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Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

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Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#11

Post by nicoburns »

_heimdall wrote: post #9
raid2000 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well summarized. Anti-competition has become the new standard operating model.

At least in the US, I believe we've proven that anti-competition regulations don't work and that the government realized its easier to regulate the consumer than to deal with regulating massive corporations. If you want to win reelection you're much better off taking massive piles of cash from big businesses and regulate consumers to help create the monopolies. Trying to protect consumers by breaking up monopolies an…

> I believe we've proven that anti-competition regulations don't work

You have? How? You barely have any. And the ones you do have you rarely enforce.

> Trying to protect consumers by breaking up monopolies and promoting healthy market competition will see you leaving office in a hurry.

That sounds like a flaw in your political/electoral system not in anti-competition regulations.

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#12

Post by 20after4 »

bbor wrote: post #5

Amazingly written, hilarious, but I figured out what’s frustrating me: the focus on being a consumer. If you’re using words like “enshittocene” I feel you should think a little more about writing a post focusing on why Google isn’t helpful for product reviews. Google n co are destroying democracy and the planet itself , and to spend our final days complaining that sometimes people buy bad products seems out of touch.…

Google (and Walmart) established their dominant position through clever marketing based on lies. We bought it and only now are starting to realize what we fell for.

Google's big lie was "don't be evil." They provided overwhelmingly valuable services for free. They did everything with minimal advertising and generally fantastic performance. Then they merged with an advertising company and pretty soon "don't be evil" was abandoned, along with almost every other principle that they had used to earn their dominant position in search and email.

Walmart in the 1980s and 1990s was all about "Made in the USA.¹" They sold themselves as a small-town company that cared about American jobs and American values. They did this while simultaneously dealing with American manufacturers using ruthless tactics. Walmart had a direct and significant (I would say critical) role in the widespread decline of manufacturing in the US.

1. This is not so prominent anymore but it was a lie from the start. Walmart has a long history with claiming to support American manufacturing while aggressively doing the opposite. https://www.thestand.org/2014/11/how-walmart-destroyed-u-s-m...

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#14

Post by dotnet00 »

_heimdall wrote: post #9
raid2000 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well summarized. Anti-competition has become the new standard operating model.

At least in the US, I believe we've proven that anti-competition regulations don't work and that the government realized its easier to regulate the consumer than to deal with regulating massive corporations. If you want to win reelection you're much better off taking massive piles of cash from big businesses and regulate consumers to help create the monopolies. Trying to protect consumers by breaking up monopolies an…

In the US we've proven that it's easiest to just talk about anti-competition regulation to buy votes and then never actually get around to improving or enforcing it. After all, if you solve problems, you lose platforms to run the next election on.

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#15

Post by mistrial9 »

nicoburns wrote: post #11
_heimdall wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, I believe we've proven that anti-competition regulations don't work and that the government realized its easier to regulate the consumer than to deal with regulating massive corporations. If you want to win reelection you're much better off taking massive piles of cash from big businesses and regulate consumers to help create the monopolies. Trying to protect consumers by breaking up monopolies an…

> I believe we've proven that anti-competition regulations don't work You have? How? You barely have any. And the ones you do have you rarely enforce. > Trying to protect consumers by breaking up monopolies and promoting healthy market competition will see you leaving office in a hurry. That sounds like a flaw in your political/electoral system not in anti-competition regulations.

I agree with the sentiment here but..

> You barely have any .. anti-competition regulations

this is not true. However, the secrecy implemented around enforcement (bad publicity) causes the casual observer to think so..

There are very large enforcement actions that take place regularly.. they are far from perfect, and the failures tend to be the ones that are amplified in media..

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#16

Post by hypocrticalCons »

mikece wrote: post #4

So... the problem isn't that Google search isn't good but that (1) the ads sold are many and to some people who are scammers, and (2) enough of how the search engine algorithm works has become common knowledge and exploited by SEO experts seeking to inflate the relevance of sites by using what they know of how Google ranks search results. But for this to become a problem Google first had to come up with a system bett…

[flagged]

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#17

Post by hypocrticalCons »

20after4 wrote: post #7

It's the very definition of selling out. This seems to be a very common trend with the vast majority of all previously respected institutions (at least in the USA). They have all sold out (literally sold the company, in many cases) and have now abandoned all principles (or pretenses) of decency and provision of value to customers. Now they are just trading on past integrity that is no longer reality. They will coast…

> just trading

When Americans understand stockbuybacks should be illegal, that the entire stock market is a game played by monsters, then maybe, maybe you'll fix your shit

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#18

Post by hypocrticalCons »

bbor wrote: post #5

Amazingly written, hilarious, but I figured out what’s frustrating me: the focus on being a consumer. If you’re using words like “enshittocene” I feel you should think a little more about writing a post focusing on why Google isn’t helpful for product reviews. Google n co are destroying democracy and the planet itself , and to spend our final days complaining that sometimes people buy bad products seems out of touch.…

Well if it doesn't have that one singular job, you're admitting it shouldn't exist. Monopolies are illegal, Google shouldn't exist. Neither should Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Having massive marketing apparatuses that are larger than your company shouldn't be legal. Leave it to Americans to fully profiteer lies, marketing, and propaganda.

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#19

Post by johnea »

Mr. Doctoro is right about goggle being shit.

But in the casse of this article, the repeated reference to a "deal" goggle made with us, is just not correct. There was no deal.

Goggle never promised anyone that they wouldn't flood their search results with shit.

Goggle will do whatever makes it the most money, like laying off 1000s of workers while buying back 10s of billions of $ in stock. I bet those workers thought they had a "deal" too, they didn't.

The only correction is for us citizens to elect legislators, and demand regulation anad breakup of massive monopolies.

Instead some of the poorest trailer park trash in the us south are sending their spare nickels to the cheeto's gofundme campain. In spite of the fact that he's billionaire brat child from a NYC family slum lord empire.

So, don't expect any of this to change in the us, except to get worse, because at this point american's are just too stupid...

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#20

Post by _heimdall »

nicoburns wrote: post #11
_heimdall wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, I believe we've proven that anti-competition regulations don't work and that the government realized its easier to regulate the consumer than to deal with regulating massive corporations. If you want to win reelection you're much better off taking massive piles of cash from big businesses and regulate consumers to help create the monopolies. Trying to protect consumers by breaking up monopolies an…

> I believe we've proven that anti-competition regulations don't work You have? How? You barely have any. And the ones you do have you rarely enforce. > Trying to protect consumers by breaking up monopolies and promoting healthy market competition will see you leaving office in a hurry. That sounds like a flaw in your political/electoral system not in anti-competition regulations.

> You have? How? You barely have any. And the ones you do have you rarely enforce.

Lack of enforcement was actually part of my point. More broadly, though, we don't need more regulation so much as we need less legal protections that allow companies to get away with it.

> That sounds like a flaw in your political/electoral system not in anti-competition regulations.

No disagreements at all that our political and electoral system is flawed. I'm not so sure if that's the direct cause here though or if its the other way around. Meaning, we could be here because runaway anticompetitive behavior led to political and regulatory capture rather than the flawed political system being the proximal cause.

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