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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

#431

Post by danielmarkbruce »

cogman10 wrote: post #388
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that we'd want any type of government entity running search is absurd on several dimensions.

It's only absurd if it's ran as a public-private cooperative. The government directly running something like this can be every bit as efficient as what any private entity could do. It's not as if the gov doesn't already employ in several sectors skilled software developers. It only goes haywire when Reagan/Clinton style "Send it to the private businesses" policies get in the way. When you start talking about a constr…

You misunderstand how big the skill gap is between google swes and government swes.

Constrained resource doesn't mean what you appear to think it means.

You have to take more than econ 101 to understand the real world.

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

#432

Post by nhumrich »

missedthecue wrote: post #334

I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'. I literally cannot think of any sort of product or service with lower switching costs than internet search. Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. Hundreds of orders of magnitude easier than switching to a different railroad if only one goes through your town. Google is a big ass company…

Monopoly is not "large, even 100% market share".

Monopoly is when they use that market share to compete in _an entire different market_ without actually earning the "best" spot. Or using their dominance to prevent competition entirely from succeeding. For example: Blocking all ad-tracking on its own browser, except ads purchased through its own ad network. Remember, _you_ are not the customer of Google. You are the product. The ad companies are the customer. The market is not search: the market is ad sales.

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

#433

Post by dceddia »

asadotzler wrote: post #385
dceddia wrote: post #32

Yeah I don’t know how this will go, but I’m not too optimistic. It feels like one of those situations where we “get exactly what we asked for”. Like those movies with an Evil Genie who delivers on their wishes in the sneakiest way possible. “You wished for $1M, so I burned your house down - but look at all the insurance money you got!” Or maybe a bit like how everyone wanted their cable bills to be cheaper (“just let…

"Let's do nothing then. Let's all just let the megacorporations write their own laws and manage themselves autonomously with no consumer or competition protections at all. Why bother." This is how you sound.

Oh yeah that’s not what I was going for here. Doing things is great. I just hope that they think through the pitfalls and loopholes of whatever they decide to do. I want to avoid the fates the article hinted at, stuff like “since you broke us up, we can’t possibly maintain Chrome for free anymore, that’s gonna be a subscription now”.

Another example of this was Apple’s response to being forced to allow alternate app stores, where they added enough fees and restrictions that it was effectively unusable. The spirit of the law (allow anyone to make apps without a gatekeeper and fees) was not what happened.

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

#434

Post by voxic11 »

t0mas88 wrote: post #341
missedthecue wrote: post #334

I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'. I literally cannot think of any sort of product or service with lower switching costs than internet search. Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. Hundreds of orders of magnitude easier than switching to a different railroad if only one goes through your town. Google is a big ass company…

Google is offering a free browser, while making a good browser costs money. They are subsidising that by their huge ad-business. And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. That browser is competing with someone like Opera (used to be a paid for product) and Mozilla in an unfair way, becau…

Making a good OS costs money also but linux is given away for free. Is linux unfairly competing with Microsoft and Apple?

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

#435

Post by Teever »

voxic11 wrote: post #434
t0mas88 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is offering a free browser, while making a good browser costs money. They are subsidising that by their huge ad-business. And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. That browser is competing with someone like Opera (used to be a paid for product) and Mozilla in an unfair way, becau…

Making a good OS costs money also but linux is given away for free. Is linux unfairly competing with Microsoft and Apple?

You have to look at this on a case by case basis.

It's not hard to see that the browser market has suffered from the actions of Google, while the operating system market has not suffered from the actions of Linux.

If anything antitrust action against Google might give Microsoft another kick at the mobile can and they can take on the Linux-based android OS that Google distributes.

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

#436

Post by Teever »

sahila wrote: post #412
__loam wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is so critically important to the infrastructure of the internet itself that I really struggle to understand why a for profit entity with incentives that are not aligned to the public should be in charge of the most important search engine.

Because they created the search engine, and truthfully profit motives produce better products at lower costs than non-profits generally across the board. The alternative is having government creating software and it’s hard to point to any public US website/app where I’m amazed.

That's not the only alternative.

Another alternative could be that the government breaks up entities like Google and regulates the market in a way that segments it so that it is more beneficial to society by providing more safety and stability over the vital infrastructure that is the Internet as well as by creating healthier markets that provide consumers with access to cheaper, better goods from a variety of vendors aren't squeezed by the likes Google, Apple, and Amazon.

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

#437

Post by Ferret7446 »

mcpar-land wrote: post #65
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…

Breaking up their individual businesses can cause each business to have incentives that line up better with their customers / users. Example: if Chrome was separated from Google, they won't have as much of an incentive to push back against adblockers with things like Manifest V3. Or include APIs that are only available to google websites (Which it has! https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018 )

> Example: if Chrome was separated from Google, they won't have as much of an incentive to push back against adblockers

I think your example is completely wrong. Chrome has no source of funding. If separated from Google, they will have a massively magnified incentive to cater to the whims of advertisers because they would be completely subservient to them for funding.

My understanding is that Chrome provides value to Google through intangible means like brand association and thus Chrome does not have to 100% justify its existence by enabling ads for Google, meaning that it has some funding to just be a good browser for consumers.

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

#438

Post by chipdart »

antihipocrat wrote: post #301
chipdart wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "buy it or don't" does not work with oligopolies. If you had a free market, I would agree, but you very much don't in this case. Why do you believe there is no free market on mobile phones? I mean, what exactly forces you to pick an iPhone over anything?

That's not quite what the parent meant. There is a choice between very few phone manufacturers, and even less mobile operating systems. Don't want to sign up to one multinational behemoth? Well, your choice is to sign up to one other multinational behemoth.

> There is a choice between very few phone manufacturers, and even less mobile operating systems.

I don't think that the manufacturer assertion is true at all. You can go to any random online store and get dozens of brands and manufacturers. It just so happens that popular demand focuses only on a hand full of manufacturers who are outcompeting everyone in the free market.

Take a look even to Android's market share. You have four manufacturers with double digit market shares, and a couple of dozen entriee. Is that what you call a monopoly?

https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-manufacturers

The OS comment is even more badfling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_operating...

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

#439

Post by throw-the-towel »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #291
Workaccount2 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lecturing people on their morals is fun but painfully useless. Peer pressure exists, and corps know how to leverage it, and that's a fact that we need to deal with.

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

#440

Post by katbyte »

dagmx wrote: post #413
sahila wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your rationale explain Internet Explore/Edge and Safari which both have abundance of money and still can’t outcompete Chrome? This goes back to the original point about Google search being superior to Bing, and not just because it’s free.

Differing priorities. Edge is based on blink now anyway , so as a core browser engine they’re roughly the same. It’s the higher level UX that is differentiated. Safari has largely caught up now for web standards and mostly only lags behind in experimental features that are largely driven by Google anyway. But Safari has better battery use and privacy. Chrome is good because Google see it as their play at a web OS. Th…

I would love to use safari but for years now it will randomly just start refreshing pages. I have no idea why or even where to begin to debug it so on chrome I stay.

Removing manifest v2 might be the kick to try Firefox again but I’d still like to fix safari

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