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Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

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Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#51

Post by kubb »

eloisant wrote: post #48
kubb wrote: post #21

In my impression, a lot of people here hold a surprisingly contradictory set of beliefs. They're huge fans of the current economic system, where the main actors are publicly owned companies, and where we rely on profits growing YOY to generate wealth for everyone (who owns the stocks). And, on the other hand, they're critical of Google which is operating precisely as such a company, and doing exactly what it needs fo…

Anti-trust laws are crucial for a well functioning capitalism. Without them, power eventually gets concentrated into few companies holding monopolies, while the fundamental of capitalism is competition. The problem is anti-trust laws have not been enforced and we let tech companies hold way too much power.

Do you think the concentration of power should be avoided in general, and let’s say a single person shouldn’t be able to decide on a whim that thousands of people have to do something pointless or harmful, like building a mega yacht?

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#52

Post by crowcroft »

Hard to think of any other ad sales company that has been able to double their prices every year for five years while offering the same thing.

TV networks didn’t, even in their prime. I wonder if that’s because there was more than one of them and they had to … with each other.

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#53

Post by grotorea »

avidiax wrote: post #35
fidotron wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android, cloud, email, youtube, maps, search and advertising could all be entirely separate businesses in an actual sense.

Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare Email -- nobody pays for email. Get ready for a much smaller mailbox and ads targeted by email contents. Get "sponsored" emails in your feed. YouTube -- was a separate company before Maps -- will become a free tourist map, may have to pay to u…

> Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones.

The Android company could simply get paid licensing fees for its OS and extras like Microsoft? Or maybe AOSP would instead continue as a intercompany project somewhat similar to Linux (the kernel).

> Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare

That's dumping and I don't think it should be allowed so routinely anyway.

> Email -- nobody pays for email. Get ready for a much smaller mailbox and ads targeted by email contents. Get "sponsored" emails in your feed.

So, if people care they can pay for the paid service.

> YouTube -- was a separate company before

Was it profitable through? I see Alphabet published revenue numbers but I didn't find profit numbers. So maybe it would be hit by costcutting like limiting video length in some cases.

> Maps -- will become a free tourist map, may have to pay to unlock any zone except your home.

OpenStreetMaps exists, so an independent Google Maps company would have to compete with that.

> Search -- if it can sell ads independently, could be a viable business.

It's the starting and most profitable part that paid for all the rest, no? How it could not be viable.

> Advertising -- all the other units need advertising to survive. This could be a clearinghouse

But is the profit in the clearinghouse part or the selling ad space part? I'm guessing both.

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#54

Post by passwordoops »

kubb wrote: post #47
passwordoops wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that the company and execs are behaving exactly as they should given the regulatory environment that existed since the 1980s. Namely, do not stand in the way of consolidation and only consider consumer prices for anti-Trust evaluations. Unfortunately that's a fundamentally anti-capitalist way to go about things because the end result is what Google, and frankly all other dominant, publicly traded corpora…

Do you think there should be regulation preventing consolidation in other areas, like land ownership?

What does that have to do with enforcing already-existing anti-trust regulation? Anti-trust regulation, mind you, that helped the US mobilize for WW2 and led directly to a golden age for American innovation, standard of living and defeated the Soviets?

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#55

Post by izacus »

fdw wrote: post #43
avidiax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare Email -- nobody pays for email. Get ready for a much smaller mailbox and ads targeted by email contents. Get "sponsored" emails in your feed. YouTube -- was a separate company before Maps -- will become a free tourist map, may have to pay to u…

But isn't that the very problem? The market for these loss-leading services is skewed because Google subsidizes their free offerings so that they improve their ads branch. Because it is hard to compete with a free (actually money-losing) service, it is very hard for competitors to spring up. And thus the whole thing is anti-competitive. If they were separate companies and had to compete on their own merit, not subsid…

> And then we are a step closer to the free market that is efficient and good for consumers.

With Apple, Amazon and Microsoft doing the same in same markets... are we? Because it doesn't seem like "whap the random company that didn't pay enough for marketing" strategy isn't really working into establishing proper competition that benefits society.

Maybe... a different approach needs to be taken? How about starting to talk about legislation which would force large companies to allow competition into their vertical integrations - ALL of them, not just the single pet megacorp we hate this week. Level playing field and all that.

