US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#101

Post by sdenton4 » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #50

chpatrick wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do basic research without being monopolistic.

That's true, but if it weren't for Google's monopolist position, I doubt they'd have the money to throw at the wall for random research. For every AI transformer they revolutionized, there's a self-driving car project that's dragging on for decades. Had Google operated like a normal company, the risk/reward of this kind of research would've looked completely differently. Google's monopoly helped research along in the…

"self-driving car project that's dragging on for decades."

And yet, waymo seems to have got the correct risk reward trade-off compared to all of the move-fast-and-get-banned competitors...

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#102

Post by nickfromseattle » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

How much blame do we assign Sundar for this outcome? Yes, he was just continuing where Larry / Sergey left off, but it did happen under his watch.

Is there anything he could have done to avoid this outcome? In a way that Google shareholders would have found acceptable?

Or was this outcome inevitable?

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#103

Post by scarface_74 » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #48

scarface_74 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s not pretend that YC and other VCs are noble. They get rich and pawn their money losing investments to the “bigger fool” https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance... > In aggregate, the average return across these YC companies is -49%, with a median return of -46%. To put this into perspective, over the same period, the S&P 500 yielded a positive return of 58% And for the rest of the companies…

> Let’s not pretend that YC and other VCs are noble. I'm fine with that. Let them make money at the expense of big tech. Breaking up big tech benefits financial/venture capital, but it also benefits labor capital as well. More opportunity for more startups to succeed, more competition for engineering talent, less market distorting wage collusion. Big tech already won. It's benefactors already reap the benefits. Break…

They do see upside - by being acquired by BigTech.

So if Google wasn’t a “monopoly” you think a startup could make a better search engine? Be more popular than Android - Microsoft tried both and failed because people prefer Google products. It wasn’t for the lack of money.

And engineers are getting wealthy - by working for BigTech. Even an entry level developer at BigTech makes more than 90% of workers.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#104

Post by almostgotcaught » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #53

This is just a few rich venture capitalists, and the harvard trained founders they back, trying to line their own pockets. AI will democratize search regardless

> AI will democratize search regardless

Not a single person in this entire ecosystem knows the difference between democratize and liberalize. Hint: AI isn't gonna let us vote on aspects of search.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#105

Post by slater » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #58

Google is a "monopoly" because their competitors with massive cash reserves (Microsoft, Apple, Meta) are too risk averse to compete in the marketplace and are hoping that the courtroom will deliver them a win.

Am I misremembering, or doesn’t Apple already have its own “stealth” search engine they could deploy at the drop of a hat, but instead use it as a bargaining chip w/ Google? Coulda sworn I read about it a decade ago in breathless “Is Apple working on its own search engine???” articles

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#106

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

bloppe wrote: post #31

Google is the reason for the current AI boom. Without the transformer architecture they invented by funding basic research, there would be no modern LLMs. YC is arguing that their incentive for funding that basic research should be taken away in order to spur innovation?

[deleted]

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#107

Post by kaladin-jasnah » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

callc wrote: post #79

jeroenhd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but if it weren't for Google's monopolist position, I doubt they'd have the money to throw at the wall for random research. For every AI transformer they revolutionized, there's a self-driving car project that's dragging on for decades. Had Google operated like a normal company, the risk/reward of this kind of research would've looked completely differently. Google's monopoly helped research along in the…

You certainly have a point. Places like google and bell labs have pushed innovation, apparently enabled by monopolies. I would rather we don’t allow monopolies since they are so bad for society, regardless of some benefits. Government funded research and private investment are still a thing, that doesn’t try to break the whole capitalism thing.

My first thought was Bell Labs here. The lack of time pressure for research results sounds like a big reason why so much innovation happened—people could pursue projects that may not have immediately benefitted the company's bottom line, because Bell had money to throw. I think UNIX was an example of this, because MULTICS was a failure and Bell was wary of similar projects, but I might be wrong.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#108

Post by pvg » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #94

pvg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about the merits of YC's brief, just the merits of the comment I'm replying to. "Why shouldn't we apply the proposed remedy for illegal behaviour on everyone" seems like a no-brainer to me.

I don't think it's unreasonable to apply the same remedy to all AI companies. Sure, it would punish Google, but if companies would actually share their data set, the internet may not be so polluted with AI crawler bots I need to block on my servers. Just as an example: in my country, all public transit information is shared publicly between operators, so anyone can effectively build a public transit navigation app. T…

I don't think it's unreasonable to apply the same remedy to all AI companies.

A court can't really formulate and enact such a remedy.

all public transit information

Not all entities are public and we have more readily available methods to influence the ones that are.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#109

Post by dghlsakjg » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #51

repelsteeltje wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is effectively being punished for retaining their earnings and re-investing in tons of software R&D over the years They have indeed invested tons in r&d, but with excessively little results. Besides web search it's tough to see succeses that Google didn't buy their way into. Gmail, maps, ... maybe?

Who knows when or if this current AI wave would've happened without Google.

That argument cuts both ways: Who knows how much longer we had to wait for this AI boom because google was sponging up every genius to work on ad selling algorithms.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#110

Post by lolinder » Sat, May 10, 2025, 3:33 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #58

Google is a "monopoly" because their competitors with massive cash reserves (Microsoft, Apple, Meta) are too risk averse to compete in the marketplace and are hoping that the courtroom will deliver them a win.

Which market are you talking about specifically? The outstanding cases against them are in search and in adtech. This amicus brief is for the Search case (this one [0]).

In search (the relevant market here), Microsoft does compete in the marketplace, and Microsoft's evidence that Google's anticompetitive practices have prevented them from gaining any meaningful ground in search were a keystone of the government's case, including the fact that Microsoft has invested nearly $100 billion into Bing [1].

In adtech much the same can be said about Meta.

So, again, I'm curious: in which market does Google not have competitors spending massive amounts of cash which Google still manages to hold back from being able to meaningfully compete?

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...