The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September • Hacker News Board

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#201

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

RubyRidgeRandy wrote: post #129

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I work (partly) in SEO. One of the main issues that affects search and will get even worse in the future is the post-scarcity environment of the web when it comes to information. Say you had five websites for that each have identical cookie recipes. If you optimize search rankings by click-through rating, eventually all the sites will have similar copy, titles, and page descriptions. If you optimize for bounce rate,…

This expectation that everything can be automatically done by algoryths is the core if the problem. its like a form of insanity, it doesn't work but we keep trying.

Why are top 10 results for 'apply for visa to Moldova' a scam? Is it really impossible to give government officials an ability to provide input for official business, like applying for a passport?

Could you not hire like 2 people in each makor country to keep track of websites for important government services?

Could you not take community input like reddit does, or wikipedia?

seriously sometimes i think the people making the smartest algorythms are tge ones with biggest tonnel vision, and are incapable of examining alternative solutions.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#202

Post by xcdzvyn » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #160

halflings wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the remaining traffic would be all expenses, no profit? Doesn't sound like capitalism anymore then, more of a public service.

Imagine a government creating a search engine as a public service. ... Oh wait, that's actually a great idea and I want to see that happen.

I, personally, am very, _very_ glad my country doesn't oblige me to use a state-sponsored search engine.

Baidu "六四事件"[0] to find out more!

[0] "June Fourth incident", the Chinese name for the Tiananmen square massacre. Other banned search terms include "candle", "never forget", and the numbers 25 and 64.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#203

Post by magicalist » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #144

satvikpendem wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking iMessage on non Apple devices and generally making Apple stuff only work with other Apple stuff, not to mention their 30% fees on their app store while also not allowing other app stores, are all anticompetitive practices, which the EU is well regulating soon.

> Blocking iMessage on non Apple devices iMessage has always worked with any device that supports SMS. Google, on the other hand, actively blocked Windows Phone from having access to Youtube. Even when Microsoft paid to write a Youtube app themselves, Google blocked it. Google did the same thing and blocked Youtube on Amazon's Echo Show.

> iMessage has always worked with any device that supports SMS

youtube has always worked in a web browser.

Meanwhile I'm laughing about how fast Apple would come down on Google if they made their own Android chat that tapped into iMessage and internet commentators tried to justify it by "even when Google paid to write an iMessage app themselves, Apple blocked it"

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#204

Post by huitzitziltzin » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

narism wrote: post #194

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #187

I appreciate the passion Matt Stoller brings to antitrust issues but his analyses are not good on the economics, to say the very least. I agree that some of google’s conduct is very questionable. It’s not obvious to me that paying to be the default search product is pro-competitive. On the other hand, the case that Google is going to make (and which I think is going to be really hard for the government to overcome) i…

>we (google) give our product away for free and so do our competitors. Search is not Google’s product, it’s a way to get their product. Their product is eyeballs which they sell to advertisers. >the cost of switching search engines is literally zero: just type Bing instead of Google. If this is true, why does Google pay Apple billions/year and Mozilla millions/year to make Google the default search? You could be savi…

The government could make antitrust claims regarding google’s behavior vis a vis advertisers. (I’m sympathetic to some claims that could be made there!)

Monopolization of the ad market is not the issue here, because the specific claim is that google has monopolized the search market. You can read that right in the linked article.

Google’s payments to be the default are (as I already said) not obviously pro-competitive to me. I don’t know if you and I disagree there.

But again… in Google’s defense they are going to say (accurately!) “everyone gives search away for free so consumers are free to switch.”

It’s going to be impossible (IMO) to argue that consumers are harmed in the search market. It just won’t be credible.

The department of justice is likely wasting its time, which is similar to the recent behavior of the FTC under Lina Khan which is (if you are American) wasting taxpayers’ time taking on losing cases, while letting mergers which really deserve critical scrutiny through. Microsoft Activision is a prominent recent example.

