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Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

nytimes.com

351–360 of 383 posts

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take? But I think antitrust trials should not he subject to settlement. It only proves to reinforce the accusations when a company is big enough to pay off the government.

...then how do you maintain an adversarial proceeding? Like, it's a pretty basic part of American law that courts only hear "cases and controversies" - that is to say, you need to have two parties who disagree before judges are allowed to do anything. If both parties no longer disagree, a settlement is how they call the lawsuit off. But if they're not allowed to settle... what happens? Are we going to force both part…

Citation?

I apologize - I know that the "Citation needed" meme is mostly a way to say "I disagree" but in this case you literally left out your citation :)

You make a claim ("most monopolies don't actually raise prices") you use the end-note citation format ( "[0]" ), but then the end-note is a parenthetical comment that starts to restart your claim and then trails off.

In all seriousness: If you or anyone else can list examples of efficient monopolies I'd be curious to know.

Off the top of my head: local utilities are often given local monopolies. Telecom seems to often be a local monopoly (I've got one option for Internet access, and that's reasonably common here in the US, especially outside of metro areas). I feel like the utilities are reasonably efficient but the telecoms aren't, but I don't have any specific data to back that up.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progressive corporate taxation could make it happen for reasons other than dodging the ghosts of chemical sins past!

Can we stop with taxing everything you don’t like? Taxes should be equal and used to fund the government, not as tools to make people do things you like.

Taxes used to offset the costs of undesirable activity are the most effective and efficient taxes, but you want less of that?

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#353

The United States government is fractured and can't get its act together. No one has a credible plan to solve this. Electing your preferred president doesn't solve a broken Senate and other structural problems. The presidency is likely to keep bouncing between parties that care as much (if not more) about undoing the previous four years as they do sketching out a coherent plan for the future four. How is wielding thi…

Hopefully the way for the United States to compete with China isn't to be more like them.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary, the entire DOJ understands that FAANG and the three-letter-agencies are one revolving door. Any judge that attempts to defang Google's data collection may well run afoul of the American surveillance system, which this administration will fight tooth and nail to defend. Not very different from how federal protectionism keeps Apple's App Store centralized despite trillions of dollars in ostensible mark…

> an ugly national security line that we're all too ashamed to admit exists We're all ashamed, apparently?? What do they call this, projections of a guilty conscience?

Jingoism. America loves the free market until TikTok and Chinese cars enter it, then it's kicking and screaming all the way down.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#355
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t we have enough taxes? Taxes should fund government not be used to force people to do things.

Taxes are disproportionately applied. We have more than enough taxes on working people and not enough on the wealthiest classes.

It's crazy to get downvotes for this matter of fact, good faith, truthful comment.

What's going on, HN?

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#356

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…

Merging implies growth, separation implies decay

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary, the entire DOJ understands that FAANG and the three-letter-agencies are one revolving door. Any judge that attempts to defang Google's data collection may well run afoul of the American surveillance system, which this administration will fight tooth and nail to defend. Not very different from how federal protectionism keeps Apple's App Store centralized despite trillions of dollars in ostensible mark…

Understandable, but how is that fair to other competitors? The whole system is now easily abused by huge mega-corporations. That goes against capitalism. Why did the USA suddenly abandon capitalism?

There's nothing sudden about it. It was happening since 1970, according to one very popular site.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an ugly national security line that we're all too ashamed to admit exists We're all ashamed, apparently?? What do they call this, projections of a guilty conscience?

Jingoism. America loves the free market until TikTok and Chinese cars enter it, then it's kicking and screaming all the way down.

You're not getting it.

There is no 'we', there is no 'America'.

These are propaganda terms. When you use them, you bolster the people who mindlessly repeat slogans and frustrate those who don't. It's a lose-lose.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#359
post #355
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes are disproportionately applied. We have more than enough taxes on working people and not enough on the wealthiest classes.

It's crazy to get downvotes for this matter of fact, good faith, truthful comment. What's going on, HN?

Vague assertions with no evidence don't really help the discussion. If someone is going to assert such a strong claim like "We have more than enough taxes on working people and not enough on the wealthiest classes.", they really need to at least define what they mean by "working people" and "wealthiest classes" and then give some evidence to show that "taxes are disproportionately applied" between these groups. (You say it was a "truthful comment" but how can you even be sure you are interpeting the comment the way the original poster meant?)

(In general, whether people agree or disagree with an assertion I would hope they wouldn't downvote something as long as the person contributes enough to the discussion that the reader can understand what they are asserting and can check for themselves if the evidence they give supports or doesn't support the assertion.)

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jingoism. America loves the free market until TikTok and Chinese cars enter it, then it's kicking and screaming all the way down.

You're not getting it. There is no 'we', there is no 'America'. These are propaganda terms. When you use them, you bolster the people who mindlessly repeat slogans and frustrate those who don't. It's a lose-lose.

My point was to relate the American POV of the judge with the America-optimistic POV of the parent comment.

Using "we" and "America" in that context is perfectly clarifying, I'm not beholden to pivot to your pet nitpick.

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