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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

#451

Post by mulmen »

nox101 wrote: post #412
mulmen wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anywhere there are eyeballs, there will be ads. I’m not convinced. Not running ads is what you do when you care about user experience. If you start running ads it’s because you care more about money than user experience. As long as there is robust competition the consumer’s preferences will be favored, because success comes at their discretion. So I think it’s more like “wherever the consumer isn’t the customer the…

Company A has no ads because they care about user experience Company B has ads. Company B makes more money and can therefore provide more features / more content. Company B ends up providing more of what users want.

Except company A will eat company B’s lunch. CX is a competitive advantage. See Netflix vs cable TV or Uber vs taxis.

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

#452

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rurp wrote: post #376
loumaciel wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 establishe…

> 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

Ceteris paribus. Running a small business in most states involves more rules today than it did in 2000. (Common denominator: the cost of financial transactions due to post-9/11 anti-money laundering rules.)

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

#453

Post by WalterBright »

hightrix wrote: post #432
WalterBright wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Short and simple response. > *Advertising in it's current form* is a plague on humanity. Magazine ads were not highly targeted towards every user that bought one. We liked magazine ads, they were high quality and usually contextually relevant. Modern advertising is nothing like magazine ads. We don't take screenshots of ads on webpages, print them out, and hang them on our walls like we did with magazine ads. > Why d…

What would you do without a search engine? Who do you think is going to pay for it?

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

#454

Post by jamesy0ung »

ta1243 wrote: post #299
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Youtube does people just don't pay for it....

Youtube videos still come with adverts, just not the google ones.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

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

#455

Post by gerash »

stego-tech wrote: post #188

Loving 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…

No, Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google ruling shows how inconsistent the ruling are on such a common sense situation.

So I don't want Google to be broken up and lose business only for MS, Apple, Amazon and Facebook to gobble up its business

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

#456

Post by ineedasername »

hzia wrote: post #446
stego-tech wrote: post #188

Loving 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…

I think most people do not understand that Google funnels a lot of their profits to make Chrome and Android into OSS. Youtube may be the only viable company that can come out of Google. Rest will either have to charge a lot of money or die. And we will be left with an even more profitable ad giant, that sends back all profits to it's share holders.

The Android Play Store alone generates about $100B/year for Google. I saw $40B as what Google has spent over the years on Android. That seems like a viable business.

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

#457

Post by rqtwteye »

I think as a general principle it would be best to break up companies automatically from a certain size on. We need more competition and less powerful corporations. I don’t see any benefit that these trillion dollar companies are providing for society. Only downside

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

#458

Post by WalterBright »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #444
WalterBright wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While the DoJ is an executive department, it is notoriously independent. Google is one of the biggest lobbyists in D.C. Trying to predict anti-trust actions by lobbying activity is naïve to the point of being counter-productive: it can be better, in many cases, to fly under the radar. (Exhibit A: Andreessen Horowitz.)

Cisco reputedly avoided an anti-trust action by wining and dining DoJ lawyers. Microsoft, in comparison, said rude things about the DoJ.

Of course, I wish things did not work this way. But isn't it a bit naive to think it doesn't?

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

#459

Post by mulmen »

WalterBright wrote: post #373

What 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.

Why would this breakup hand anything to another country? Competition is good for the economy. Breaking up Google allows new innovators to thrive.

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

#460

Post by ineedasername »

gerash wrote: post #455
stego-tech wrote: post #188

Loving 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…

No, Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google ruling shows how inconsistent the ruling are on such a common sense situation. So I don't want Google to be broken up and lose business only for MS, Apple, Amazon and Facebook to gobble up its business

A lot of people think it's common sense, but plenty of them disagree on what that common sense approach actually is.
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