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Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

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Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#281

Post by cycrutchfield »

User23 wrote: post #266
cycrutchfield wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Google would allow their employees to build IP for a particular political campaign? That is, they would waive their rights to the IP produced by their employees for the specific benefit of a particular candidate? That seems unlikely.

They took leaves of absence, with the company's blessing. And Google is incorporated in California, which has strict laws that employees are allowed to develop what they like when they're not on the clock using company resources. It's interesting people here are calling this a "conspiracy theory" when I guarantee you there are hundreds if not thousands of posters here who remember the TGIF and groups discussions wher…

At least admit that your initial statement was unclear at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. You made it sound like Googlers, in their capacity as employees, were working for a political campaign.

>And Google is incorporated in California, which has strict laws that employees are allowed to develop what they like when they're not on the clock using company resources.

Not really. Try to develop a search engine in your spare time and see what happens.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#282

Post by dang »

mav3rick wrote: post #269
luckylion wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of us work on things that people like and improve our lives. Like what? Services that support the ads monetization, lock in users and strengthen control over the ecosystem?

Search is just one big example. If you say search hasn't improved humanity then you're a delusional troll.

Please don't break the site guidelines regardless of how misinformed another comment is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#283

Post by enitihas »

I think the slowly most businesses would realize if you are a big company, it makes much more sense to capture exclusively the high end market (iPhone) and try to stay as much away as possible from the low end market. This gives you a lion's share of the profits, while making sure you don't get labelled a monopoly (and people asking you to make your platform open). This is the exact model of Apple. iPhones dominate the high end market, and the high price ensures both a.) high capture of the profit. b.) less market share due to simply being out of reach for a lot of people.

Once you are in the above position, you can do anything on your platform, and since you aren't a monopoly, you have much more leeway than your competitors. Your competitor might be forced to unbundle and compromise the uniformity of their platform, while you can simply choose to not even allow alternative browsers, because you know, you aren't a monopoly. Getting the low end market share might be come to seen as more of a headache than required.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#284

Post by IshKebab »

SomeOldThrow wrote: post #274
IshKebab wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because before Chrome existed most people used IE which is very slow to create or adopt new web standards and is full of bugs. That makes developing complex websites really difficult. What company do we know that makes some the most complex web sites out there and would really benefit if the web had... I dunno WebGL so they could make a smooth mapping site, maybe with a 3D mode. Or a new version of HTTP so their…

So, to be clear, you are saying they were being altruistic and purely motivated by the desire to push forward web standards, and that this is entirely unrelated to the business they run?

No, I'm saying they were pushing web standards because it helped the business they run. It happened to help the rest of the web too which is nice.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#285

Post by teknopaul »

enitihas wrote: post #283

I think the slowly most businesses would realize if you are a big company, it makes much more sense to capture exclusively the high end market (iPhone) and try to stay as much away as possible from the low end market. This gives you a lion's share of the profits, while making sure you don't get labelled a monopoly (and people asking you to make your platform open). This is the exact model of Apple. iPhones dominate t…

Its an interesting take on things. Other view is that Apple is an abusive monopoly any is getting away with it for the same reasons Google is. America is permitting Monolpolies at the moment because it is scared of China.

Presumably the US has doubts that capitalism is best and is betting on state supported Monoplies. ;)

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#286

Post by IshKebab »

dao- wrote: post #260
IshKebab wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because before Chrome existed most people used IE which is very slow to create or adopt new web standards and is full of bugs. That makes developing complex websites really difficult. What company do we know that makes some the most complex web sites out there and would really benefit if the web had... I dunno WebGL so they could make a smooth mapping site, maybe with a 3D mode. Or a new version of HTTP so their…

Reality was a bit different from what you describe. Firefox was a thing. Its market share was rising slowly but steadily. Google paid leading Firefox engineers such as Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher. It could have doubled down, improved Firefox's performance, marketed it aggressively, and then your narrative would make sense. Instead they pulled the engineers to create Chrome. There was no need at all for that except t…

Why pay to develop some other company's product when you can just develop it yourself? Nobody would do that.

Also when Chrome was released IE still had a 60% market share. You can't ignore that.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#288

Post by studentrob »

googthrwy_ wrote: post #221
nsomaru wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand, the penalty for not paying taxes is incarceration or heavy fines. The penalty for not working for Google is effectively having to find work somewhere else. Not exactly oranges to oranges. I appreciate that you may be working on things that improve people’s lives. How is that work funded? What would happen to those projects when they are deemed not profitable enough or endanger the evil stuff?…

I agree its not a perfect analogy but you could argue that you can go live somewhere else too. And yes, a lot of the work is funded by the "evil stuff" but Google is trying to expand their enterprise offerings and their hardware business is growing as well. I expect those to be profitable one day if not already.

I'm not a googler and I don't think their revenue model is funded by "evil stuff". At least you can choose not to use Google.

For broadband ISPs, on the other hand, you have one option. It's pricey and the service is not what it should be.

If people told me to feel badly about working for Google I'd tell them something not nice. There are real monopolies in the tech world, and Google isn't one of them.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#289

Post by xkgt »

benologist wrote: post #53

In the last ~year Google has admitted to accidentally-but-knowingly stealing $75 million from Adwords customers, and settled a case they had fought four years for $11 million to avoid revealing what happens to a banned Adsense account's unpaid revenue. There is likely several hundred million dollars of fraud just in these two 'edge cases' they ignored handling for decades, so it's definitely time for someone to dig d…

I saw a similar complaint video[1] from ZoggfromBetelgeuse but didn't know the problem was pervasive. It is a shame this killed one of the best channels on YT.

[1] https://youtu.be/SADDJY7e7cM

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#290

Post by derscheister »

swalsh wrote: post #160

Imagine what competition in the search space would do for adword prices. I have no idea how one would go about breaking up google search, and the infrastructure/IP behind it. Or changing consumer habits, but there would be a lot of beneifts to everyone.

How would it benefit everyone? Who exactly and in what way?
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