And if the Justice Department actually does show up in court with a filing that says: “No, your search engine was awesome, but it’s increasingly ad-filled crap. You’re too powerful, you’re too lazy, and America needs some real competition” (this is a direct quote from Stoller’s article) they are going to be laughed out of town and they will richly deserve it.

So again… I like the attention Stoller pays to antitrust issues but his analysis of the economics (especially in the case of some tech firms) is just bad.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#205

Post by huitzitziltzin » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #198

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #187

I appreciate the passion Matt Stoller brings to antitrust issues but his analyses are not good on the economics, to say the very least. I agree that some of google’s conduct is very questionable. It’s not obvious to me that paying to be the default search product is pro-competitive. On the other hand, the case that Google is going to make (and which I think is going to be really hard for the government to overcome) i…

Look, I’m not informed or an expert here, but if it’s being given away for free, then the search itself is not the “product”. The way I understand it, Google’s monopoly is over the ad market. Stoller wrote a book on the subject which I never properly got through in its entirety, but it included a deep dive on what a monopoly is. You are correct - market share is not an anti-trust violation in it’s own. My assumption…

The DoJ is welcome to make a claim on monopolizing the ad market. The case here is about monopolizing the search market.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#206

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

mertd wrote: post #143

siliconc0w wrote: post #54

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 old Internet is dead. There used to be people building web pages just because they are passionate about something. Now any imaginable niche subject is drowned by a deluge of blogspam articles. Interesting people moved behind walled gardens because who is going to bother building a webpage when you can just post a pic or 140 characters on a whim and move on with life.

well building the webpage is easy, but paying hosting and keeping it updated is a side jobby i dont need once I've reached 30 and have kids

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#207

Post by bbor » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #118

hgs3 wrote: post #96

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…

I agree that antitrust is too reactive, especially in tech, but when it hits the real world your proposed solution would just lead to a new Byzantine maze like our current tax code. We'd get a whole new industry built up around helping corporations to technically stay under the thresholds by exploiting loopholes (and another industry for lobbying for those loopholes to be expanded).

This could be used as a criticism of literally any law of any kind.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#208

Post by salawat » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

RubyRidgeRandy wrote: post #129

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I work (partly) in SEO. One of the main issues that affects search and will get even worse in the future is the post-scarcity environment of the web when it comes to information. Say you had five websites for that each have identical cookie recipes. If you optimize search rankings by click-through rating, eventually all the sites will have similar copy, titles, and page descriptions. If you optimize for bounce rate,…

You could stop working in SEO and just design shit to be responsive to typical boolean search like Tim intended. But dear God, people might be able to find things then, and where would you fork in the distracting cruft?

The problem never was or will be Search. The problem is advertisers hijacking the verb of "Search" to weight it for those willing to pay.

Librarians and archivists have had search solved for the last century. The only people who have a problem with that implementation are the ones who want to convince you the answer you're looking for is them.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#209

Post by littlestymaar » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #156

littlestymaar wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia having a higher turnover than Mozilla from contribution alone is a counter-example. And if Google is being split, then Chrome will also need to find a monetization strategy, opening the perspective for Mozilla.

The bar to contribute to a software project of any size is many times higher than the bar to contribute to Wikipedia. If you were speaking monetarily, Wikipedia has a gargantuan user count and good will to match, where Mozilla has spent the last few years squandering both of those.

I'm not talking about code contribution here, but about money. Wikipedia raises every year from donation more than what Mozilla gets from its pact with the devil.

I agree with you though that Mozilla has spent most of its good will, and that a donation-based model would have been much easier to pull-off a few years back than it is now.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#210

Post by bbor » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #200

hgs3 wrote: post #96

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…

Yeah and other countries won't follow suit. Congrats, you yield all the economics of scale to China. What now? "Export" the US's domestic laws to other countries like it always does?

We would be more efficient if we made the work week 80 hours minimum, at the small cost of people's happiness! China would stand no chance.

In case I'm unclear, I feel that not keeping our economy diverse and fair because China might make more stuff than us if we do is very misguided.