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Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

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Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#291

Post by lotsofpulp »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #277
lotsofpulp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp offers very simple high quality image/video sharing. If you are being excluded by your friends, it’s not because the image quality is bad. It’s because they want to exclude you.

Why would I get a whatsapp when I already have a perfectly working messaging app? Everyone needs to download this random app because one kid is too broke to get an iphone? Some people are painfully unaware of what it looks like on the ground here...

Yes, if your friends and family are too lazy or unwilling to take 30 seconds to install a very widely used app for you, you are getting a valuable signal from them on where you rank in their social graph.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#292

Post by bearjaws »

chipdart wrote: post #253
bearjaws wrote: post #30

If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. We either start ripping this band-aids off or we will just continually have a worse and worse internet.

> If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. I don't follow your logic, because it does not have any logic. Can you clarify your line of reasoning? I mean, if breaking up a company creates more problems than the ones it solves, what leads you to believe that anticipating the breakup would have any impact whatsoever in the fact that breaking up the company creates more proble…

> I don't follow your logic, because it does not have any logic.

You do not follow it because you do not wish to.

Think of Google as a cancer.

You can ignore it for the rest of your life, and your quality of life may get shittier and shittier until you die.

Think of anti-trust like surgery, you may be permanently harmed, lose a limb, skin, organ, etc... but you will be better in the long run. Sometimes surgery has no side effects, sometimes it harms you, we won't know until we are out the other end.

In this case, we may have waited so long the cancer might kill the host by removing it. I don't believe that to be the case however.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#293

Post by bearjaws »

matthewfelgate wrote: post #58
bearjaws wrote: post #30

If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. We either start ripping this band-aids off or we will just continually have a worse and worse internet.

What about Microsoft?

Why is this always posted as some sort of "gotcha!"

Break them up to? Break everyone up.

Ask me any company over 5k employees. It should probably be broken up.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#294

Post by [deleted] »

shadowgovt wrote: post #79
uptownJimmy wrote: post #39

Google's "search results" are the textbook definition of a monopolized good/service. The whole thing is almost a casino, rigged to the point of absurdity. There has been nothing in my life so disillusioning as working on a Web app for a company that is more or less required to play Google's game.

Your problem isn't Google, your problem is capitalism and the limited attention economy. If you were in a position where you could just put things online and they may or may not be useful to people, you wouldn't be having this problem. But you're not; you're working for a taskmaster that demands attention or they can't justify their existence. If Google evaporates tomorrow, there's no guarantee that your product gets…

[deleted]

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#295

Post by [deleted] »

oneplane wrote: post #67
fny wrote: post #31

I'm very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved "uniform" businesses: - American Tobacco: Commodity - Standard Oil: Commodity - AT&T: Utility - Northern Securities: Railroads - Swift & Co: Meatpacking - Kodak: Film - Paramount: Movie Theaters Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective do…

There are probably only a small number of services that could successfully spin off on their own, but a lot of the value is in integration, which as others point out is also how some things seem 'free'. An easier example would be Microsoft and Office; you could spin off an application like that quite successfully, the same might apply to their ERP. But those examples only stem from the fact that they used to be isola…

[deleted]

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#296

Post by Chabsff »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #162
shadowgovt wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but it's entirely possible that separated from Google, Chrome is either not a viable business model (browsers don't make money on their own) or is incentivized to get into bed with some other ad company to make money, to effectively the same result.

Aren't you pointing out the exact problem with Google? If Chrome wasn't a viable business without Google's ads subsidizing it, isn't its existence in its current form exactly the kind of anti-competitive outcome we would be better off without? Without Google subsidizing Chrome, a real competitive market for browsers might emerge, with more vendors investing more effort into competing for users, without having to comp…

The original value-proposal for Chrome was: The more people browse the web in general, the more Google profits. So the mere existence of a good free, fast, and safe browser would inherently benefit Google at large in general. And that rationale is why we get to have Chromium at all.

Obviously things have evolved quite a bit since then, but I think the general pitch that Chrome is primarily a value-multiplier for the org at large, rather than a direct value generator is still broadly the case, and it's really not clear to me that it can exist as anything else without a fundamental reassessment of what it's trying to accomplish.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#300

Post by layer8 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #121
treyd wrote: post #83

I really hope that some portions are turned into public institutions (either directly or in the weird way organizations like USPS is) in some way. They've made themselves so deeply ingrained and essential to using the internet as loss leaders in some areas that it's impossible to imagine those services standing on their own and still making sense. That's what's responsible for their monopolization, and natural monopo…

I'm scratching my head trying to think of something Google does that should be a public institution. Can you give an example? YouTube is the closest thing I can think of, but it is tightly bound to advertising. Wikipedia, archive.org are two examples of non-Google projects that come to mind when I think of internet "public-good". They seem to be doing fine without advertising dollars (although perhaps they are only h…

Web search is certainly something that should be a public institution.
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