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Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

nytimes.com

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Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#271

Post by UpsideDownRide »

vlovich123 wrote: post #120
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…

You're basically advocating for unscrambling the omelet to be easier. Should be obvious why it's harder to unmix than it is to mix.

That is about as bad of an analogy as you can make

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#272

Post by geocar »

edg5000 wrote: post #229
andsoitis wrote: post #219

> its ad tech business now there's the euphemism of the day. Alphabet derives 75% of their revenue from Ads. It is their business.

The article seems to distingish ads from ad tech, stating ads bring in a lot of revenue, but ad tech not. Kinda confused about what the difference is.

Ok, so "ad tech" is basically situations where someone pays you to run their ad network, like a newspaper or a magazine or something who sells their own ads to people. Google used to call this "Doubleclick for Publishers" (DFP) and don't anymore to be confusing, but I am going to use the old names so it is easier to tell you what each part of the business does.

When someone sells "ads" they are selling the placement itself. When advertisers buy this, they use "AdWords" or "Doubleclick for Advertisers".

Many DFP users got a checkbox one day permitting Google to sell ads and checked this. As a result, Google was able to outcompete _every_ ad publisher, and now "ad tech" doesn't make money buy "ads" does.

Google is right that they cannot separate them, but is lying about why: Neither unit would be profitable without the monopoly, because quite frankly if someone else could sell ads without sucking a ton of money off the top to make a failing self-driving car company, they would and simply win on price.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#273

Post by youngtaff »

Arainach wrote: post #116
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…

> or make it just as easy to unmerge two companies as it is to merge them. [Disclaimer: I work at Google, all words my own and not representative of anyone, etc.] There's no such thing. Let's stick to software since it's what HN knows best, but it's a universal truth. Merging two companies: you take the two sides and they keep running. You probably need some extra accounting work to make sure the mandatory reports fr…

Companies that spin off separate businesses do this stuff all the time, staff up the new business to fill the gaps, license tech from the parent to the new spinoff etc

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#274

Post by pocksuppet »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #75
jordanb wrote: post #2

That "Lake America" is doing a hell of a lot of work for Google

To all the people pissed about the "Lake America" stuff: why in the actual fuck do you want Google of all organizations to be arbiter of geographical info, instead of federal institutions that are (at least nominally) operated under democratic principles? Don't you understand the horror of what you're suggesting: "I want Google to impose it's own personal value judgments over the government's." Yes, I think it's incr…

Why should the USA override every other country about the names of things outside the USA?

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#275

Post by pocksuppet »

xp84 wrote: post #97
dragontamer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's meaningless to fight. Except not really. If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario across the board, and use the difference to find who is or isn't on my side on that issue. The only people calling it Gulf of America or Lake America are hardcore MAGATs in my social circle. Even former Trump voters in my social circle are annoyed and not using the new names. So it's an effe…

> If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario This is the same logic that the right wing used when they disagreed with Obama on some issues, so they blocked his Supreme Court nominations just because anything Obama does must be bad. Sounds like your social circle is in denial. There are certainly plenty of things Trump, buffoon and graft-a-holic he is, has done that are corrupt. Renam…

No, they didn't use any logic and they aren't now. They simply said whatever would let them win and it worked.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#276

Post by vincnetas »

idndnfjfj wrote: post #266
fsh wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some cute tech projects do not justify a massive monopoly. Google is financing Waymo using the ~300 billion dollar it extracts annually from consumers via ad spending. I would rather pay substantially less on anything I buy, and have the free market sort out self-driving cars.

[flagged]

free market :) (forgets about patents, tax cuts, excessive regulations thats unbearable for small players). Can it be that is not so free after all.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#277

Post by account42 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #120
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…

You're basically advocating for unscrambling the omelet to be easier. Should be obvious why it's harder to unmix than it is to mix.

He's saying that if we can't unscramble the omelet then we should make damned sure the omelet will be healthy before allowing it to be scrambled.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#278

Post by KellyCriterion »

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…

IIRC, the last real break-up was Standard Oil back then?

Since then, anti-cartel laws are written but no more enforced

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#279

Post by helpfulclippy »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #278
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…

IIRC, the last real break-up was Standard Oil back then? Since then, anti-cartel laws are written but no more enforced

AT&T back in the 80s Microsoft almost got it 2000-ish, but that did seem to mark the end of it.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#280

Post by fpoling »

majormajor wrote: post #249
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…

This is true, I'd go much further than the OP here and say the barrier for merger should be MUCH higher than the barrier for spin-out or split. There's no shortage of obvious problems that can arise from concentration of influence and control over a market. So just try to prevent it. Trade some max efficiency for redundancy + anti-corruption/pro-competition/pro-consumer market forces.

A progressive tax on the size of the company can do this.
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