What is the so-called "ad feed" mentioned in this article? What would it mean to license this to somebody else?
US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
351–360 of 888 posts
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Exactly, it's "just" the market setting the price. 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'…
I think that's exactly the point I was getting it. Who decides what efficient is, and what do they measure. You might care about vision algorithms, and I might care about hamburgers.
From the economics perspective, something being Monopoly doesn't mean it's inefficient.
Depending on the situation, they can be far more efficient then diverse companies, or much less
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sans access to the worlds top supercomputer infra.
Used to be the worlds top supercomputer infra was in national labs or such places and not private companies. Some of the largest are still there. In my hypothetical that would be the case "assuming same resources."
Governments can not compete on infra with trillion dollar computer companies.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
how did this happen before advertising? trade shows, trade magazines, word of mouth, window-dressing in the THING-quarter, ... why are personalized ads on a website indispensable?
What do you mean before advertising? There is no before advertising Pretty sure we have ads from Mesopotamia
i know what you're saying, but really now, you know what i mean. some scribbles on a pancard or some fish monger shouting above the crowd, it's not the same as the mass media ads that find you everywhere willingly and unwillingy, 24/7. so before 1900, why not, to make it easy. let's go back there.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#355DeepMind wouldn’t have happened to the level it did had google been broken up prior.
There was no shortage of other deep-pocketed suitors trying to buy DeepMind too during the Google acquisition back in 2014 - I think DeepMind would have likely found a reasonable home regardless.
I just bring this up as a reminder that the government did kill Bell Labs by breaking up a trust. There are pros and cons to every corporation system.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#356As someone who spent time researching the Ma Bells breakup and being knee deep in the local telecom deregulation, I see a lot of the same proposals when discussing the breaking up of Google and Facebook. This is the short story of what happened in the local telecom deregulation, which I'm pretty sure will happen if you were to break up Google. Consider this took place over the course of 20+ years, but I see the same…
So are you implying we shouldn’t’ve broken up Ma Bell? Or shouldn’t breakup Google? Perhaps Ma Bell taught us lessons to avoid this time around.
>> Perhaps Ma Bell taught us lessons to avoid this time around.
I hope this is true. I'm not sure breaking up Ma Bell was a good thing long term. All they did was break them up and then all the regional bells and smaller companies just re-constituted themselves again in some other form. The deregulation created more competition, but it was short lived because of economic pressures.
For many business customers, their first dealings with local telecom companies that were competing with Qwest at the time were horrific. Business customers would lose their landline and internet service for days without any idea when it would be restored. Cutovers were problematic and a total crap shoot if they went smoothly. Qwest regularly tagged the wrong lines that needed to be cut over. The billing nightmares of moving off of Qwest to a local company were too numerous to remember. Many businesses would switch for the savings and within a few months, would switch back because it was just one thing after another these companies couldn't get right. Suddenly paying a little more for the peace of mind far outweighed any savings they were getting.
I suspect Google customers will have the same experience so I'm still on the fence whether it will be worth it long term. The one argument you can make is that Google isn't simply a company that needs competition, but that's its actually doing damage by how they manipulate their search rankings and what results they're delivering to people - so in that regard, they absolutely need to be broken up.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#357HN 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…
Alternatives are bad because they do not have 24 years of data how users use the search. They will also never get this data if Google keeps dominating.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Defacto, yes they do, that’s the entire value proposition of their advertising model — that they can target customers better than any other platform due to buying intent signals from search queries.
When companies buy ads with Google they’re quite literally bidding for microtargeted user intent data.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#359If they did this 15 year ago, I bet google reader would still be actively maintained today. More innovation is possible when there are smaller companies working on fewer things. Yes there are economies of scale with large entities, but you then run up against the economy of shareholder attention if your little effort within the larger organization is not the current golden child of the day. When you work at a smaller…
Google engineer's time was not worth Google reader. If you think it was a useful product you could have created it yourself for profit.
There are a variety of people that did just that. It’s frustrating to keep seeing the sentiment, on HN of all places, that Google Reader is what is needed for RSS services. RSS readers are a niche business and clearly not worth Google’s opportunity cost of maintaining. I have used NewsBlur as my RSS aggregator since Reader shut down. Pretty sure it is a one man operation.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it still baffles me how bad the alternatives still are Kagi
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
> I still ended up falling back to google all the time.
It uses google search behind the scenes. Among other search providers.