331–340 of 888 posts
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DuckDuckGo can have a seat at the table when they implement their own search index. Putting a sticker on Bing and Yandex results doesn't make a Search company.
If they are actually nominally offering privacy over bing and yandex, while selling anonymous ads on that sticker, that is a valid USP.
Something I really don't get is the part about Google's monopoly in search text ads. FTA: > Finally, the filing said Google’s dominance over search text ads needed to be addressed by lowering barriers to would-be rivals or licensing its ad feed to others, independently from search results. What Google has is a monopoly on search (which is bad), but I don't think having a monopoly for advertising on your own property…
> What Google has is a monopoly on search (which is bad), but I don't think having a monopoly for advertising on your own property is a bad thing. Where one might run afoul is using your monopoly in one market -- search, in Google's case -- to gain an advantage in another market -- advertising. It's kinda interesting because they clearly don't treat "search" as a market given they don't sell it to anyone but it also…
There is another ongoing case regarding Google's Ad business (concerning Display Ads and more specifically the ad auctions) which seems pretty strong. But again, it's not about preventing Google from owning the ad platform for their own properties.
Preventing companies from owning the advertising platform for their own properties is a pretty terrible idea (got an idea for a new ad format that no network supports? Tough luck!). But, preventing a player with a monopoly in one sector from having an ad platform for other players, that's sensible.
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> 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.
Your data is worthless. Please do tell me how much you could sell your “data” for right now.
I don't want to sell my data. I want companies to stop collecting it.
In fact, I don't think I've seen anyone here wishing they could sell their data.
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Google doesn't really sell products though, not to businesses. It sells individual data to businesses, it sells advertising to businesses. The only thing the government will be interested in is the spying which they aren't allowed to do, but unaccountable corporations are allowed to do. As people become more aware of this it means google becomes less and less useful.
Google does not sell individual's data to businesses. Where do you even get that notion?
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Maybe if google sold more products to the feds they wouldn't be so brazen as to kill them off
Google doesn't really sell products though, not to businesses. It sells individual data to businesses, it sells advertising to businesses. The only thing the government will be interested in is the spying which they aren't allowed to do, but unaccountable corporations are allowed to do. As people become more aware of this it means google becomes less and less useful.
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If I am worried about anybody holding my private data (apart from US' 3-letter agencies and thats a hill I am not going to die upon since I don't have same basic human rights as US citizens), its Meta. Sure Google is everywhere, but Meta holds much more data on our inner personal sides, which are the easiest things to actually abuse to no end. That and pornhub.
Google actually tracks associates everywhere you visit in incognito mode in chrome and associates it with your main user id. So whatever pornhub knows, so does google.
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1242019127/google-incognito-m...
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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.
Online advertising has leveled the playing field, allowing smaller brands to compete with big names. Platforms like Google make it easy to capture attention, which is why even giants like Nike are losing market share to newer players. This shift spans all non-regulated industries. Without online ads, launching a nationwide brand would require enormous budgets, leaving us stuck with the same old monopolies.
And it still doesn't justify Google.
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Why wouldn't people pay for something highly useful? It seems the opposite, that people would pay for things that are highly useful. People don't pay for things that are marginally useful.
> Why wouldn't people pay for something highly useful? Typically because they can easily get it for free. Perfect case study is WinRar. How many people actually bought a license for software they used daily?
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Sort of playing devil's advocate here, but well run companies with near monopolies have on many occasions provided massive benefits that would not have been possible at smaller scale. Think of Bell Labs. Google has a number of Bell Labs style projects ongoing that massively benefit scientific research. Transformers, AlphaFold, etc. It's hard to see how a smaller, more focused company would be able to justify that typ…
Why can't that be right? I see the sentiment a lot, but it strikes me as reality denialism. People are willing to pay for one thing but not the other.
The issue is that these are near monopolies, so the market isn't efficient.
In other words, if those companies didn't have monopoly power, other businesses (or non-commercial entities) might be able to afford to hire some of these people as well, which might be beneficial overall for innovation.
That's the economic argument and it's pretty clean imo.
But as far as I'm concerned personally, I would really prefer to live in a world in which smart people work on human flourishing... rather than whatever that is.
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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…