Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#61

Post by newsclues » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #53

newsclues wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard oil lacks the ability to shape the narrative that google has. If standard oil had control of the information space history would be very different. Not even Ma Bell had the power that google has

You couldn't even own a phone under Ma Bell. Meanwhile just about every product Google has I can use someone else.

Ma Bell didn’t have the power to cut off advertising revenue to YouTubers who say things the company does like, nor the power to shape the global access to information with search, nor did they scan people’s communications

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#62

Post by throwadobe » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #59

bearjaws wrote: post #30

If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. We either start ripping this band-aids off or we will just continually have a worse and worse internet.

It appears to me that your two paragraphs contradict each other. If we break up Google and what comes afterwards is worse, then break it up or we'll get worse? Is it worse if we do and worse if we don't? Which "worse" is worse? Or do I misunderstand your point? The whole point of breaking up monopolies is not moral principle. It's so that things get better for customers. If they don't, then what's the justification f…

Immediately worse vs. worse long term.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#63

Post by jsheard » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #46

fny wrote: post #31

I'm very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved "uniform" businesses: - American Tobacco: Commodity - Standard Oil: Commodity - AT&T: Utility - Northern Securities: Railroads - Swift & Co: Meatpacking - Kodak: Film - Paramount: Movie Theaters Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective do…

One of the potential remedies is to require Google to open source their crawling data. This should make it easier for others who want to build a competing search engine.

Surely the crawling is the easiest part? The AI goldrush has seen dozens of new players gobbling up the entire internet.

The hard part is turning that staggering amount of unstructured data into a useful search engine, and in particular fighting off black-hat SEO.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#64

Post by throwadobe » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #46

fny wrote: post #31

I'm very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved "uniform" businesses: - American Tobacco: Commodity - Standard Oil: Commodity - AT&T: Utility - Northern Securities: Railroads - Swift & Co: Meatpacking - Kodak: Film - Paramount: Movie Theaters Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective do…

One of the potential remedies is to require Google to open source their crawling data. This should make it easier for others who want to build a competing search engine.

That's a pipe dream and really achieves nothing other than hurting Google.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#65

Post by mcpar-land » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #31

I'm very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved "uniform" businesses: - American Tobacco: Commodity - Standard Oil: Commodity - AT&T: Utility - Northern Securities: Railroads - Swift & Co: Meatpacking - Kodak: Film - Paramount: Movie Theaters Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective do…

Breaking up their individual businesses can cause each business to have incentives that line up better with their customers / users. Example: if Chrome was separated from Google, they won't have as much of an incentive to push back against adblockers with things like Manifest V3. Or include APIs that are only available to google websites (Which it has! https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018)

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#66

Post by abirch » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

matthewfelgate wrote: post #58

bearjaws wrote: post #30

If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. We either start ripping this band-aids off or we will just continually have a worse and worse internet.

What about Microsoft?

The funny thing is this is going to be benefit Microsoft significantly. Much of what Google did Chrome, Android, etc. was to prevent Microsoft from destroying it like Netscape, Novell, Lotus, Wordperfect, ...

It's probably no coincidence that Google's first external CEO Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Novell.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#67

Post by oneplane » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #31

I'm very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved "uniform" businesses: - American Tobacco: Commodity - Standard Oil: Commodity - AT&T: Utility - Northern Securities: Railroads - Swift & Co: Meatpacking - Kodak: Film - Paramount: Movie Theaters Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective do…

There are probably only a small number of services that could successfully spin off on their own, but a lot of the value is in integration, which as others point out is also how some things seem 'free'.

An easier example would be Microsoft and Office; you could spin off an application like that quite successfully, the same might apply to their ERP. But those examples only stem from the fact that they used to be isolated 'offline' products, and Microsoft is working hard to undo that.

Trying to draw parallels between that and Google Workspace, that is a technical nightmare considering the entire distributed nature means that half of workspace can't exist outside of Google. You'd have to copy Google to host it outside of it, and I'm not talking about GCP or Borg or anything like that, it's everything, from the GSLB to Zanzibar, from monorail to the custom hardware everything runs on. Perhaps a double-digit years long refactor could change that, but nobody wants to pay for that.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#68

Post by throwadobe » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

retskrad wrote: post #4

1. Forbid Google from paying Apple and Android OEM’s to be the default search engine. Also, detach Google search from Android and forbid Google from forcing it to be included on every Android phone. 2. Give Google search competitors access to Google’s search data so these new AI search engine companies can compete. Without these huge amounts of data, they have no chance. Done!

#2 will get you laughed out of any room. The goal here is not to destroy Google.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#69

Post by JKCalhoun » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #59

bearjaws wrote: post #30

If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. We either start ripping this band-aids off or we will just continually have a worse and worse internet.

It appears to me that your two paragraphs contradict each other. If we break up Google and what comes afterwards is worse, then break it up or we'll get worse? Is it worse if we do and worse if we don't? Which "worse" is worse? Or do I misunderstand your point? The whole point of breaking up monopolies is not moral principle. It's so that things get better for customers. If they don't, then what's the justification f…

Breaking up Google gets worse the longer we wait.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#70

Post by LeonB » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

timmg wrote: post #45

uptownJimmy wrote: post #39

Google's "search results" are the textbook definition of a monopolized good/service. The whole thing is almost a casino, rigged to the point of absurdity. There has been nothing in my life so disillusioning as working on a Web app for a company that is more or less required to play Google's game.

> There has been nothing in my life so disillusioning as working on a Web app for a company that is more or less required to play Google's game. Have you built any iOS apps?

Ha, well said. Having both of these experiences makes one even more against the tyranny of monopolists.