Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

Post by pocksuppet » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 4:51 AM UTC

schmidtleonard wrote: post #218

patcon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is obviously the ask: why doesn't government unmix the omelet. Your very body unscrambles the omelet and makes you. It's what intelligent things do when they are moving agency into the proper places. what is the purpose of regulation except to resist entropy in such strategic places?

Progressive corporate taxation would give the market an incentive to do spinoffs and undo the merger wave. Or we could just roll antitrust policy back to what it was before Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork installed the Consumer Welfare Standard, the idea that companies must be allowed to merge if they can scribble a tall tale with crayons on butcher paper about how the merger will benefit consumers, for sure, pinky pro…

Post by pocksuppet » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 4:53 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #244

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... for those who think that Trump is an outlier. No, just a slight acceleration to a very much established trend.

People used to joke that W was the bottom of the barrel, then the GOP did a hold my beer and dug a little deeper.

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 5:07 AM UTC

condiment wrote: post #236

xahrepap wrote: post #113

Slightly tangential thought: My belief is: legislation needs to either make it just as hard to merge two companies as it is to unmerge them, or make it just as easy to unmerge two companies as it is to merge them. It's insane to me that for how often companies merge and cause competition issues, we effectively never see the opposite happen. I know there's a ceremonial approval for merging two companies (at least in t…

This point of view has more to do with your information diet than it does with reality. Companies un-merge and spin out all the time, for many reasons. Mergers and acquisitions are more interesting because they are often associated with a growth story. We like success. Aswath Damodaran, who teaches corporate finance at NYU Stern, has a bunch of great talks and content about this where he discusses how companies shoul…

Post by fsh » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #255

condiment wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This point of view has more to do with your information diet than it does with reality. Companies un-merge and spin out all the time, for many reasons. Mergers and acquisitions are more interesting because they are often associated with a growth story. We like success. Aswath Damodaran, who teaches corporate finance at NYU Stern, has a bunch of great talks and content about this where he discusses how companies shoul…

>What we are seeing with some of these big tech companies is that they are transitioning from an exciting growth story into an extractive dividend story in a way that's becoming harmful to consumers. Alphabet is rolling out autonomous driving vehicles in many cities around the USA, potentially getting rid of the need to drive a car in 90% of today's use cases. How is this not still an exciting growth story? My kids m…

Post by gambiting » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 5:41 AM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #168

gambiting wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. The idea that somehow my mum can't even find the space bar on her keyboard and yet is competent enough to go through several warning screens to install a custom .apk is just laughable.

> is competent enough to go through several warning screens What about "is incompetent enough to press the buttons when the nice man from Microsoft calls about the viruses on her USB"?