121–130 of 351 posts
Won't this kill Firefox if Google gets told it cant pay browsers to put it as default? That would suck.
It would kill the Mozilla Corporation in its current form and hopefully get us Baker's head (as least metaphorically if nothing else) but it will not necessarily be the end of the browser itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a model anywhere for this having been tried, successfully or otherwise? The obvious hesitation I have is just that some companies really do benefit from a lot of vertical integration. Could Apple be Apple if they were forced to spin off the phone business, or the chip design house, or the OS? What would it mean for the startup ecosystem if getting bought by a conglomerate was a less plausible exit? How would…
Should Apple exist in it's current form? If it weren't, the things that are integrated become available for others - meaning better products for all, no? What's the societal benefit of integrating all these advances in single companies?
TLDR: it’s complex, but successful vertical businesses have fairly different products, efficiencies, and outcomes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a model anywhere for this having been tried, successfully or otherwise? The obvious hesitation I have is just that some companies really do benefit from a lot of vertical integration. Could Apple be Apple if they were forced to spin off the phone business, or the chip design house, or the OS? What would it mean for the startup ecosystem if getting bought by a conglomerate was a less plausible exit? How would…
Should Apple exist in it's current form? If it weren't, the things that are integrated become available for others - meaning better products for all, no? What's the societal benefit of integrating all these advances in single companies?
I think Apple’s long term privacy and e2ee pushes and googles recent attempts at the same would not exist across a pile of medium sized companies. iCloud Photos leaking would continue to be a thing.
Antitrust laws are too reactive. We need proactive laws that break up companies if they grow beyond a certain size criteria. Ideally, the criteria would be aggressive enough to kill large corporations leaving behind only small to medium-sized businesses. The result would be markets with increased competition, more innovation, lower prices, more options for employment and self-employment, and the elimination of Big Co…
Is there a model anywhere for this having been tried, successfully or otherwise? The obvious hesitation I have is just that some companies really do benefit from a lot of vertical integration. Could Apple be Apple if they were forced to spin off the phone business, or the chip design house, or the OS? What would it mean for the startup ecosystem if getting bought by a conglomerate was a less plausible exit? How would…
I guess going public would be the move realistically. I would prefer to see a shift toward startups aiming for solvency though, which I believe would make better companies. Companies that fit a role in society better. Free market capitalism isn't really happening if consumers aren't paying for anything and the money rains in from the VC heavens instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should Apple exist in it's current form? If it weren't, the things that are integrated become available for others - meaning better products for all, no? What's the societal benefit of integrating all these advances in single companies?
Not so much because then, for example, you become Qualcomm and have 50 different customers all asking for different things from your chips and you reach a local optimum where you solve everyone’s issue a little bit but don’t actually do a good job. There’s a reason that Apple’s chips are so much better in terms of performance and energy efficiency. Similarly, it’s why Apple did the W1 first and it took a very long ti…
My first thought is that the "apple Qualcomm" that would come out would have incentives to make better chips without needing to also sell phones (competing with other chip manufacturers) but I can understand that the chip industry is very costly and risky, I can see how without integration they can't compete with any current player - too expensive and risky.
So, what are the demands in this trial? Do they want to divide google? How?
> VIII. REQUEST FOR RELIEF
> To remedy these illegal acts, Plaintiffs request that the Court:
> a. Adjudge and decree that Google acted unlawfully to maintain general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising monopolies in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2;
> b. Enter structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm;
> c. Enjoin Google from continuing to engage in the anticompetitive practices described herein and from engaging in any other practices with the same purpose and effect as the challenged practices;
> d. Enter any other preliminary or permanent relief necessary and appropriate to restore competitive conditions in the markets affected by Google’s unlawful conduct;
> e. Enter any additional relief the Court finds just and proper; and
> f. Award each Plaintiff an amount equal to its costs incurred in bringing this action on behalf of its citizens.
So basically just banning whatever anti-competative behaviour the court finds and fining Google a bunch.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/d9/press-releases/attachments/2020/1...
It's hard to tell if it's Google's dominance causing search to suck or just the web ecosystem naturally optimizing for clicks. I will say most queries with even vaguely commercial intent do seem to get the max or nearly a full page of sponsored links. I don't recall what it was like years ago but I'm pretty sure it is worse. I also think it's pretty clear the platform take-rate needs to be generally lowered across th…
Google has a conflict of interest here: on the one hand their users need information, but on the other Google is the primary vendor of advertisements on these garbage clickbait sites. It would not surprise me if Google intentionally upweighted results that have their ads in them, and they certainly are not downweighting them the way Kagi does.
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Google has 95% of search market, but none of the other examples have 95% of anything. What are Amazon, Apple, Microsoft’s monopolies? They all have substantial competitors across their various verticals. Amazon: Walmart (goods), Netflix (media) Microsoft: Apple (OS), Google, Amazon (enterprise compute) Apple: Microsoft (O, services), Samsung (mobile), Google (mobile, services), Netflix (media)
Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop OS and Office software markets. It’s impossible to come up with a reasonable definition of monopoly that doesn’t include them in those markets.
Their market has been shrinking due to the rise of tablets and smartphones (so a majority of the population doesn't need PCs at home beyond certain professionals, gamers and hobbyists)
They do have a large business market share, but that is also shrinking as many "modern" businesses diversify with Apple computers due to employees growing up with them.
Depending on stats, it has fallen from 90% to 75% in a decade and will most likely continue to fall. This is part of the business case for Microsoft to make their software work cross-platform in order to diversify.
Otherwise their position is a natural monopoly. Companies opted to all use Windows because there are certain economies of scale that occur when you all standardize on the same software, including, and this is the biggest one, your employees not needing to relearn whatever ridiculous snowflake UI scheme came up by each different linux distro. It's why Windows and macOS will continue to remain dominant in the PC space.
The same goes for Office 365. Sure there are certain elements of it that are a bit _too pushy. But companies buy into it because it's one standardized and integrated system. Going elsewhere has overhead of increased training costs for end users and even the IT admin side.
It's hard to tell if it's Google's dominance causing search to suck or just the web ecosystem naturally optimizing for clicks. I will say most queries with even vaguely commercial intent do seem to get the max or nearly a full page of sponsored links. I don't recall what it was like years ago but I'm pretty sure it is worse. I also think it's pretty clear the platform take-rate needs to be generally lowered across th…
The problem here is authority. What makes you an authority on a subject? Books written? Credentials (diploma?)? References? These things aren't all true in real life, and on the internet it's even easier to fake all of that. In the beginning Google went by 'amount of text' (which is why you read everybody's life story on how they had sex next to a magma flow in Hawaii which created the idea of doing burnt ends on a p…
Now instead of 5 sites with identical recipes, what about 500? 5,000? 5,000,000? How can you even rank them in a meaningful way and does it matter to the end user?
There will be too much of a supply of information, especially when ai ramps up, that no one website will have unique value outside of local significance or if it was made by your mom or someone you like. I think it will be crazy to see what the web looks like 10 years from now. It could be vastly different.
This can be done for search as well which makes sure at least 4 players stay in the market at all times. Why isn't US govt doing this?
1. https://www.indiatimes.com/worth/news/upi-apps-may-soon-have...