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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

#541

Post by shiroiushi »

kernal wrote: post #380
nine_k wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox Wat. It's like saying that an apple is a slightly upgraded orange. I would understand if you mentioned KHTML and Safari as relatives, but "slightly upgraded" does not fit anyway. > PageRank was what gave Google monopoly I don't think so. PageRank has been successfully implemented elsewhere, and outmatched. What helped Google build a monopoly was the first mover advantage,…

>Google Maps is an acquisition from 20 years ago. (As is Android) This is comical. When Google acquired Android, it was nothing more than a 3000 line JavaScript demo. The Android OS was created entirely at Google.

It's the same for Google Maps. It was just a C++ demo when acquired, nothing at all like what we see today.

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

#542

Post by ensignavenger »

whatever1 wrote: post #534
ensignavenger wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they must be valuable enough for what you are paying. If they weren't, you would let Epson have them knowing they were losing money on them, and you would spend your money on better valued things.

I don't get your point. There is certainly demand lift from Google ads, I am not disputing this. But because it is a monopoly currently businesses pay way more than the value of the actual conversions Google ads achieve. Nobody should be willing to pay above, yet they do because the competition is willing to speculate on the value of these and take extreme positions.

My point is that advertisers still "win". Even if they might be paying less if the market were more competitive or transparent.

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

#543

Post by edmundsauto »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #526
rurp wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> sell the drug for $X0000/dose, even if relatively few people can obtain it 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.

Right, but in some cases volume doesn’t make up for the price drop. Or the source materials are the bottleneck. Even if the societal benefit was greater.

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

#544

Post by ocdtrekkie »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #444
WalterBright wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the anti-trust action against Microsoft, Microsoft did not lobby nor donate to politicians. After Bill Gates rode on a golf cart with Bill Clinton, he realized the need to pay the expected tribute to the politicians.

While the DoJ is an executive department, it is notoriously independent. Google is one of the biggest lobbyists in D.C. Trying to predict anti-trust actions by lobbying activity is naïve to the point of being counter-productive: it can be better, in many cases, to fly under the radar. (Exhibit A: Andreessen Horowitz.)

Google used to directly fund the dude who was the FTC chair for a while. Joshua Wright likely is why these cases are happening in 2024 and not 2014. (The DoJ and FTC end up sort of splitting antitrust cases.)

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

#545

Post by bryanrasmussen »

hzia wrote: post #533
sciurus wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these measurements are correct, iOS has about 11% more of the US market share than Android. This is very different from the global market share, where Android has 45% more. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ios-vs-android-market-s...

Majority of revenue base lives on iOS globally (due to being a monopoly in the US) That's why Apple has higher profits than all other mobile operators combined!

I thought the higher revenue was because Apple charges more for everything, and the people who buy Apple products are also more likely to purchase other things, driving product for app store etc. (based on some study I saw many years back that is probably out of date by now)

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

#546

Post by [deleted] »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #215
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…

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!

[deleted]

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

#547

Post by pighive »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #276
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!

"President Walt Disney Pepsi Comcast has done wonders for the economy! Being that it now is ...the economy."

"Brought to you by Carl's Jr." /s https://youtu.be/1BYFbXJKJ8U?si=MkBwxpJe54NvOGtd

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

#548

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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.

Microsoft is categorically incompetently run at this point. They chose to cede both the web and mobile platforms entirely to Google for free. They couple some of their most impressively engineered OS releases with things like preinstalling Candy Crush to ensure that any gain of respect their engineering deserves is immediately burnt goodwill from shoddy behavior.

Apple is mostly too dependent on vertical integration to truly take over a market. If they allowed their OS on other hardware or something, they could pull Google power but they are entirely built around being their own unique bubble.

If Google finally gets broken up, you'll probably see hardware manufacturers like Samsung and LG truly start doing interesting things again.

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

#549

Post by eviks »

whiplash451 wrote: post #114
geor9e wrote: post #113

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…

Maybe because search is an extremely hard problem and requires hundreds of millions (if not billions) of investment to remain competitive?

What's incredibly hard allowing client side filtering like kagi is doing?

How many millions do you need to spend to decrease your own spending on AI for every query?

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

#550

Post by ulfw »

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.

If you think Android couldn't survive on revenues from whatever they may rebrand their Store / "Android Play Store" as, I got a robotaxi to sell ya.
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