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#56

Post by epolanski »

grotorea wrote: post #53
avidiax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare Email -- nobody pays for email. Get ready for a much smaller mailbox and ads targeted by email contents. Get "sponsored" emails in your feed. YouTube -- was a separate company before Maps -- will become a free tourist map, may have to pay to u…

> Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. The Android company could simply get paid licensing fees for its OS and extras like Microsoft? Or maybe AOSP would instead continue as a intercompany project somewhat similar to Linux (the kernel). > Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare That's dumping and I don't think it shoul…

> It's the starting and most profitable part that paid for all the rest, no? How it could not be viable.

It relies on your information taken from your phone/email/search/youtube history/etc. Without all that data the value of ads is much lower.

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#57

Post by epolanski »

throwaway4good wrote: post #25
bomewish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to say it but this is where we get the state to step in and simply dismember the company.

Google is a US company but the "welfare loss" its monopoly create is on the whole (western) world and not just the US economy. That is why it won't be regulated out of existance. That and national security.

Care to explain how is it better for "national security" that some of Google's division have to be sold/spun off into different companies?

What is exactly the threat of YouTube becoming an independent company again, e.g.?

The only thing I see is a loss for Google in revenue and in YouTube in the "quality" of their ads.

None of this has any implication on national security.

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#58

Post by fidotron »

epolanski wrote: post #56
grotorea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. The Android company could simply get paid licensing fees for its OS and extras like Microsoft? Or maybe AOSP would instead continue as a intercompany project somewhat similar to Linux (the kernel). > Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare That's dumping and I don't think it shoul…

> It's the starting and most profitable part that paid for all the rest, no? How it could not be viable. It relies on your information taken from your phone/email/search/youtube history/etc. Without all that data the value of ads is much lower.

You mean the ad people may have to explicitly pay for information they want to use? Horrifying stuff.

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#59

Post by danaris »

fdw wrote: post #43
avidiax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare Email -- nobody pays for email. Get ready for a much smaller mailbox and ads targeted by email contents. Get "sponsored" emails in your feed. YouTube -- was a separate company before Maps -- will become a free tourist map, may have to pay to u…

But isn't that the very problem? The market for these loss-leading services is skewed because Google subsidizes their free offerings so that they improve their ads branch. Because it is hard to compete with a free (actually money-losing) service, it is very hard for competitors to spring up. And thus the whole thing is anti-competitive. If they were separate companies and had to compete on their own merit, not subsid…

Precisely.

The argument "but if you spin off this major part of the company, it wouldn't be profitable enough to survive on its own" is the whole damn point. Using your monopoly in one area to prop up an otherwise-unprofitable arm controlling another area is exactly the kind of behavior antitrust law is designed to combat.

Too many people (especially around here) seem to forget that.

Re: Google/IAC/Expedia (2019)

#60

Post by danaris »

kubb wrote: post #51
eloisant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-trust laws are crucial for a well functioning capitalism. Without them, power eventually gets concentrated into few companies holding monopolies, while the fundamental of capitalism is competition. The problem is anti-trust laws have not been enforced and we let tech companies hold way too much power.

Do you think the concentration of power should be avoided in general, and let’s say a single person shouldn’t be able to decide on a whim that thousands of people have to do something pointless or harmful, like building a mega yacht?

Dunno about the GP, but I do.

I know it's not something that's going to happen any time in the foreseeable future, but I think it would be fantastic for our society and economy if the top marginal tax rate was 100%, with that tax bracket starting at (just as an off-the cuff estimate) something like $50 million/year, with regular and capital gains income counted together and taxed at the same rate.

Many people witter about how that means there's "no incentive to do better", but a) if you as a person making $50,000, $500,000, or even $5,000,000 per year think that this applies to you or is ever likely to, you are probably wrong, because even the person making $5M/yr is closer to the one making $50K/yr than they are to the one making $50M/yr, and b) if the only incentive you personally respond to is monetary, you are in the minority, because it's plain from empirical evidence and plenty of solid scientific research that the norm for human beings is to care about doing a good job for its own sake—so long as they're not being burned out, beaten down, and kept poor, and especially if they're allowed to do work that they like doing and are given some degree of ownership in it (not legally/financially, but conceptually—autonomy, a say in the process, etc).

More realistically, I'd love to return to something like the tax structure in what many look back on as a golden age: the post-WWII years, when the top marginal tax rate was above 90%, and yet somehow our industry chugged along at a fantastic pace, and people didn't just stop caring because there was "nothing to work for".

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