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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

#511

Post by shiroiushi »

WalterBright wrote: post #423
hightrix wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching the internet and not rendering any promoted links or ads in my browser.

[flagged]

The reason people turned to ad-blockers is because the ads became too intrusive. They were fine (or at least bearable) when they were just simple text boxes next to your Google search results, or maybe when they were static banner ads. But then the advertisers came up with pop-ups, pop-unders, video ads, 2-hour long ads in the middle of YouTube videos, and all kind of other nasty shenanigans that hijacked your computer and rendered it completely unusable. The advertisers have only themselves to blame for ad-blockers.

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

#512

Post by hkand »

rqtwteye wrote: post #457

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

To say you can't see any benefit at all is probably an overstatement.

These trillion dollar companies were often able to invest into big money-losing moonshot projects that benefited consumers massively - in Google's case, GMail and Google Maps - which were truly unimaginable at the time even though they're taken for granted today, so there's clearly some benefit in the form of innovation. Who else can afford to build things like that?

The questions to ask are, can startups and venture capital take on the role of innovating that these big corps have done? I'm doubtful, since there's been no startup in the past ten years that put out anything nearly as genuinely innovative and helpful as Google Maps was for me, mainly because the risk/profit ratio is so bad without the network effects that these big companies have.

Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Ten years ago, when the big companies were innovating so much to the benefit of consumers, I'd answer unequivocally yes. Now it's much less clear.

And finally, is there any way to rein in the negative effects of these big companies while bringing out the positive effects to the benefit of consumers?

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

#513

Post by shiroiushi »

dmonitor wrote: post #416
someluccc wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This illustrates why breaking up google is a good idea given their egregious charges (free) for things people used to/still spend money on, such as: - An office software suite - Global maps and GPS, City Guides - Video entertainment - Mobile and Desktop OS - Web Browsers Also, pay no mind to their competitors in all of those markets AND in their core business of search, being feeble multi-trillion and multi-billion g…

My concern is that breaking up Google without breaking up Microsoft will basically just be giving MS a huge advantage in the multitude of categories in which they compete with each other, so we'll be left in an even worse situation than before.

I have the exact same concern, but instead with Apple.

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

#514

Post by krackers »

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.

So if Google dies then we'll have more diverse browser and mobile ecosystem? Where exactly is the downside?

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

#515

Post by debit-freak »

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.

Sure, a lot in absolute terms. A pittance in relative terms.

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

#516

Post by hkand »

apercu wrote: post #91
molticrystal wrote: post #45

A lot of Google's features when integrated and leading to ads and other Google properties they are justified, but if you were to forbid cooperation between the divisions, they may be shut down or diminished, as on their own they would need to be subsidized considerably and the 3rd party alternatives for ads would take most of the profits probably leading to negative cash flow without decreasing the level of service o…

If they are shut down but valuable, some other company will produce similar products. That's how the market should work.

What if they are valuable, but only when integrated with other parts of the company? At many of these companies, I can think of several products in big tech that are good for consumers and profitable but can't be done in a different, independent company.

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

#517

Post by agent281 »

krackers wrote: post #514
hzia wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if Google dies then we'll have more diverse browser and mobile ecosystem? Where exactly is the downside?

Google funds Chrome. Other browsers use Chrome as a base. The majority of Firefox's funding is from Google. They will suffer as well. MS would need to step back up with browsers and you would also have Safari left over. I think it would be a major shock to the browser ecosystem.

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

#518

Post by floxy »

relistan wrote: post #348
floxy wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1982 seem a bit early for the massive fiber rollout. My recollection was that Sprint was the driving factor for laying fiber, since they had the railroad right-of-ways. But that was quite a while back. Maybe there was also another dark-horse company laying fiber along railroads, but not operating as a phone company? Something not quite at the tip of my tongue. Seems like someone could have written a good history book…

Sprint is the de-acronymized name for SPRINT: Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony They started doing public long distance on their own (railroad) network in the 1970s. They were restrained (and frequently sued by) AT&T. The breakup opened the floodgates. They were sold like a half dozen times in the 80s. But, MCI was AFAIK the largest early fiber pioneer.

Ah, yes, MCI. Thanks.

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

#519

Post by mvkel »

ledauphin wrote: post #501
IX-103 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing up Manifest v3 like it's some evil plot to show people ads. Nevermind that Chrome already ships with its own adblocker which blocks bad ads. The fact is that with the Spectre mitigations added to Chrome, the performance of networking with manifest v2 was bad. Having to keep sending every network request through 3 different processes just in case there is a plugin (uses by the minority of users) t…

it's at the very least an evil plot to stop users (and extension authors) from _making their own decisions_ about the efficiency trade-off. which is really just absurd when you think about it. I don't care about another hour of battery life, but even if I did, I'd be perfectly happy if Chrome just told me "hey these extensions aren't very battery-efficient!" and I got to make my own decision about that.

This just sounds like Hobson's choice. There's only one right answer, and Google is making it on behalf of the user. Fine.

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

#520

Post by foolfoolz »

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

big breakups don’t make sense in a globalized economy because it empowers foreign companies. i don’t think MS, Apple, amazon, fb would be the only benefactors. i think we entered the age of “too big to fail” about 10 years ago. breaking up very big companies like google is now a national security risk
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