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

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

#191

Post by josefx »

jeffbee wrote: post #156
ayewo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many other search engine options, why should Google be punished for hiring the best people over decades to make the best one? I’m guessing this whole court case wouldn’t have been a thing if Google wasn’t bribing Apple, to the tune of $20 billion a year [1], to remain the default search engine on iOS. 1: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/apple-may-add-ai-search-...

Amazing how you can see that as Google bribing Apple instead of Apple extorting Google.

It would be a rather ineffective extortion if "customers would just switch" as the comment further above claims.

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

#192

Post by hkpack »

mullingitover wrote: post #184
snielson wrote: post #168

The solution proposed by Kagi—separate the search index from the rest of Google—seems to make the most sense. Kagi explains it more here: https://blog.kagi.com/dawn-new-era-search

Crawling the internet is a natural monopoly. Nobody wants an endless stream of bots crawling their site, so googlebot wins because they’re the dominant search engine. It makes sense to break that out so everyone has access to the same dataset at FRAND pricing. My heart just wants Google to burn to the ground, but my brain says this is the more reasonable approach.

Most of the tech is set for being a monopoly due to the negligible variable cost associated with serving a customer.

Thus being even slightly in front of others is reinforced and the gap only widens.

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

#193

Post by light_triad »

It's good for YC to do this and will benefit every startup in the long run. Google has been one of the sources of the AI boom, and provides liquidity by acquiring startups. But as YC argues they've monopolised distribution channels to the point where you need to go through the Google toll booth every time you want to access the market. This tax on founders to reach their audience makes many types of businesses unsustainable and impossible, especially for products where usage != sharing.

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

#194

Post by dehrmann »

ViktorRay wrote: post #153
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?

But when AT&T had a monopoly it funded Bell Labs which was responsible for much innovation. Then AT&T was shut down and Bell Labs went away. If we take your argument seriously then AT&T shouldn’t have been dismantled. But it was a good thing AT&T was dismantled. It helped lead to the modern internet. By your logic all Rockefeller had to do in the early 20th century was set up a lab to do basic research and then Stand…

> it was a good thing AT&T was dismantled

Citation needed. I hear this repeated, but the consumer experience was it was split into regional monopolies, and consumers now had to deal with both local and long distance, and both were still monopolies. It only got better with competition from mobile providers.

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

#195

Post by thomastjeffery »

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?

Researchers at Google are the reason for the current AI boom.

FTFY

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

#196

Post by Larrikin »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #151
chpatrick wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do basic research without being monopolistic.

What monopoly? Google's entire business model is currently under threat right now.

There are lazy developers reading this very comment thread that broke basic website functionality this week because they only tested on Chrome

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

#197

Post by antonvs »

Zigurd wrote: post #115
chpatrick wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do basic research without being monopolistic.

Debatable. I visited the down at the heels post break up Bell Labs and it was sad.

I worked for a while at the company that used to be named Bellcore (Bell Communications Research), which was originally a research consortium for the Baby Bells. By the time I joined, it was a zombie cash cow shell that did no research, and it met the common fate of such businesses: acquired by a private equity firm.

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

#198

Post by Ekaros »

xiphias2 wrote: post #113

AI is the most competitive and healthy large industry I have seen. Having a search index helps just like having tweets for x.ai, but data isn’t the deciding factor.

Competitive maybe. Healthy almost certainly not. My definition for healthy industries is being able to fund operations and development either by revenues or debt. Not by continuously raising capital from investors and then burning it on hardware and operating costs.

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

#199

Post by Ajedi32 »

lolinder wrote: post #183
luckydata wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not understand that a search engine is not a business by itself? I'm struggling to understand why so many supposedly smart people don't seem to grasp the obvious fact that Google can only exist in the current form or not at all and that any viable business of the same form has to look the same. Chrome is not a self standing viable business. YouTube is definitely not one either. Ads only works because the searc…

This argument can be made about nearly any anticompetitive monopoly, and that should not stop the government from deciding that, if the business can only exist in its current form, then the business should not exist. You're not entitled to a business model if your business model is harmful.

What evidence do you have that their business model is harmful? As a consumer search seems like an extremely healthy sector right now with plenty of competition. Google just happens to be by far the best.

What exactly do you think is stopping you from using a competitor? Can you not find the setting to change your default search engine in Chrome? Is Google blocking you from making that choice somehow? All the arguments I've seen for Google being anti-competitive in this sector are extremely weak.

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

#200

Post by itopaloglu83 »

sidibe wrote: post #5

A. The Remedy Should Open Access to Google’s Datasets and Search Index. B. The Remedy Should Prevent Google from Extending Its Monopolies into Query-Based AI Tools. Good luck with that YC...

The number of searches started to decline and everybody knows that Google is going to start pouring all their cash into AI tools now.

It looks like this is a strategic case to prevent Google from getting into AI search space and even gain access to their search index data so that they can train their own models on it.

Wright brothers invited the aircraft but almost all their patents were cancelled when the Great War started. If we believe the AI race is indeed an existential threat then let's cancel all patents that prevent anyone from innovating.

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