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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]

#501

Post by cmrdporcupine »

trevor-e wrote: post #496
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…

When I worked in the travel tech industry several years ago, it was basically unfair to compete against Google Flights. We just accepted they didn't have to pay for marketing and had infinite compute to work with, and had to differentiate in other ways. They could operate the business at a loss and not really care because it was still good for Google as a whole to have user's travel data. They built a great product b…

It's also stopped being great.

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

#502

Post by const_cast »

skybrian wrote: post #337
croes wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google killed the Edge browser with the same tricks MS used. The use money and Google Play services to hinder competition. Not really less anti-competitive.

By one measure, Edge has 5% market share, twice that of Firefox. On Desktop it’s 13%, which is second place. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

Corporate is a huge, huge part of this.

Lots of people working just use whatever browser is preloaded. In addition, you can't even download another browser in a lot of environments.

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

#503

Post by AlexandrB »

const_cast wrote: post #495
The_Blade wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

somehow, after the ATT, Microsoft, Standard Oil, or American Tobacco antitrust suits, the constituent parts and country soldiered on

Yeah, especially Tobacco. I mean, there hasn't been an industry gutted that hard ever. They were attacked from all sides. They can't even fucking advertise anymore, and when they can, they have to tell you "hey don't buy this it kills you". And then, cherry on top, when consumers do buy this product, they're allowed to use it in like And yet, somehow, Tobacco is still profitable.

This is very North America-centric. Smoking is still rampant in many countries, including parts of Europe. It was actually a bit of a culture shock for me.

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

#504

Post by londons_explore »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #300
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

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…

Access to the click stream is the big bit.

Ie. Knowing which users clicked which search results.

Without the click stream, one cannot build or even maintain a good ranker. With a larger click stream from more users, one can make a better ranker, which in turn makes the service better so more users use it.

End result: monopoly.

The only solution is to force all players to share click stream data with all others.

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

#505

Post by Xelbair »

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…

And?

If monopoly is attained over such segment failure of those products and services is less bad outcome.

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

#506

Post by barbazoo »

sofixa wrote: post #418
edanm wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take that bet. AI players are already replacing search for a lot of users in a lot of cases.

Because we're still in the "get them hooked" stage where AI startups and Google/Meta are losing money on AI. Once they start properly monetising (aka making users pay for what it actually costs them to train and run), it will be a different story. The vast majority of people won't pay $20-30€/month for an LLM to replace their search engine. (And an analysis I saw of OpenAI's business model and financial indicated the…

They’ll instead accept being manipulated and fed content influenced by money, be it ads or individualized content that somehow serves whoever is paying for it.

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

#507

Post by echelon »

fsh wrote: post #410
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…

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?

We need a better word than "duopoly" to describe what Apple and Google are. They're just as bad as a monopoly - and they're impossible to compete with.

Both Apple and Google need to be disrupted here. We should be able to see lots of healthy verticals for every single one of these product categories. They shouldn't accrue to two players and be impossible to dislodge.

I propose the word "Googolith" to describe {Google, Apple, Amazon}, though it's not a great attempt. We do need some kind of word or language to describe these anti-competitive titans that are impossible to innovate against. The word "monopoly" gets shut down, but the control they wield may as well be monopolistic. There's no choice and there's no competing. They're practically nation states.

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

#508

Post by theptip »

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…

> In the best case, killing these will force consumers to move to Apple.

I think there are better options than you suggest.

The whole doc suite can be had from Microsoft. Maybe folks need to ten bucks a month for something that used to be free, but it’s not like we fundamentally lose capabilities.

This is a completely different order of magnitude than banks going under, where people were impacted to the tune of thousands or millions of dollars when they lost their homes.

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

#509

Post by tokioyoyo »

fsh wrote: post #435
sofixa wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Everyone would be subscribed to YT premium, if people were ok with paying for ad-free experience.

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

#510

Post by gazpacho »

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 agree. At risk of being totally off base because I have not been keeping up with the details of the legal matter it seems to me that the solution isn't to kill Google's core business but rather to force it to sell off some of these branches, with thought and strategy. E.g. one of the comments below pointed out that Google Flights competes with other sites / businesses. Seems like a good candidate to spin off: it could probably be a profitable business in it's own right. Android? Chrome? Idk about those: who / how are they going to be funded? Each piece needs to be analyzed and a deal needs to be struck that's not based on principles as much as it is on what is pragmatically the right balance that benefits people (the American people in particular) the most in the medium to long term.
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