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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

#261

Post by mulmen »

AlexandrB wrote: post #174
arghwhat wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having been a paid subscriber for a number of months, I have to say that it still wasn't cutting it. I still ended up falling back to google all the time. Plus, https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

What bugs me most about Kagi at the moment is that their iOS plugin behaves weirdly. Frequently it will completely swallow my search and I'll have to retype it. Eventually I just disabled it :( Arguably this is not their fault - I really wish iOS/MacOS Safari let you set a custom search engine instead of picking from a fixed list.

On iOS I just set my default browser to Orion with Kagi as a default search engine. There’s some minor UI bugs but they’re not showstoppers.

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

#262

Post by tick_tock_tick »

tensor wrote: post #191
eagerpace wrote: post #178

Anywhere there are eyeballs, there will be ads. And wherever there are ads there are privacy concerns. Netflix waited until they had sufficiently killed off cable TV, then went back to creating the same problem it fixed. No ads in ChatGPT today, but soon as it (or a competitor) gains meaningful marketshare, there will be ads.

What I'd love to see is regulation forcing companies to provide reasonably priced ad-free options. There should be a right to opt out of ads.

I mean Youtube does people just don't pay for it....

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

#263

Post by CatWChainsaw »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #98
akoboldfrying wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chrome is not installed by default on Windows PCs; Edge is Whenever this is brought up, the silence is deafening. Edge is a good browser, and users are notoriously lazy; most won't read a dialog box before clicking it away. And yet... ~everyone on Windows still downloads Chrome.

does google.com still push Chrome? I think it does, and it's most people's first website

IME if I am using a non-Chrome browser I get three nags from Google to switch to Chrome before it gives up. It's happened on Google's home page, Gmail, and Maps.

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

#264

Post by zuminator »

someluccc wrote: post #250
bityard wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking up AT&T was unquestionably the right call. (So to say.) Long distance was expensive for quite a while even after the break-up. If you called up an out-of-state friend or relative to catch up, you expected the call to cost you at least a few bucks. (And you hoped they would be the ones to call you next time.) Even into the 90's, long distance at $0.10/minute was considered cheap. And in most rural areas, ever…

This illustrates why breaking up google is a good idea given their egregious charges (free) for things people used to/still spend money on, such as: - An office software suite - Global maps and GPS, City Guides - Video entertainment - Mobile and Desktop OS - Web Browsers Also, pay no mind to their competitors in all of those markets AND in their core business of search, being feeble multi-trillion and multi-billion g…

Those things aren't free, they're supported by ad revenue and the sale of personal or aggregated user information. I'm not saying there isn't a place for that type of software, but imo it's wrong and somewhat dangerous to equate that with things that are actually free. And even so, to the extent that any of Google's software is actually free, it's mostly a loss leader for the sake of vendor lock-in, which is intrinsically anticompetitive.

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

#265

Post by someluccc »

Kon5ole wrote: post #48
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, markets don't work, then? A free market, theoretically, promotes innovation by ensuring that businesses must advance their products in order to compete with one another. You're saying that a lack of competition promotes innovation by concentrating all of an industry's capital under one roof.

The thing that makes markets work is the struggle. A Darwinian survival of the fittest in a way. Once the struggle is over and only one contestant remains, the results are generally dystopian. Also I believe that even when working optimally the Darwinian mechanism can't solve certain problems. Some things need to be dealt with by a group of motivated people working for other goals than profit. Markets gave us compuse…

Yes I can see the dystopian consequences of google’s search monopoly profits, which they have used to do such horrible things as:

- Providing a free alternative to Microsoft’s monopolized office suite and desktop OS

- Provide a free alternative to Apple’s mobile OS, spurring a revolution in access to the internet for the world’s poor

- Provide free global maps with streetview sights

- Provide a free to access video platform with invaluable educational resources that allows millions of creators to make a living and that likely wouldn’t exist save for Google’s monumental investments and ability to sustain years of losses

- Research given away for free that ignited the current AI revolution

- Research given away for free that is revolutionizing medicine and drug development

In sum, truly a horrible thing they’ve done

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

#266

Post by ruthmarx »

idle_zealot wrote: post #259
ruthmarx wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interoperability is great, Yup, and that's what people want. So what is the integrated service you are saying exists that can be a drop in replacement for the way so many organizations use Google's integrated services?

There isn't one, and there's no incentive to build it so long as creating a walled garden is more profitable.

> There isn't one,

There we go. So if we go back up to your first comment where you say there are separate replacements for some services, you can see that isn't really relevant since what is being discussed was a drop in replacement for Google, and not an individual service they offer.

Aside from that though, Google's offerings are not a walled garden.

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

#267

Post by someluccc »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #242
teleforce wrote: post #8

There's side effect benefit of big kahuna companies mainly on the significant breakthrough and game changing research output because these excellent researchers are paid handsome money compared to conventional universities or research institutions. We saw this with AT&T Bell research labs with their inventions of transistor and Unix, among others. The same thing happened with Google research with (arguably) deep lear…

So it's OK to burden the whole country with a monopoly as long as they fund a handful of Nobel prizes? Competition is a prerequisite for healthy Capitalism. Lack of competition is the Achilles heel.

Please do tell us how Google is a burden to the whole country.

Is it the free maps? free mobile OS? free email? free cloud storage? free video service? free office suite? free desktop OS? free AI chat?

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

#268

Post by bluGill »

ssklash wrote: post #148
dvngnt_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do people learn of products?

If ads are the only way people are able to learn about products, then there is clearly a massive failure of imagination, as well as innovation. People know what they need, and have always known. The concept of exploiting human psychology in order to sell more of a product to people who likely don't need it is a relatively recent development in human history. Plus you can just search for stuff you need in a search eng…

> People know what they need, and have always known

No we don't. I need a better mouse trap, but I already have mouse traps that work, so if you make a better one you need me to find out about it otherwise I'll just buy the same old not so good ones out of habit thinking they work as good as any other one. There are also problems that I don't even know I have. There are a lot of houses with terrible insulation that the owners really need some advertisement to get them to upgrade - it will pay off in just a few years.

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

#269

Post by mulmen »

tensor wrote: post #191
eagerpace wrote: post #178

Anywhere there are eyeballs, there will be ads. And wherever there are ads there are privacy concerns. Netflix waited until they had sufficiently killed off cable TV, then went back to creating the same problem it fixed. No ads in ChatGPT today, but soon as it (or a competitor) gains meaningful marketshare, there will be ads.

What I'd love to see is regulation forcing companies to provide reasonably priced ad-free options. There should be a right to opt out of ads.

Competition should solve this. The government’s role is to cultivate competitive markets, not to get bogged down in implementation details.

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

#270

Post by feelandcoffee »

ryandrake wrote: post #218
eagerpace wrote: post #178

Anywhere there are eyeballs, there will be ads. And wherever there are ads there are privacy concerns. Netflix waited until they had sufficiently killed off cable TV, then went back to creating the same problem it fixed. No ads in ChatGPT today, but soon as it (or a competitor) gains meaningful marketshare, there will be ads.

> And wherever there are ads there are privacy concerns. Not necessarily true. Physical billboards are ads but (mostly) without privacy concerns, until they start putting cameras on them watching who walks by and looks.

I miss old contextual advertising. Like you read a sports website, you see ads for matches, sports gear, etc, all based on the content not the user preferences.
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