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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]

#521

Post by andelink »

gazpacho wrote: post #510
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 co…

My understanding is that the legal remedies/repercussions being considered involve divesting Android, Chrome. Splitting these off is not in any way killing Googles core business.

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

#522

Post by taormina »

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…

We understand the consequences. The only projects listed that matter are the open source ones. They’ll survive. The rest don’t matter and will die as they frankly would’ve already if not for Google unfair position in the market.

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

#523

Post by lolc »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #491
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?

There is nothing mediocre about the search engine, gmail, maps, android, chrome etc.. etc. Do they all have room for for improvement? Probably. But they are simply incredibly, breathtakingly good products. Search, maybe has gotten worse in recent years, but it's still amazing. Maps and Satelleite view are astounding, especially when you consider that they are free. >How is this a desirable outcome? The list speaks fo…

> There is nothing mediocre about the search engine

I agree. The search index is great, the presentation is shitty.

As for maps: The most prominent features on it are ads. The rest is low contrast. For navigation the map is really bad. The satellite view is great.

Yeah not mediocre: It's great tech enshittified.

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

#524

Post by jorvi »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #509
fsh wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I feel like people are subconsciously aware that Google is trying to bludgeon them into getting YouTube premium, and they're simply sticking it to Google rather than giving in. Google's gone through:

- one skippable 5s ad

- two skippable 5s ads

- one unskippable 5s and one skippable 15s ads

- aforementioned or two 15s ads, one skippable

- two 15s unskippable ads

- removed the prerenderer 'skip' button to make it more difficult to immediately skip

- removed the ad amount indicator and precise length indicator (now just a bar) to psychologically drive people into sunk cost feelings

God knows what they're cooking up next.

And for large swathes of content, there is no alternative to YouTube.

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

#525

Post by BeetleB »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #491
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?

There is nothing mediocre about the search engine, gmail, maps, android, chrome etc.. etc. Do they all have room for for improvement? Probably. But they are simply incredibly, breathtakingly good products. Search, maybe has gotten worse in recent years, but it's still amazing. Maps and Satelleite view are astounding, especially when you consider that they are free. >How is this a desirable outcome? The list speaks fo…

> There is nothing mediocre about the search engine, gmail, maps, android, chrome etc.. etc.

Search Engine: Google is fantastic with its index. Very poor with the results it returns. Sampling of the problems:

- There's a reason people add site:reddit.com - the default results are often very low quality. Sure, Google has the good quality stuff indexed, but over the last 5 years they've been declining like crazy in actually showing you what you need.

- When I search for something on mobile, I get fairly unstructured results. First, an AI blurb. Then the first batch of results are videos. Then some web sites. Then a break with "People also ask...". Then more web sites. Then image results.

99% of the time I just want the web sites. Before, if there were video/image results, they'd be on the top and I'd conveniently scroll past them to get to the meat. I can't do that any more. Google keeps breaking the flow by adding more and more sections. When I hit "More search results", the problem continues.

Thank God for Kagi.

> gmail

Lots of people don't use it (including me). Other than people losing their mail, I'm not sure what is lost if this goes away. Email providers are aplenty. What am I missing by not using Gmail?

> maps

I'll grant you this one.

> android

It's nice to have an alternative to Apple, but that's the only good thing about it. Using Android reminds me of the old Windows. Very unstable. Full of spyware/bloatware.

> chrome

The only thing Chrome was better at than Firefox was stability - for a brief period in its history. Firefox is just better. If a site works on Chrome and not Firefox, that's not because Firefox is inferior.

Calling Chrome an "incredibly, breathtakingly good product" is just insane. It's merely an OK browser.

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

#526

Post by benlivengood »

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…

> I am convinced that the quality would improve dramatically if there was some actual competition.

You can pay for Google One right now, roughly exchanging cash for storage capacity on the otherwise free services. I see no viable competition for that model. Protonmail is comparatively expensive.

I really don't want the Internet to turn into the mess that is video streaming where every independent licensing agency tries to capture an audience for $15/month.

Another great example is Let's Encrypt. It's a public good to provide quality TLS certificates and the marginal cost is $0 with some sponsorship. I'd far rather other core Internet services like e-mail and basic file sharing are sponsored.

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

#528

Post by BeetleB »

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…

Of this list, the only things I'd miss are Search (because Kagi relies on it) and Maps. I do use Android, but I'll be frank: It sucks. And I'm sure Translate is easily replaceable by a 3rd party.

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

#529

Post by xyzzy9563 »

ezfe wrote: post #459
xyzzy9563 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they only have high market share because people want to use Google instead of the competitors. Many consumers switch their search engine to Google when presented with other defaults. Because Google search works the best and people know that.

So then why do they pay Apple $25,000,000,000 a year to default search to Google?

Because they have the money and Apple wants them to pay. Why should Google let a competitor pay a lesser amount to be the default?

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

#530

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

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

Googles c suite is clearly not thinking ahead here. They could have helped to slow down the anti-trust lawsuits by opening up their search index to whichever AI company wants to pay for it. Web crawling is expensive, and lots of companies are spending wild amounts of money on it. There is a very clear market arbitrage opportunity between the cost of crawling the web and Google's cost of serving up their existing data.
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