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US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

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Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#581

Post by actinium226 »

fsh wrote: post #410
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

This list is very telling. Instead of a healthy marketplace of companies competing to sell their software and services, we end up with one monopolist who gives away mediocre products and in return taxes everything you buy (in the form of ad spending), and then annoys you with the same ads. How is this a desirable outcome?

I agree. I'm so sick of maps. I type something in and there it is, can't they do any better than that? Sure they have directions to the place in multiple modalities, and photos of it, and reviews, but is that it? Is that really the best that's available?

Google drive is likewise awful. I upload something to it and there it is. I come back 10 years later and it's still there. Why doesn't it do more? Why can't it make my file better over time? Why can't they take ideas from dropbox, or box, or onedrive. Stupid monopoly forcing us all into one choice.

And as for Google Fiber, well there are so many ISPs offering gigabit plans now, what is Fiber going to offer to do better? It's like you said we need a healthy marketplace with competing companies, not just the one monopolist with shitty gigabit ethernet service.

And don't even get me started on gmail!

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#582

Post by p1necone »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #447
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

Android in this list stands out. If Android goes away, I am not sure who is there to pick up The OS of the world, not IOS, certainly, but who? All else, good riddance. More competition will make better products.

The bulk of Android is open source, the only proprietary bits are the google services.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#583

Post by int_19h »

itsoktocry wrote: post #579
BrenBarn wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. That is why the banks should have been broken up into smaller banks long before we reached that point, and it is why Google should have been broken up long ago. The only way to prevent the situation you describe…

Smaller banks aren't competitive with larger (global) banks.

Smaller anything isn't competitive with larger anything, because the larger guys can always price-dump and bundle their way to full market dominance.

That's why we need anti-trust in the first place.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#584

Post by josephg »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #576
josephg wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. It’s also hard to overstate how many incredible engineers work at Google. Many - perhaps most of them are doing very low value work of adding marginal features nobody cares about to mature products. And in many cases doing so at a glacial pace. Every year thousands of brilliant engineers add ~1m lines of code to Google chrome. And almost nobody notices or cares. As browsers get faster, companies respond by addi…

I am sure there are many capable people working at Google, but the exaggerating of their skill level needs to stop. Some leet coder doesn't necessarily deliver better designed systems than any another engineer. And with that, the cult of believing in whiteboard coding interviews also needs to go away.

I’ve worked there. They certainly aren’t all geniuses. But there are a huge number of brilliant engineers there - many of whom spend their lives schleping protobufs around for a fat paycheck.

It’s not the whiteboard interviews that makes that possible. It’s the prestige (especially from a few years ago), job security and salary. And the opportunity to work with other smart people. Google has an excellent talent pool.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#585

Post by matheusmoreira »

fibers wrote: post #561
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

- Google Maps - this would be a big loss but at least this will open the field for Apple Maps and OSM (and I wonder if a competitor will be able to properly leave OSM as is an perhaps integrate traffic data like with Waze or another product like it) - Google Mail - I dumped gmail after Google google'd GDomains and sold it to squarespace so I moved to proton - Google Drive - lol, this is a literal multibillion industr…

I like your style, "lol" is the appropriate response to the notion of losing Google's entire list of products.

Android? It's not a big loss. It's no longer the open platform it used to be. Hardware remote attestation will get us locked out of every app if we "tamper" with our devices. It's just a shitty version of iOS now so who cares?

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#586

Post by int_19h »

jader201 wrote: post #551
dangrossman wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free, taking much of the money out of the market that allowed that product to be built. Without Google giving away the one winner they chose to acquire, you'd have options again. I built my free web stats service in 2004 because I couldn't afford an Urchin license. Google bought Urchin Live and rebra…

> Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free Nearly everything that was acquired was a) already free, and b) built (and given away for free) in hopes that someone like Google would acquire them. If you look at most startups, their exit strategy is acquisition. Some would live to IPO, but that is a much tougher road. It could be argued th…

> If you look at most startups, their exit strategy is acquisition

And that is a part of the problem.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#587

Post by mathfailure »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

We're gonna be fine without all those items from that list. There are plenty of alternatives and plenty more would arise once the monopolist sinks.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#588

Post by dangus »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #367

I'm not sure people understand what the consequences of taking away Google's ad revenue is. If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. The same will happen when Google loses its ad revenue. Google is an ad company. By opening up all its trade secret data, i…

What a lame take on this.

To you the only implied solution is to just let Google eating all the money in the market?

Most of the products on your list are products that are or can be profitable on their own and have profitable competitors. Google could be broken up and Apple wouldn’t just take over the world as you assert.

Google wouldn’t just magically go out of business just because of the scenario you describe. They’d still command a huge part of ad spend because they’re a huge brand name. Even if competitors get a much-deserved leg up, it would take a whole lot of sustained momentum to unseat them.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#589

Post by int_19h »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #563
doctorpangloss wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just bad. There isn't a single piece of Apple software that is (1) free and (2) people choose to use on iOS, only use because the user is forced to. Photos? Forced, sucks. iMessage? Forced, sucks. Apple Mail, Calendar, Contacts? Huge pieces of shit. The App Store, the very gateway into competition, is the shittiest of all, and not just because the 30% fee, but because its discovery is maybe the worst ever made by…

Yeah, I really don't understand how MS, Google and AT&T get this treatment but not Apple..

Mostly because they don't have 90+% market share in anything.

Re: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

#590

Post by int_19h »

worik wrote: post #469
wpm wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too big to fail means too big to exist. Google et. al should never have been allowed to get this large, same as those banks. Better late than never.

> Too big to fail means too big to exist. Google et. al should never have been allowed to get this large I agree But placing limits on private property accumulation is a controversial idea But it is an idea who's time must come, or we face a dreadful future of robber barrons and peons

You don't even need a hard limit for that. Just have a progressive property tax in place, and start applying it to intellectual property as well.
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