521–530 of 888 posts
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At least according to this, Google generated ~$47B/year. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/google-play-statistics/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/444476/google-play-annua...
That’s revenue not profits. Majority goes to app devs. Profits are all that matter
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That's just a lesson that capitalism is insatiable. Early on, Google didn't have personalized ads and they were still making money hand over fist just because search queries are an excellent signal into stuff you may want to buy. But in "line must always go up" fashion, there is even more money to be squeezed out if they surveille everything you do to personalize ads. Same thing happened with Facebook. They had a ton…
That's not how it works. Rather, Google realizes someone else would take over their business if they didn't make their product better. If Google stuck to no data and XYZSearch used data, then XYZSearch would provide a better product and Google would go out of business. It doesn't take greed, the "could make even more money" part, to have an incentive to do better. All it takes is a desire not to go out of business.
Odd take IMO that Google's ever encroaching ads make their product better. Heck, Larry and Sergei even wrote a treatise (it used to be available directly off google.com, can't remember the name) about how they would be different from search engines at the time, how they wouldn't sell search position, and how the ads model was fundamentally at odds with end user experience. That's hilarious now as Google has gone to great lengths to make ads as indistinguishable as possible from normal search results, and for some terms my entire front page is ads. Compare that to "early" Google where ads were clearly identified in top and right sections with a yellow banner.
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.
Innovation requires reliable funding, such as monopoly profits or government funding. Monopoly leads to undemocratic concentrations of power and various private taxes on the public (e.g. in the case of Google, your personal information). Bell Labs was funded by monopoly funding with a law directing a certain amount to research.
Competition improves the balance of power, but destroys the ability to innovate except on relatively easy to engineer variations of existing tech within a 1-5 year window projects. The recipients of monopolist largess (such as OSS) whither on the vine as competition drives profits to zero over time (which then causes consolidation and monopoly formations...).
The answer I prefer of course is to create the efficiencies and innovative capacity of large scale industry but control them democratically. Nationalize Google.
HN is a special place but among the average folk, I get why 90% of people use google. I'm no google fan, but it still baffles me how bad the alternatives still are. Especially with so many companies scraping the whole web for AI data, and so many GPUs chugging on that data. I suppose they are all focused on replacing the concept of search results with LLM prose. Ironically bing is down at the moment https://downdetec…
Can you give me an example of a search query which yields acceptable results on Google but does not on Bing?
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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 div…
I think it's a much harder argument to make that Apple should get to control all application software used on a device, and furthermore that they have a right to a cut of all revenue of app software sold for a particular device.
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Why can't that be right? I see the sentiment a lot, but it strikes me as reality denialism. People are willing to pay for one thing but not the other.
Capital markets don't perfectly account for all positive and negative externalities in the world, not even close. For example think of a company that invents a miracle drug that only costs $1 to produce. The net benefit to humanity would be to open up production and sell it to everyone who needs it for a few bucks, but of course the company will do everything it can to maintain a monopoly and sell the drug for $X0000…
A rational company would lower the price if that broadened the market and netted more profit by volume. Drugs aren't Veblen goods.
The impetus for jacking up drug prices is that the market is captive, and those who need the drug will obtain it. That and insurance/government is often the payor.
I'm fully onboard, but only if it's not only Google being broken up here. M$, 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…
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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…
What completed or competes with YouTube?
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I think you underestimate the value of controlling the platform that you base all your revenue from. Chrome controls the internet and android has a huge market share on mobile. The latest changes to chrome that breaks plugins like ublock origin allows them to keep maximising their advertising revenue. I think these two being open source is a major reason why they have been so successfully adopted. It isn’t direct rev…
>android has a huge market share on mobile. Not in the US they don't; it's a minority share, split across many different manufacturers who all have their own flavor of Android, their own (crappy) app stores and pre-loaded crapware apps, etc. Apple has a clear majority of the US smartphone market (and it's a vertical monopoly, with Apple controlling the phone hardware and the app store and not allowing any alternative…
This is very different from the global market share, where Android has 45% more.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ios-vs-android-market-s...
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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 div…