosted/domiciled in a country foreign users are entering another jurisdiction when they access the service.

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

#306

Post by trinsic2 »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #297
hef19898 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Un-googling, I found out, is easier than un-Microsofting or un-Facebooking. MS because of Office and FB because of WhatsApp. Writing this from a yet to be un-googled Pixel phone...

Google Maps, YouTube, and gmail (forwarded to my fastmail) are all that I really have, but they're _really_ hard to replace. Apple Maps sucks, there's nothing near as good as YouTube, and I don't want to move hundreds of email accounts off of gmail.

> Apple Maps sucks

Really? I found it more accurate in most cases. I wonder if there is a difference based on location. I am in California. Also maybe years ago it was not as good as Google, maybe it got better since then?

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

#307

Post by hfkwer »

shadowgovt wrote: post #176
hfkwer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Keeping in mind that the law wasn't that when the tech stack was built. It would certainly be a problem for Google to solve, but one should note that legally requiring this of the company would be tantamount to legally requiring Google to shut down (which in the long run would harm user privacy because the company would almost certainly be replaced by an ecosystem of companies that care far less about privacy than Go…

> legally requiring this of the company would be tantamount to legally requiring Google to shut down

What a leap in logic. Care to elaborate? That assertion is insane and the rest of the comment hinges on that.

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

#308

Post by hfkwer »

Spivak wrote: post #247
hfkwer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a reasonable argument why they shouldn't? I'm not sure you're making the point you think you're making.

It's not that they shouldn't but that they won't because every government is skittish to kill their own golden calves. It's easy to penalize foreign companies because it's not your country's income that's affected.

So you're simply partaking in whataboutism? What does this bring to the discussion?

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

#309

Post by [deleted] »

trinsic2 wrote: post #306
shepherdjerred wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps, YouTube, and gmail (forwarded to my fastmail) are all that I really have, but they're _really_ hard to replace. Apple Maps sucks, there's nothing near as good as YouTube, and I don't want to move hundreds of email accounts off of gmail.

> Apple Maps sucks Really? I found it more accurate in most cases. I wonder if there is a difference based on location. I am in California. Also maybe years ago it was not as good as Google, maybe it got better since then?

[deleted]

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

#310

Post by spacebanana7 »

sangnoir wrote: post #289
spacebanana7 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanctions are different from antitrust. With sanctions the US can declare that third parties must choose between doing business with the US and Cuba / ZTE. Because of it's large economy the US would be confident that most of those parties would choose to choose the US over the company / small country. Antitrust enforcement is many ways more difficult than sanctions enforcement because third parties must be compelled…

When it comes down to it - it's the same thing with the EU - they can decree that Google be broken apart or stop doing business in the union. Or pay a massive fine based on global profit or exit the union.

The goal of antitrust is to make markets more competitive.

If Google left the EU entirely there’d be even fewer competitors in the digital ads space. Depending on the segment Google’s market share would likely go to Bing, Facebook or TikTok.

The EU wants to increase the market competition, but frustratingly antitrust enforcement may not be effective and might even go in the opposite direction.

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