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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

#581

Post by cool_dude85 »

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…

The old ways would have been to buy ads on warhammer.com, or the Warhammer magazine, sponsor the annual Warhammer convention, run a tournament, and so on. The money, in that case, may largely stay within the ecosystem, rather than going to some investment fund owning shares of google.

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

#582

Post by maeil »

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.

Chrome would be absurdly profitable. Imagine selling the default search engine setting to the highest bidder on Chrome when it already goes for $20 billion/year on the far less popular Safari.

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

#583

Post by maeil »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #361
pembrook wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defacto, yes they do, that’s the entire value proposition of their advertising model — that they can target customers better than any other platform due to buying intent signals from search queries. When companies buy ads with Google they’re quite literally bidding for microtargeted user intent data.

That is not “de facto” selling data about an individual to other businesses. No one can go to Google and buy information about a specific person.

They likely can, even if indirectly. [1]

> I'm going by this document from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and a lawsuit brought against Google, signed by member of Congress, that alleged data brokers are "siphoning" off bid-stream data and reselling it . It makes the claim that U.S Dept of Homeland Security uses real-time bidding data for warrant-less phone tracking.

> https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Mass-data-bre...

> https://www.tampabay.com/news/2021/05/07/google-selling-user...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41762264

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

#584

Post by jacinabox »

utopcell wrote: post #447
internet101010 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always thought the reason they became alphabet was because of the expectation that they would eventually get broken up and wanted a company for each letter.

Off-Topic: I always thought they missed out on a great opportunity to name the umbrella company AlephBet instead of AlphaBet ([1]), perhaps with a tag-line that reads: "stop thinking in constants" (to contrast Googol being equal to 10^100). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number

frigging ...what?

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

#585

Post by typewithrhythm »

tehjoker wrote: post #540
typewithrhythm wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a completely strange idea to me... You are seemingly measuring innovation within a specific product and forgetting that the product itself is a new creation that came without any monopoly as it built. People eventually recognise a good idea, you don't need a well funded research group to have one. You need an environment where it's plausible for the new thing to work and be profitable. Breaking up a giant lik…

The idea behind nationalization is that it takes Google out of the market economy and the profit motive. It's then possible to rationally design supports for new ideas, and removes one of the biggest reasons for fighting new ideas.

My experiences with actual nationalised companies does not support this; in general they are no more likely to support innovation or good design that supports other industries than the private sector, but they absolutely will create legal issues when trying to innovate around them.

Telecoms in Australia is probably the best modern example I can think of, the nbn was given a monopoly and now delivers an expensive inferior product, and there is no real way to compete or innovate around it.

It doesn't exactly take them out of the market, it just creates a enterprise with legal protections and non market motivations for what it actually does.

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

#586

Post by creato »

maeil wrote: post #582
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.

Chrome would be absurdly profitable. Imagine selling the default search engine setting to the highest bidder on Chrome when it already goes for $20 billion/year on the far less popular Safari.

But that behavior was just determined to be illegal, at least when the bidder is Google. It seems ridiculous if the sequence of events that happens here is:

1. Google is fined/broken up due (in part) to paying for the default search engine position.

2. In the newly broken off chrome company, they auction the default search engine position.

3. Google cannot bid on it. So I guess Microsoft is going to win that position? Who else is going to pay for it?

I can't imagine this is what happens. This would just make the DoJ look absolutely foolish and would basically put the DoJ in the position of being Microsoft's personal attack dog. But on the other hand, what else could happen? It's still ridiculous even if it's anyone other than Microsoft that is the winning bidder.

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

#587

Post by starspangled »

tlss wrote: post #575
starspangled wrote: post #571

In the early days, Google seemed like it promised to give us another Bell Labs or IBM Research, which would have made me think at least something good was coming from their anti competitive behavior. It never eventuated though. Many of the interesting products and technologies that came out of it were either bought from or copying the actual innovators.

I’m sorry, but what are you talking about? A Nobel Chemistry prize was just awarded for the creation of AlphaFold.

I don't know what was unclear about what I wrote.

EDIT: AlphaFold was acquired by Google, in case anybody didn't realize that.

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

#588

Post by fragmede »

ulfw wrote: post #550
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.

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.

The self-driving car taxi service Waymo is another Google division that could do well in terms of being a company and having a product.

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

#589

Post by rockskon »

IX-103 wrote: post #493
T-Winsnes wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Bad ads?

No, that is horseshit.

The goal of blocking ads isn't to only allow in "good ads".

It's to block ads. Not some ads. Not a few ads. Not just malware delivered via ads. Not just Google's competitors.

It's to block ads. All of them. To stop the relentless harassment of the advertising industry claiming other peoples' screens and time as their own.

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

#590

Post by kelnos »

IX-103 wrote: post #493
T-Winsnes wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> Chrome already ships with its own adblocker which blocks bad ads.

No it doesn't, because I define all ads as bad, so Chrome's ad "blocker" is does not even remotely meet my needs.

> You just can't programmatically decide which resources to filter

That "just" is doing a ton of work there. Declarative ad blockers aren't terrible, but they're not great either. And I don't want my browser fetching ads (which could also be malware) at all. Downloading them and then hiding them is insufficient.

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