I think the government is late to the game in this instance. I would have been in the “break it up” camp until this year. I see google’s search monopoly going away in the next few years with GenAI.
US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
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Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding was that most of the internet infrastructure was laid by Bell before their break-up because they projected video calling being a huge use case in the future.
1982 seem a bit early for the massive fiber rollout. My recollection was that Sprint was the driving factor for laying fiber, since they had the railroad right-of-ways. But that was quite a while back. Maybe there was also another dark-horse company laying fiber along railroads, but not operating as a phone company? Something not quite at the tip of my tongue. Seems like someone could have written a good history book…
The place that I heard about Bell Labs was: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner
I did a search for books about building the internet infrastructure and it turned up some other recommendations but I haven't read them so can't vouch for quality or content:
Network Geeks: How They Built the Internet by Brian E Carpenter
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum
How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone by Brian McCullough
Maybe someone else here has read them and can comment.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#373What country wouldn't love to have a Google? And the US wants to break its good fortune up.
Like all dominant companies, Google will eventually fall via strangulation by its internal bureaucracy. There's no reason to hand the market over to another country.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#374Hilariously shortsighted. Big Tech companies have been a GDP-doubling runaway success for the US economy. It would be like if we here in Denmark started breaking up Novo Nordisk. Our economists would probably do a public lynching of any government official who suggested doing that. However as a European I can't help but welcoming the US shooting themselves in the foot like this. Something tells me we will see more of…
Denmark has separate gdp numbers that don't include novo nordisk because they care about the real economy, not just number go up.
Developing and selling medicine to solve the number one health problem in the world (in addition to medicines for other health problems) is not real economy?
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#375Loving 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…
What MSFT learned from that was to open offices in Washington DC, lobby and sell to the federal gov. Hard to find the sense in this action.
Before the anti-trust action against Microsoft, Microsoft did not lobby nor donate to politicians.
After Bill Gates rode on a golf cart with Bill Clinton, he realized the need to pay the expected tribute to the politicians.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you're right about that being the dominant effect we should see small businesses increase as a portion of GDP as online ads become more prevalent, but as best I can tell we aren't seeing that at all. For example this[0] chart from the US Chamber of Commerce shows their share of the economy actually shrinking significantly.
An alternative effect could be that online ads are an avenue for better resourced established companies to out compete and stifle upstarts. Startups are always pressed for resources and running an effective online ad campaign can take significant resources.
You're surely right that some small businesses have benefited from the online ad market, but I suspect that on average larger companies have benefited to a greater degree.
[0]https://www.uschamber.com/small-business/small-business-data...
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#377Good. I bet Mozilla is nervous.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#378Loving 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…
> nicely provide us with everything digitally that we could need... Advertising Sorry for the snark, but no one anywhere needs advertising. Advertising in it's current form is a plague on humanity.
I am in the market for a new scanner. I looked at advertisements for them.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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?
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Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gmail was revolutionary at the start, but stopped innovating 10 years ago - why don’t we still have a good search engine within it? MapReduce would be invented anyway (I implemented it from scratch before learning of it’s existence). Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox (and novadays Safari is just as good if not better with ai) PageRank was what gave Google monopoly, it’s not a result of monopoly. Go - I can g…
> Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox Wat. It's like saying that an apple is a slightly upgraded orange. I would understand if you mentioned KHTML and Safari as relatives, but "slightly upgraded" does not fit anyway. > PageRank was what gave Google monopoly I don't think so. PageRank has been successfully implemented elsewhere, and outmatched. What helped Google build a monopoly was the first mover advantage,…
>Google Maps is an acquisition from 20 years ago. (As is Android)
This is comical. When Google acquired Android, it was nothing more than a 3000 line JavaScript demo. The Android OS was created entirely at Google.