Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 888 posts

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

#481

Post by c0balt »

gerash wrote: post #461
arrosenberg wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big Tech is stagnant and mostly good at milking the US consumer for cash. The tech industry would be better serve the average American if the market was more dynamic, and that requires breaking up the big players who are (often illegally) stifling competition.

What industry is not stagnant then? Auto? Medicine? Food?

One may amend that most mature industries tend to move to an apparent stagnant state as the Capex for r&d increases over time, sometimes due to regulation and/ or due to increased technical complexity. There is also a point at which you can't optimize certain aspects further and have to figure out where to pivot innovation, e.g. end of dennard scaling/Moores law.

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

#482

Post by timeon »

relistan wrote: post #168

Hilarious to see all the people lamenting the break-up of AT&T. That break-up sparked the long distance phone race, which became the driving force for the massive laying of fiber optics... which enabled the Internet boom of the 1990s.

> which enabled the Internet boom

Now this gives me reason lamenting the break-up of AT&T.

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

#483

Post by hluska »

adventured wrote: post #282
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDP argument is weird. If Google being huge is good for GDP why don't we just let them own the whole country? One US company for everything, maximum GDP afterall!

Big tech is very good for the US. They're far more difficult to compete with in terms of scale and the resources they can deploy, than small companies. It more easily enables the US to suffocate the tech efforts of other competing nations. Giving this advantage up is extraordinarily moronic by the US. There is no benefit to the US by making it easier for the rest of the world to compete with the US golden geese. The…

Do you actually believe that the United States should permit a monopoly because it “enables the US to suffocate the tech efforts of other countries”?

You would rather ruin everyone else than have a functional economy? That says a lot about you.

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

#484

Post by PlattypusRex »

WalterBright wrote: post #453
hightrix wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Pay for Kagi or any other good, paid search engine, which is already superior to Google today?

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

#485

Post by kunwon1 »

bityard wrote: post #197
relistan wrote: post #168

Hilarious to see all the people lamenting the break-up of AT&T. That break-up sparked the long distance phone race, which became the driving force for the massive laying of fiber optics... which enabled the Internet boom of the 1990s.

Breaking up AT&T was unquestionably the right call. (So to say.) Long distance was expensive for quite a while even after the break-up. If you called up an out-of-state friend or relative to catch up, you expected the call to cost you at least a few bucks. (And you hoped they would be the ones to call you next time.) Even into the 90's, long distance at $0.10/minute was considered cheap. And in most rural areas, ever…

I was in the USAF in the early 2000s, stationed in Germany. Due to a dispute with DT, I ended up using long distance calling cards to dial (overseas!) into AOL to get online. It was very involved. I imagine I may have been the only person in the country doing this

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

#486

Post by timeon »

pawelmurias wrote: post #415
ssklash wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of being a massive ad company whose raison d'etre is to collect as much personal information about you as possible (with limited or no consent) to enable other people to try to convince you to buy stuff even remotely a net positive for the world?

I would prefer to see ads for things that I want rather then see ads for stuff I couldn't care less about. If I get convinced to buy useful things it's a win/win.

This seems like Stockholm syndrome.

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

#487

Post by sensanaty »

I'm fully onboard, but only if it's not only Google being broken up here. M$, Apple, Meta (!!!!!!!!) and all the other big tech companies all need to be nuked from orbit.

I'm worried that what's actually going to happen is Google getting broken up and M$ just swooping in to feast on the carcass, leaving us in an even shittier position. Out of all the evils coming from the FAANG world, M$ and Meta are by far the worst IMO, so not breaking them up alongside google is just idiocy

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

#488

Post by FpUser »

robertlagrant wrote: post #437
makeitdouble wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd raise you the same question on which private company is spawning its own LHC to research fundamental physics.

Firing particles at each other to disprove the next 500 variants of string theory is nowhere near as useful.

What a shortsighted comment

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

#489

Post by timeon »

bluGill wrote: post #268
ssklash wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ads are the only way people are able to learn about products, then there is clearly a massive failure of imagination, as well as innovation. People know what they need, and have always known. The concept of exploiting human psychology in order to sell more of a product to people who likely don't need it is a relatively recent development in human history. Plus you can just search for stuff you need in a search eng…

> People know what they need, and have always known No we don't. I need a better mouse trap, but I already have mouse traps that work, so if you make a better one you need me to find out about it otherwise I'll just buy the same old not so good ones out of habit thinking they work as good as any other one. There are also problems that I don't even know I have. There are a lot of houses with terrible insulation that t…

If you think the mouse traps work you probably do not need other. Anyway, marketing is not good way to find about flaws of current ways. Because that is not it's focus.

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

#490

Post by azemetre »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #414
mmastrac wrote: post #185

Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon -- the US could easily break all of these up. There's a huge risk to stagnation and over-optimization once these companies get as big as they do.

I'm curious as to why you included Apple. All of the other companies bought up a bunch of potential competitors so they wouldn't get outcompeted, e.g: Facebook: Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus Google: DoubleClick, YouTube, Android, Waze, Deep mind Amazon: Whole Foods, Audible, Zappos, Ring, One Medical Arguably, I think things would be better if a bunch of these acquisitions were never allowed in the first place. But mos…

Apple has operating systems, hardware, and software. Maybe Apple should spinoff OSX into its own company? They clearly abuse their positions with OS X and their hardware to push Apple specific software that only they benefit from.

If they had to separate their operating systems into another company, they would have to freely compete to put their app stores on their devices.

Or even better, spin off their hardware divisions if you want.

Either way Apple shouldn't be able to control their operating systems or their hardware unless they open up their devices and allow consumers easier ways to both repair their devices and install alternative operating systems on them.

Post reply on HN