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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

#41

Post by dehrmann »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #21
LightHugger wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a theoretical benefit which is directly at odds with the benefits of competition in a healthy market. For google, my observation is the "big kahuna" benefit of google basically does not exist and competition needs to be restored. Google is famous for not innovating on anything successfully, they produce graveyards of trash. Instead what they do is buy other companies then enshittify them in an anti competitiv…

>Google is famous for not innovating on anything successfully PageRank Gmail Maps MapReduce Chrome Protocol Buffers Go

Didn't some of the early GPT work come out of Google?

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

#42

Post by fecal_henge »

fsh wrote: post #35
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…

Clearly this model no longer works. Bell labs had 11 nobel prize winners. What did Google invent? Slightly better generative neural networks whose offsprings now pollute their search results?

Google invented the ability to put an animated Gif inside a spreadsheet cell.

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

#43

Post by GauntletWizard »

fsh wrote: post #35
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…

Clearly this model no longer works. Bell labs had 11 nobel prize winners. What did Google invent? Slightly better generative neural networks whose offsprings now pollute their search results?

You could interpret this the other way - Why has Jeff Dean been snubbed by the Nobel committee? Why hasn't Larry Page gotten a Nobel for inventing the search technology that half the planet now depends on? I don't know what category to put that one in, but there's some important results in lightspeed-limited communications in "The Datacenter as a Computer" that would be worth extending the Physics category for.

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

#44

Post by dehrmann »

kibwen wrote: post #25

Google is such a rudderless mess that breaking it up may be the only way to salvage anything of societal value from this company.

One of the pendulums in business strategy is whether companies should be smaller so they can be more nimble and pursue their own destines or larger so the can be more protected from market demands and can capitalize on "synergies" with other business units.

In practice, investors usually discount larger companies for efficiency reasons. You can see this with acquisition announcements where the acquirer usually goes down in price. The synergies often fail to pay off because there aren't actually many synergies between making microwaves and running a TV network, and the sprawling empire turns into mostly independent fiefdoms.

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

#45

Post by molticrystal »

A lot of Google's features when integrated and leading to ads and other Google properties they are justified, but if you were to forbid cooperation between the divisions, they may be shut down or diminished, as on their own they would need to be subsidized considerably and the 3rd party alternatives for ads would take most of the profits probably leading to negative cash flow without decreasing the level of service or charging fees.

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

#46

Post by MathiasPius »

dtquad wrote: post #39

Hilariously 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…

It is precisely the large impact on GDP that poses a threat to the host nation. When companies like Novo Nordisk are such a huge part of the economy, they can exert disproportionate influence on society itself.

Our economy is absolutely benefiting from Novo Nordisk's size right now, but if/when their demand weakens or they're out-competed, we're going to end up with a lot of unemployed biotechnicians and massive roads to Kalundborg which will need to be maintained.

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

#47

Post by kibwen »

dtquad wrote: post #39

Hilariously 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…

Hilariously shortsighted. Breaking up Standard Oil created wildly competitive industries and launched Rockefeller's wealth into the stratosphere. Big Tech is a rent-seeking middleman that chokes the life out of innovation.

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

#48

Post by Kon5ole »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #22
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…

So wait, markets don't work, then? A free market, theoretically, promotes innovation by ensuring that businesses must advance their products in order to compete with one another. You're saying that a lack of competition promotes innovation by concentrating all of an industry's capital under one roof.

The thing that makes markets work is the struggle. A Darwinian survival of the fittest in a way. Once the struggle is over and only one contestant remains, the results are generally dystopian.

Also I believe that even when working optimally the Darwinian mechanism can't solve certain problems. Some things need to be dealt with by a group of motivated people working for other goals than profit.

Markets gave us compuserve and facebook while CERN gave us the open web, for example.

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

#49

Post by kibwen »

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…

What on Earth... you do realize that antitrust regulation was the only reason we got Unix in the first place, right?

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

#50

Post by dehrmann »

pixxel wrote: post #36
kibwen wrote: post #25

Google is such a rudderless mess that breaking it up may be the only way to salvage anything of societal value from this company.

>societal value Genuine question: what societal value would be lost if Google was erased tomorrow (all technical reliance their services was magically replaced overnight with alternatives by pixies)?

You could make that argument for anything, though.
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