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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

#481

Post by JohnMakin »

carlosjobim wrote: post #357
trueismywork wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATTs customers were phone users, hence it was difficult for them. Google's customers are ad companies, and for them, switching away from Google is impossible. By thinking of how easy it is for you to switch, you are not considering the correct customers. And this shows in your statement about better search engine, better search engine cannot come without customers (not you) having option to switch.

> Google's customers are ad companies, and for them, switching away from Google is impossible. Billions (probably trillions) of dollars are spent every year on advertising through other channels than Google, including online. Let's stick to reality.

Yes, let's stick to reality - one (1) company has a quarter of ad revenue among ad companies. Seems like quite a lot, yes?

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

#482

Post by nonrandomstring »

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…

> I think we need a better term than monopoly,

I think you're right. It hides a lot. We do need a better understanding of the problems. But be careful what you wish for. Google being a monopoly is not a cause, but a symptom. Do a little 5Y analysis. Even rolling it back one step;

Q. Why is Google/Microsoft etc a monopoly?

A. Because they bought up all the competitors.

So, a deeper problem is the very ability to buy and sell companies. Is it "the market"? Yet it is possible to create articles of a company as non LLC/Ltd so that it it can never be bought or sold. People don't do this because they don't intend to "build a great product/company", they intend to cash-out and sell a great company. These subtle incentive structures really matter.

Dig deeper and ask things like "why do people only build companies to sell?" There's more upsetting answers behind that one too.

In the end, if you want to say BigTech is not to blame and could not do anything else but agglomerate into problematically large blocs then we have to concede the environment and incentives of modern business are harmful to the public/national good. The place to intervene is then at the level of those values.

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

#483

Post by nubinetwork »

parineum wrote: post #474
jemmyw wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read through some of the documents of the original complaint. This is mainly not about Google being the dominant search engine for consumers. It's more to do with their anti competitive behavior in the ad tech market. As a consumer, switching is easy. As a company that wants to advertise, switching is not easy if Google holds all the users. But also they've bought up all sides of the market, so what used to be comp…

I agree with you on the premise of the complaint but I think the parent's point still holds, the reason why you don't want to switch to another ad company is because all the people are with Google but they're with Google because they like it. The judgment makes a lot of hay over google paying to be the default search engine and how google has all this data on how valuable default is and how much people don't tend to…

> The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company

Just barely, 95% of their ads are scams.

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

#484

Post by shadowgovt »

b112 wrote: post #476
shadowgovt wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's an obvious difference between shelling out $60 up-front or $5 a month or whatever and shelling out $0 (and then being tracked, or having your data harvested). Especially in the modern ecosystem where costs have become divorced from income, people would (behavior observation strongly suggests) much rather pay with their information footprint (a resource they can't capitalize alone) than the dollars in thei…

But they aren't capitalizing their data, because they're paying more in the end. That's my point. Let's say widgets are $x. Now the widget manufacturer, as their competitors are advertising, decides to advertise too. They just hit magazines. Success! But then comes targeted advertising. Now they must pay for profiled advertising, which means that someone colllected the data, archived it, continues to track, and provi…

If your argument is "Browsers are subsidized by advertising driving up the cost of goods," I don't think I disagree but I don't think the consequence of stopping that model is the cost of good goes down.

Advertising is driven by competition; in the absence of a browser-subsidy flow for that money, the ads will still be there and prices won't go down. The ads will flow through other channels. Then we get higher cost of goods and no zero-cost browser, which seems strictly worse?

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

#485

Post by _heimdall »

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…

> I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'.

I think the problem is that people don't know what the word means. We don't need to redefine it, people will either respect the importance of definitions of we'll just lose the next term for a monopoly as well.

For anyone following along, Google is a monopoly because they are the market leader in multiple overlapping industries and product lines. They choose to leverage those products together to fain a competitive advantage that no one competing with a single product can reasonably compete with.

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

#486

Post by mulmen »

__loam wrote: post #444
sahila wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Riding this taxi cab directly to privatization of fire fighters.

I think you mean taking an Uber.

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

#487

Post by b112 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #484
b112 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they aren't capitalizing their data, because they're paying more in the end. That's my point. Let's say widgets are $x. Now the widget manufacturer, as their competitors are advertising, decides to advertise too. They just hit magazines. Success! But then comes targeted advertising. Now they must pay for profiled advertising, which means that someone colllected the data, archived it, continues to track, and provi…

If your argument is "Browsers are subsidized by advertising driving up the cost of goods," I don't think I disagree but I don't think the consequence of stopping that model is the cost of good goes down. Advertising is driven by competition; in the absence of a browser-subsidy flow for that money, the ads will still be there and prices won't go down. The ads will flow through other channels. Then we get higher cost o…

If the cost goes up, then the cost will come down. It doesn't happen overnight, and yes a browser is a minimal part of the market.

However if everyone paid cash for browsers, browsers would also be quite cheap. If you sell 50M copies a year, even $1 goes a very long way.

Firefox seems to spend around $200M/year1 on 'software development', but they also have lots of side projects (pocket, proxies, other software like thunderbird, etc) so I bet $50M could easily fit the bill. And Firefox doesn't even use a shared render engine, or HTML/etc parsers, it's not a chromium based browser.

1. https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

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

#488

Post by throwaway48540 »

avidiax wrote: post #479
throwaway48540 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their need to buy advertising proves it is not a monopoly. If they were, they'd make that easy and profitable decision immediately.

Google's payment to Apple isn't advertisement. It's to prevent Apple from rolling their own search engine, or selling the default to the next highest bidder.

Putting their search in front of people instead of others is advertisement. It doesn't prevent apple from doing anything.

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

#489

Post by danielmarkbruce »

randomdata wrote: post #480
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn't. I didn't start the discussion. Read the case. One of the biggest complaints is the fees Google pay Apple. Made up definitions aren't relevant. Here is the ruling: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzmaxjxvw/...

> No, it wasn't. I didn't start the discussion. All the more reason for you to stick the topic that is already there. No need to double down on whatever out-to-lunch behaviour that came beforehand. If you really want to talk about something else, why not start a new thread? > One of the biggest complaints is the fees Google pay Apple. Right, because that solidifies their position in the market. That spend provides a…

The thread started by someone saying switching costs are zero.

Actually read the case. Maybe start with the conclusion. Surely at some point you get tired of just making stuff up.

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

#490

Post by azemetre »

jszymborski wrote: post #195
Someone wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how Microsoft is not up for discussion when it's a behemoth Because we think interfering with the free market is necessary when a company misuses market power, not solely when it is a behemoth.

Public companies exist to enrich shareholders. If you are in a position to abuse your market power, you're sorta obligated to.

Agreed. Free markets is such a massive misnomer.

The only thing that matters is competitive markets.

“Free markets” is typically associated with regulatory capture, buying out your competitors, and abusing your monopoly status to thwart others.

Governments should care about competition, not that abusive corporations stay at the top.

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