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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

#561

Post by EasyMark »

idle_zealot wrote: post #226
bhelkey wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drop in equivalent exists for Android? I have no desire to move to iOS. What drop in equivalent exists for Google maps? I have used OpenStreetMap for a personal project and have tried other proprietary options. If Google maps disappeared, life would go on but I would be worse off. What equivalent exists for Chrome? Even on desktop I prefer Chrome over Firefox. On mobile, Firefox falls far behind Chrome.

Fortunately for you, Android and Chromium are FOSS and not going anywhere. For maps there is OSM with several available frontends, Bing maps, and Apple Maps has a web version.

What FOSS organizations will pick up Android? Or are you talking about someone like Samsung taking up the reigns for Android?

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

#562

Post by brendoelfrendo »

agent281 wrote: post #517
krackers wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Other browsers use the open source Chromium project as their base, not Chrome. If Google killed off Chrome tomorrow, those other browsers could continue using the Chromium codebase, and new maintainers could step up to manage the Chromium project. Nothing needs to change.

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

#563

Post by tandr »

elzbardico wrote: post #510
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cisco reputedly avoided an anti-trust action by wining and dining DoJ lawyers Source? (They settled with Multiven.) > isn't it a bit naive to think it doesn't No, it's naïve to think that level of influence can be bought. Not an uncommon mistake. Bankman-Fried made it, and it's increasingly looking like Bytedance did too. But D.C. is a town obsessed with power over money. People regularly toss aside lobbyists and t…

Well, you don't simply walk into a Patek Phillipe store and ask to see the watches. Enzo Ferrari refused to sell ferraris for people he didn't think were deserving of having a ferrari. Corruption on the highest levels is very similar. Not everyone is on the buyers club.

...and here I went for hour and half rabbit hole of what/who is Patek Phillipe, and why you cannot get to their store...

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

#564

Post by crabmusket »

api wrote: post #364
crabmusket wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man that would be really cool. I do wish governments would move a bit faster on providing such generic public benefit services.

I'm not a huge fan of governments doing Internet services, but the identity layer is something that actually fits within their sphere. Governments already provide the canonical identity layer for society and have since, like, ancient Egypt. Your drivers' license could have a chip in it capable of FIDO2 etc. and it could be linked with an OAuth provider. I know login.gov already exists but it's not built to be used ev…

That's a good point. Why are you not a huge fan in general though?

I think governments often to do it badly, but I think it's a muscle we (broadly speaking) should try to strengthen, not just concede that we'll never be able to do it well.

I was really frustrated by Australia's COVID app rollout, which was just done in typical government style - by throwing money at a big consulting corporation which delivered trash. But the solution isn't "give up". It's "do better". The solution to corruption in the public sector is to fight the corruption, not abandon the public sector.

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

#565

Post by idle_zealot »

foolfoolz wrote: post #520
gerash wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you truly believe that tech monopolists are critical to national security then the only safe option would be to nationalize them. Incidentally, that would also remove the profit motive for bad behavior, solving one of the largest problems with allowing a monopoly to exist. But apparently that would be anti-free. Because nothing says Free Country like letting a handful of the most rich and powerful people on the planet hamstring your democratic government.

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

#566

Post by Apocryphon »

teleforce wrote: post #8

There's side effect benefit of big kahuna companies mainly on the significant breakthrough and game changing research output because these excellent researchers are paid handsome money compared to conventional universities or research institutions. We saw this with AT&T Bell research labs with their inventions of transistor and Unix, among others. The same thing happened with Google research with (arguably) deep lear…

What groundbreaking household name advancements has Microsoft Research yielded? Not all of these labs are equally revolutionary.

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

#567

Post by idle_zealot »

BurningFrog wrote: post #479
loumaciel wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons of small businesses rely on advertising. Tons of legit businesses only exist because online advertising became easy and widespread.

I'll try to explain to the young people how bad things used to be. Google ads was (and is) incredibly good for niche companies, since it makes it possible to advertise to people who are interested in your product instead of the general public. So if you sell Warhammer paraphernalia, you can buy ads to be shown only to people who have searched for Warhammer related words, rather than "everyone in Wisconsin". This lowe…

> if you sell Warhammer paraphernalia, you can buy ads to be shown only to people who have searched for Warhammer related words, rather than "everyone in Wisconsin".

Tracking people and shoving your wares in their faces is not the only way to reach interested parties. You could go to a Warhammer convention, join a Warhammer forum and offer to send members samples, or just post images of your stuff in a sharing thread, whatever. Engage with people while they're searching for the thing you're offering.

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

#568

Post by starspangled »

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.

Not a lot of their profits. A minuscule fraction of their profits, and far less than OSS has given value to them. And the value from contributing back to open source is generally pretty high by itself because you get a lot of review and maintenance from the community on the features and code you want for your proprietary business, so it's not like they are doing a lot of it out of pure altruism.

OSS would be fine without Google, it was great before Google ever existed. There are intrinsic motivations to contribute, which is why thousands of companies do.

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

#569

Post by stackskipton »

sensanaty wrote: post #487

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…

Law doesn't work that way. They have to break up the first company THEN using that precedent, they can start on other monopolies.

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

#570

Post by shiroiushi »

idle_zealot wrote: post #226
bhelkey wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drop in equivalent exists for Android? I have no desire to move to iOS. What drop in equivalent exists for Google maps? I have used OpenStreetMap for a personal project and have tried other proprietary options. If Google maps disappeared, life would go on but I would be worse off. What equivalent exists for Chrome? Even on desktop I prefer Chrome over Firefox. On mobile, Firefox falls far behind Chrome.

Fortunately for you, Android and Chromium are FOSS and not going anywhere. For maps there is OSM with several available frontends, Bing maps, and Apple Maps has a web version.

Will OSM tell me which subway lines to use and what time the next train comes and how much the different possible routes cost?
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