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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]

#431

Post by malfist »

eastbound wrote: post #416
sfpotter wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used Kagi or Google recently? Kagi works way better.

On every Kagi comment, there is “Have you used Kagi recently? It’s improved a lot!” — to the level that I suspect they have bots to upgrade the brand image, at least to search which comments to respond do. I’m saying that because yes, I’ve used Kagi recently, and I switch back to Google every single time because Kagi can’t find anything. Kagi is to Google what Siri is to ChatGPT. Siri can’t even answer “What time is…

Maybe you see different comments than I do, but I don't see many comments saying it's improved a lot lately.

As a Kagi user, I would not say it's improved a lot lately. It's a consistent, specific product for what I need. I like the privacy aspects of it, and the control to block, raise or lower sites in my search results. If that's not something you care about then don't use it.

Is it better than Google at finding things? I don't think so, but then, Google is trash these days too

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

#432

Post by mburns »

fallingknife wrote: post #387
ChuckMcM wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Blekko we advocated for this as well. Google has two interlocked monopolies, one is the search index and the other is their advertising service. We often joked that if Google reasonable and non-discriminatory priced access to their index, both to themselves and to others, AND they allowed someone to put what ever ads they wanted on those results. That change the landscape dramatically. Google would carve out their…

This sounds a solution contrived to advantage companies that want access to this data rather than an actual economically valid business model. If building an index and selling access to it is a viable business, then why isn't someone doing it already? There's minimal barrier to entry. Blekko has an index. Are you selling access to it for profit?

There are search engines that sell api access to their index. Pretty sure Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex all do.

Blekko also did, 10 years ago. When they still existed.

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

#433

Post by danielmarkbruce »

mondrian wrote: post #401
dantheman wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout history there are very few monopolies and they don't normally last that long; that is unless they get are granted special privileges by the government.

Concentration is the default in an unregulated environment. Sure pure monopolies with 100% market control are rare but concentration is rampant. A handful of companies dominating tech, airlines, banks, media.

airlines? Worst example ever. There are lots of airlines coming and going. "Tech" isn't even an industry.

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

#435

Post by fsh »

sofixa wrote: post #419
fsh wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This list is very telling. Instead of a healthy marketplace of companies competing to sell their software and services, we end up with one monopolist who gives away mediocre products and in return taxes everything you buy (in the form of ad spending), and then annoys you with the same ads. How is this a desirable outcome?

Because the vast majority of people don't want to and have zero intention pf paying separately for email, maps, navigation, browser, etc. In fact, that's how things used to be before Google and their ilk used ads to make an ecosystem, and their ecosystem was better and free at the point of use than what came before

The vast majority of people are paying separately for all kinds of stuff. I don't see a reason why software and digital services have to be different. In the early days, payment was difficult, but this has been long solved. I am convinced that the quality would improve dramatically if there was some actual competition.

Also most people would probably prefer not to pay for the ad fees that google extorts from pretty much any company.

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

#436

Post by mondrian »

fallingknife wrote: post #409
mondrian wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concentration is the default in an unregulated environment. Sure pure monopolies with 100% market control are rare but concentration is rampant. A handful of companies dominating tech, airlines, banks, media.

Concentration seems much more prevalent in heavily regulated markets e.g. utilities / airlines. In many cases regulators have even encouraged this e.g.finance. There is no default for unregulated markets. It's a question of whether the economies of scale outweigh the added costs from the complexity that scale requires. It costs close to 100x as much to build 100 houses, run 100 restaurants, or operate 100 trucks as i…

Home building is interesting because I think a major blocker to monopoly-forming is the vastly heterogenous and complicated regulatory landscape, with building codes varying wildly from place to place. So you get a bunch of locally-specialized builders.

Regulation can increase concentration in a high corruption/cronyism environment — regulatory capture and regulatory moats. There is plenty of that happening.

In building, I think we have local-concentration, due to both regulatory heterogeneity and then local cronyism - Bob has decades of connections to the city and gets permits easily, whereas Bob’s competitor Steve is stuck in a loop of rejection due to a never ending list of pesky reasons.

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

#437

Post by r0m4n0 »

gnaman wrote: post #285
r0m4n0 wrote: post #143

As others have pointed out, YC is definitely trying to get some of that Google money. Another important aspect that benefits YC is a turn of events that would improve the talent pool. Google retains tens of thousands of software engineers, I’d argue maybe the biggest reserve in existence. It’s the largest population of experienced engineers that won’t leave because the money and circumstances are too good. Startups w…

that is not a google problem that is a big tech problem. people move where the money is and the money flows to google easily because ads is such a lucrative business. if you force the talent pool to move off google, meta or amazon will easily absorb them

More talent with less demand means lower wages and/or worse benefits. My situation at Google can’t be matched at Amazon or Meta (remote work, pay, WLB, other benefits). I’d have to compromise if the climate changes but not much will make me leave… ever. I have a friend that has been trying to get me to join a startup for years and the risk just isn’t worth the reward

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

#438

Post by hu3 »

prepend wrote: post #402
hu3 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile Apple, also sitting on infinite cash, is easily entertained by toying with regulators around the world and contributes back almost nothing in comparison to Google. Heck, they can't even be bothered to fund a single developer to help their hardware run Linux.

Why would Apple have developers working on their hardware running Linux? Apple doesn’t use Linux. They aren’t the biggest oss dev, but they have a decent amount of contributions. [0][1] It’s hard to compare how much Google vs Apple contributes to open source, but not sure why anyone would think Apple “contributes back almost nothing.” [0] https://github.com/appleopen [1] https://opensource.apple.com/projects/

Please stare at your own links for a second.

Let me help you:

https://github.com/orgs/appleopen/repositories?q=sort%3Astar...

Their most popular repo in that entire account has 8 stars.

I have multiple personal repos with more usage than that.

As for the other link. More than half of those projects are Apple specific.

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

#439

Post by dismalaf »

Not sure a VC firm with a vested interest in Google failing should be allowed to have an opinion here...

I always thought the point of the government breaking up monopolies was to prevent anti-competitive behaviour, not simply to punish companies for being too successful.

If we want to talk about what's best for the economy and startups, there's a bunch of large companies that could be broken up for the benefit of society, but not sure that's entirely fair either.

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

#440

Post by danielmarkbruce »

guhcampos wrote: post #426
fallingknife wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concentration seems much more prevalent in heavily regulated markets e.g. utilities / airlines. In many cases regulators have even encouraged this e.g.finance. There is no default for unregulated markets. It's a question of whether the economies of scale outweigh the added costs from the complexity that scale requires. It costs close to 100x as much to build 100 houses, run 100 restaurants, or operate 100 trucks as i…

You are comparing Apples and Oranges. You just can't compare the barrier of entry for Software business and an Airline, even without any regulations. It's just orders of magnitude more expensive to buy an airplane than a laptop, and most utilities are natural monopolies so they behave fundamentally different.

Most planes are leased. The capex for an airline isn't anything especially high if they don't want it to be.
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