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US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

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Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#181

Post by gaiagraphia »

The free market's great IF there's competition. If the market's dead, it's time to reinject some life and keep the cogs turning.

Scale's great, but it often comes with a societal cost. For every efficiency made, there's less agency and decent jobs to go round.

Seems unfair to make such decisions ad-hoc though, and string it out through years of court cases and m/billions of lawyer fees.

Why not establish rules of the market where once a company gets x% market share, the company 'wins', the CEO gets the ability to run for high office, the nation thanks shareholders and gives them a big payoff for supporting innovation, and those 1 run down the food chain get to spin off their own companies and go for gold.

Life and death is a part of everything sustainable in life. We should embrace these cycles and utilise them, not let old hat stagnation strangle and squeeze all what's good from life.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#182

Post by 4star3star »

gaiagraphia wrote: post #181

The free market's great IF there's competition. If the market's dead, it's time to reinject some life and keep the cogs turning. Scale's great, but it often comes with a societal cost. For every efficiency made, there's less agency and decent jobs to go round. Seems unfair to make such decisions ad-hoc though, and string it out through years of court cases and m/billions of lawyer fees. Why not establish rules of the…

It would become a game to NOT capture x% market share to the degree that it suited interested parties to avoid it.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#183

Post by mock-possum »

voisin wrote: post #116
geor9e wrote: post #113

HN is a special place but among the average folk, I get why 90% of people use google. I'm no google fan, but it still baffles me how bad the alternatives still are. Especially with so many companies scraping the whole web for AI data, and so many GPUs chugging on that data. I suppose they are all focused on replacing the concept of search results with LLM prose. Ironically bing is down at the moment https://downdetec…

> I'm no google fan, but it still baffles me how bad the alternatives still are. I have such a hard time understanding your position on this. Google search results are absolute trash now, compared to DuckDuckGo.

Here are some examples of DDG utterly failing as a search engine compared to google: https://www.tumblr.com/ddgvsggl

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#184

Post by bhelkey »

idle_zealot wrote: post #158
bhelkey wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android makes up ~70% of the global phone marketshare [1]. Google maps makes up 70% of the mapping marketshare [2]. Chrome makes up ~65% of the browser marketshare [3]. Those are three of the nine products Google has with over a billion users [4]. [1] https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics [2] https://www.thestreet.com/technology/big-tech-working-to-cha... [3] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-sha…

Excellent job demonstrating Google's broad market dominance, and that alternatives exist to replace them should antitrust action be taken.

What drop in equivalent exists for Android? I have no desire to move to iOS.

What drop in equivalent exists for Google maps? I have used OpenStreetMap for a personal project and have tried other proprietary options. If Google maps disappeared, life would go on but I would be worse off.

What equivalent exists for Chrome? Even on desktop I prefer Chrome over Firefox. On mobile, Firefox falls far behind Chrome.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#186

Post by patmorgan23 »

mvdtnz wrote: post #164
tannhaeuser wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn't that special a place considering nerds think about Google as a "search engine" lol. Google/Alphabet, first and foremost, is the largest online advertiser via its acquisitions of YouTube, DoubleClick, and others, in addition to selling ad placement on Google Search via AdWords, plus a growing number of consumer portals for price comparisons etc. integrated with Google Search (leaving out tracking your activit…

google.com is a search engine, regardless of what drives Google's revenue. Weird to say it's not.

It's an advertising billboard that if you scroll past might have some relevant links at the bottom of the page.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#187

Post by CSMastermind »

relistan wrote: post #168

Hilarious to see all the people lamenting the break-up of AT&T. That break-up sparked the long distance phone race, which became the driving force for the massive laying of fiber optics... which enabled the Internet boom of the 1990s.

My understanding was that most of the internet infrastructure was laid by Bell before their break-up because they projected video calling being a huge use case in the future.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#188

Post by stego-tech »

Loving the discourse in the comments here. Speaking as someone who grew up alongside Google in a sense, I fall on the side of the "break it up" camp. It was novel at the time to have a single company so nicely provide us with everything digitally that we could need - G Suite, YouTube, Search, Maps, Advertising, Books, Reader, etc - but in hindsight, we gave too much power to too unaccountable an entity, who in turn used it to choke off any avenues to challenge its dominance.

As for the rebuttal of "bUt ThE gDp", there's a counter-argument to be made that the GDP would have grown just as much with a higher diversity and stringent M&A regulations by spurring on new businesses and concepts, as opposed to mainstreaming fad after fad that seemingly solely benefits the established players. There's another argument to be made equating GDP values to desirable targets creates a Goodhart's Law problem, thereby making GDP as a measure of growth or success a bad metric; the rise of income and wealth inequality these past few decades, when there was increased focus on GDP as a target of growth or success, could be viewed as evidence supporting said argument.

It's worth noting that this case against Google is likely to be the bellwether for future divestments and breakups. Whatever comes next will be an invaluable learning experience for both sides, just like AT&T and Microsoft's own anti-trust woes were learning experiences for the current crop of companies.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#189

Post by esbranson »

Clubber wrote: post #131
gerash wrote: post #129

What an incompetent government where the goal is to pad some DoJ lawyer's resume instead of benefiting consumers or the economy

The US government has been working solely for their donors for the last 40+ years. Any benefit the voters get from lawmaking is coincidental.

That thought may be comforting, but no.

Don't mistake the limited-purpose US Government for your state government. Colorado does quite a bit, from healthcare to environment to policing. And so does the US, for those subjects it has jurisdiction, and has been doing so for hundreds of years.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#190

Post by s1artibartfast »

gaiagraphia wrote: post #181

The free market's great IF there's competition. If the market's dead, it's time to reinject some life and keep the cogs turning. Scale's great, but it often comes with a societal cost. For every efficiency made, there's less agency and decent jobs to go round. Seems unfair to make such decisions ad-hoc though, and string it out through years of court cases and m/billions of lawyer fees. Why not establish rules of the…

What happens to the company when it wins in your scenario. Did you leave that out or did I miss something?
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