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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]

#471

Post by janalsncm »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

Because Google has monopoly power, they can charge whatever they want for ads, and every company in the economy has to pay it. So there’s a pretty good argument the economy is being held back by a “Google tax”.

Most of the services you listed above are hardly best in class, and giving them away for free is basically scraps off of the table. The ones which are best in class like Waymo have a good shot at being commercially successful on their own.

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

#472

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

malfist wrote: post #431
eastbound wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I don’t understand.

The GP of your comment is literally saying that Kagi is better than Google as of late. You’re not helping the “Kagi doesn’t use bots” case by ignore the context 2 comments up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43948385

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

#473

Post by janalsncm »

ccppurcell wrote: post #455
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

I think comparing to banks is silly. Banks don't have competitive advantages like Google has. When banks fail it is not because they lost a competitive advantage (other than the competitive advantage of competent management). The catastrophe associated with a major bank collapse has to do with the specific function of banks in the financial system, not just: oh where are all their customers going to go?

Exactly. Even if Google search shut down tomorrow the economy would go on. It’s competitors are probably worse but it wouldn’t cause a run on the banks, which is a specific financial emergency.

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

#474

Post by ewoodrich »

hollerith wrote: post #427
sofixa wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn't kill the Edge browser, Microsoft gave up. If Mozilla can have an independent from scratch browser, Microsoft of all companies could have one too. It's just easier and cheaper for them to rebrand Chromium and call it a day. And I'm not buying the argument that progress on the Web (tech stack) should stop so that it's easier to make/maintain a browser.

Some of us would have preferred for "progress" on the web stack to have stopped about 20 years ago.

I grew up in the dial-up era but personally think it's incredibly cool how I am able to use a full featured IDE, flash an ESP-32 or my phone via USB, make low latency Zoom/Teams calls with screen sharing, run language agnostic bytecode and utilize low level GPU access, all in a highly secure sandbox on my Macbook, Linux/Windows Thinkpad, $100 Chromebook, tablet and phone.

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

#475

Post by cyberax »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

> Here's a small number of things that will die when Google dies.

I dispute that. Google Docs/Drive/Mail are supported by enterprise subscriptions. Android Auto is also a commercial product that can live off license fees. Fi/Fiber/Pay/Waymo are also not free services, and can survive on their own.

Free GMail/Forms/Groups/Translate can probably survive off ad revenue that they can get from third parties. They are pretty trivial expenses at this point.

Android and Chrome are the main projects at risk.

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

#476

Post by cyberax »

dataflow wrote: post #385
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

Would YouTube not also be affected here? I don't have numbers but it seems to me a huge number of people depend on it as both consumers and producers, and I'm not sure it has any viable alternatives. My even bigger worry is actually the effects on privacy, security, and people's data. I'm very curious what other companies people would trust more with their data.

Why would it? Youtube sells ads (and premium subscriptions) on its own. It doesn't really need the rest of Google, and can just continue living as a separate company.

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

#477

Post by karaterobot »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

For the sake of argument, let's grant the implication that Google is in danger of going out of business. Even so, if our economy is at the point where one company going out of business would cripple it, it's almost certainly worth the pain of decoupling from that company. It would hurt, but we would get through it, and it would be better in the long run. On the other hand, if we just threw up our hands and said "do whatever you want, Google, you're too important for us to tell you what to do" then we're pretty much at their mercy. I can't imagine things getting better or fixing themselves in that situation.

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

#478

Post by worik »

dataflow wrote: post #385
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

Would YouTube not also be affected here? I don't have numbers but it seems to me a huge number of people depend on it as both consumers and producers, and I'm not sure it has any viable alternatives. My even bigger worry is actually the effects on privacy, security, and people's data. I'm very curious what other companies people would trust more with their data.

> ta. I'm very curious what other companies people would trust more with their data.

The problem is one company with all the data.

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

#479

Post by dataflow »

worik wrote: post #478
dataflow wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would YouTube not also be affected here? I don't have numbers but it seems to me a huge number of people depend on it as both consumers and producers, and I'm not sure it has any viable alternatives. My even bigger worry is actually the effects on privacy, security, and people's data. I'm very curious what other companies people would trust more with their data.

> ta. I'm very curious what other companies people would trust more with their data. The problem is one company with all the data.

> The problem is one company with all the data.

I realize, but the idea that we won't have another giant company succeeding at achieving the same seems like wishful thinking.

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

#480

Post by cactusplant7374 »

mburns wrote: post #432
fallingknife wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Brave Search does too?
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