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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

#281

Post by ta1243 »

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…

The goal of almost all search engines is to direct people to adverts, not to give them the results.

Even when you do get the results your after, and get sent to the page you want, the goal of that page is to serve you adverts, not to give you the content you want.

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

#282

Post by adventured »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #215
stego-tech wrote: post #188

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 u…

The GDP argument is weird. If Google being huge is good for GDP why don't we just let them own the whole country? One US company for everything, maximum GDP afterall!

Big tech is very good for the US. They're far more difficult to compete with in terms of scale and the resources they can deploy, than small companies. It more easily enables the US to suffocate the tech efforts of other competing nations. Giving this advantage up is extraordinarily moronic by the US. There is no benefit to the US by making it easier for the rest of the world to compete with the US golden geese. The DOJ isn't thinking that far ahead, they're playing a game of agenda.

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

#283

Post by Iulioh »

hightrix wrote: post #235
loumaciel wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons of small businesses rely on advertising. Tons of legit businesses only exist because online advertising became easy and widespread.

I fully understand that advertising enables many businesses. But there have been businesses based on lead pipes for drinking water plumbing, asbestos for residential insulation, and so on. You could make an argument that these technologies enabled many businesses as well. That doesn’t mean we should allow lead pipes for drinking water or to use asbestos in residential homes.

Bad things happened because tool, tool bad , very good argument.

Put yourself in the mind of someone making a THING, how do you plan to reach your possible customers for THING?

THING is the best in class, better than the competition but how would you make the world aware of THING existing?

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

#284

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

feelandcoffee wrote: post #270
ryandrake wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's just a lesson that capitalism is insatiable. Early on, Google didn't have personalized ads and they were still making money hand over fist just because search queries are an excellent signal into stuff you may want to buy. But in "line must always go up" fashion, there is even more money to be squeezed out if they surveille everything you do to personalize ads. Same thing happened with Facebook. They had a ton of data about what ads to show you solely based on your interactions on Facebook's (now also Instagram's) site and apps, but they could make even more money if they tracked you everywhere online in order to increase their ad click-through rates.

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

#285

Post by pdonis »

alexpotato wrote: post #101
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…

Rory Sutherland has a great take on this which is (paraphrasing and my own interpretation): Innovation is a lot easier when you have a lot of money to spend on R&D. In order to get that money, you can't compete on price b/c that's a race to the bottom. Instead, you want to focus on quality and/or customer service so that you become a monopoly and then can use monopoly profits to innovate to higher quality products an…

Peter Thiel made a similar argument about monopolies years ago. As I pointed out then [1], the argument only shows that monopoly is good for the monopolist; it doesn't actually show that monopolies are good for society as a whole.

[1] http://blog.peterdonis.com/opinions/monopoly-money.html

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

#286

Post by nomat »

someluccc wrote: post #277
zuminator wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intrinsi…

A) Do you pay them? - No: then yes it is free “But my data” Have your ever sold your data? Would the value you could ever possibly receive for your data ever equate to the value you get from the free services? Likely No and No. Is the free ad supported city newspaper free? Yes it is in fact free, just like FM radio is free, and broadcast television is free, and sidewalks next to billboards are free Someone creating s…

if you aren't considering the fact that your data is what enabled these companies to become such massive giants in the first place, you may be living outside of the EU.

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

#287

Post by api »

The most important thing -- and I doubt this would ever happen -- would be to break off the identity (OAuth) provider and make it some kind of public non-profit. One company should not own the identity layer for such a huge chunk of the Internet, and so many people use Google for this.

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

#288

Post by someluccc »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #275
someluccc wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry to repeat the "if you're not paying, you're the product, not the consumer" adage, but I think that's critically important when evaluating Google. These things aren't free, they're paid for by billions in advertising, and it's not like Google was the first to figure out this business model - radio and TV was "free" in the same manner for decades prior. I honestly would love it we would ditch surveillance capital…

Like I said in my comment. All of those things are things you can PAY FOR, today! To multi-trillion dollar corporations! The time you can go back to giving away your money for things google gives away for free is… now!

Excellent criticism too that the evil monopolist that devilishly gives away extremely useful and value-add products and services in order to expand its evil monopoly is also famously criticized by the victims of those free data-mining products for sometimes discontinuing them without giving them proper notice! Surely Google can’t just stop mistreating them without adequate prior notice!

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

#289

Post by dartos »

someluccc wrote: post #277
zuminator wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intrinsi…

A) Do you pay them? - No: then yes it is free “But my data” Have your ever sold your data? Would the value you could ever possibly receive for your data ever equate to the value you get from the free services? Likely No and No. Is the free ad supported city newspaper free? Yes it is in fact free, just like FM radio is free, and broadcast television is free, and sidewalks next to billboards are free Someone creating s…

> A) Do you pay them? - No: then yes it is free

And here we see the ostrich. When faced with the horrors of reality, sticks its head in the sand. It’s simpler in there.

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

#290

Post by novia »

331c8c71 wrote: post #251
novia wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two of Google's researchers are getting the Nobel prize for AlphaFold2 this year.

DeepMind, not Google organically.

Many parts of Google today are acquisitions: YouTube, Android, Doubleclick, and many more.
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