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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]

#561

Post by fibers »

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…

- Google Maps - this would be a big loss but at least this will open the field for Apple Maps and OSM (and I wonder if a competitor will be able to properly leave OSM as is an perhaps integrate traffic data like with Waze or another product like it)

  - Google Mail - I dumped gmail after Google google'd GDomains and sold it to squarespace so I moved to proton

  - Google Drive - lol, this is a literal multibillion industry with dropbox, box.com, etc

  - Google Docs - lol, maybe high schoolers will finally use paper and pencil now? either way proton docs looks promising and perheps a new competitor will take the space

  - Google Groups - email listservs are still a thing, use that
 
 - Google Forms - this seems like a serious loss but surely there will be another competitor

  - Google Cloud - there are better ways to do on prem now, either way you can use AWS or Azure

  - Google OAuth - ok this one will be a big loss but also people need to get it together that google isnt mail.

  - Google Search - this product has been going through a collapse since pre covid give me a break

  - Google Analytics - lol
 
 - Chrome - web standards have been cannibalized by google already so like who cares at this point. just switch to Firefox

  - Android - another major loss but it still suffers from fragmentation, hopefully Chinese competitors fill the void?

  - Android Auto - lol 

  - Fitbit - lol didn't they just release an update where you cant export your data anymore

  - Google Fi - another MVNO that may die out? I mean cricket is still good right?

  - Google Fiber - a genuine loss and hope they will be treated with care but probably not given the large legacy telcos that will acquire it

  - Google Flights - another major loss? but even as someone who loves flying it is becoming an untenable situation given the current regime in the White House and ATCs getting knocked out

  - Google Translate - another major loss but this can be solved with LLMs
  - Google Pay - lol

  - Waymo - lol

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

#562

Post by no_wizard »

jader201 wrote: post #551
dangrossman wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free, taking much of the money out of the market that allowed that product to be built. Without Google giving away the one winner they chose to acquire, you'd have options again. I built my free web stats service in 2004 because I couldn't afford an Urchin license. Google bought Urchin Live and rebra…

> Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free Nearly everything that was acquired was a) already free, and b) built (and given away for free) in hopes that someone like Google would acquire them. If you look at most startups, their exit strategy is acquisition. Some would live to IPO, but that is a much tougher road. It could be argued th…

> Most CEOs plan and hope for it

I don’t think so, at least, it’s not their main motivation.

For most, I imagine the VC fueled free period is to lock up customers and increase you have their sensitive data, you start making moves so you can start to charge them, usually a fairly hefty sum. It’s a classic lock in strategy.

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

#563

Post by TechDebtDevin »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #553
TechDebtDevin wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about, there are competitors for all these products, they simply just aren't as good...

Not just bad. There isn't a single piece of Apple software that is (1) free and (2) people choose to use on iOS, only use because the user is forced to. Photos? Forced, sucks. iMessage? Forced, sucks. Apple Mail, Calendar, Contacts? Huge pieces of shit. The App Store, the very gateway into competition, is the shittiest of all, and not just because the 30% fee, but because its discovery is maybe the worst ever made by…

Yeah, I really don't understand how MS, Google and AT&T get this treatment but not Apple..

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

#564

Post by jameshart »

dvdhnt wrote: post #532
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?

This is a very ungrateful and childish perspective. It assumes that these things exist out of thin air rather than things google has created. Products don’t just appear, they’re built. Nothing is stopping someone from usurping google. Ever hear of oracle, intel, xerox, blackberry or Microsoft?

It's a more sophisticated perspective than you're giving it credit for.

They're not disputing that google has provided all these services, they're arguing that google's ability to subsidize them prevents market solutions for these same problems being produced.

The internet is, in this view, somewhat of a planned economy with Google as the central planning committee. You get google's maps and google's docs and google's search, rather than a maps marketplace, a docs marketplace, and a search marketplace.

Google is able to enforce this on the market because it holds a unique position where it can extract a significant amount of the value generated in the internet economy in 'ad taxes'.

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

#565

Post by Draiken »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #545
Hydrocarb0n wrote: post #531

Google is much bigger than a Monopoly, it is a multi-monopoly, Search, web ads, email, video, maps / nav, User data / metrics. If you had told me in early 2000s that google would absolutely dominate all of these fields And it would be allowed to continue for decades, I wouldn't believe you. I'm a free market guy, I believe some small gov is nessasary to regulate monopolies, protect constitutional rights etc, but mult…

Do you think the world benefits from this monopoly though? I think the world would be a worse place without Google, a much worse place. While it would be nice to live in some timeline were lots of choices for search (there actually are, people are just lazy and don't like change), but we built a world with Google and let it get to where its at. We will just be shooting ourselves in our own foot, at least in the short…

We simply can't know if there would be better alternatives because of it. Any competition is acquired or dies and it has been like this for years.

But then again monopolies are the final form of capitalism so there's no real way to avoid them. Maybe on an utopia where we have strong regulations and can shield them from being influenced by money. Not gonna happen.

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

#566

Post by jasonfarnon »

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…

Products like engine, gmail, maps, and youtube were game-changers when first released. But that was a long time ago and right now plenty of competitors would step in and do a decent copycat job.

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

#567

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

beagle3 wrote: post #462
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I well aware of Schmidhuber, still the scaling of the compute was critical. The reason Schmidhuber didnt go all the way is still scaling/capital, which accrues to monopolies who can afford wildly speculative research. Also, LSTM, RNN, etc, while effective for their time, were dead ends.

compute was critical, but compute was happening anyway. I fail to say why you are convinced that there would not be transformers.

I'm not saying that, I'm saying you need a company with huge amounts of cash on hand to spend on R&D. The monopoly provides a safe space for it, like it or not, this system has worked.

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

#568

Post by josephg »

Jach wrote: post #555
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…

It's important to try and de-googleify your life if only so you don't get caught up in making such an exaggerated sky-is-falling point. All of these could literally vanish tomorrow and the world would go on, they all have their alternatives, some of them arguably superior. For some, the near term pain would be greater than for others -- even just on my personal level I'd be caught with my pants down for email, becaus…

Yeah. It’s also hard to overstate how many incredible engineers work at Google. Many - perhaps most of them are doing very low value work of adding marginal features nobody cares about to mature products. And in many cases doing so at a glacial pace. Every year thousands of brilliant engineers add ~1m lines of code to Google chrome. And almost nobody notices or cares. As browsers get faster, companies respond by adding more bloat to their websites.

If Google suddenly went out of business and 5% of xooglers started companies, we would see a gigantic burst of innovation in computing.

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

#569

Post by bernardom »

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…

They won't be killed, they'll be forced to stand up as their own businesses, like the Baby Bells after Ma Bell broke up, or the split of Standard Oil.

I can see most of these being reasonable standalone businesses. And if they can't be they'll die and get replaced by one that is better.

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

#570

Post by philistine »

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…

Google has built all these free products for one reason: your comment. They want people to genuinely believe that they can't be treated like a monopoly in ads.

Not because they're not a monopoly in ads. No no no. They want us to believe they're a good monopolist that can't be broken up because they're giving us so many good things. Don't let it sway you for a second that Google is proven to hinder competition and raise ad prices.

I don't buy it.

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