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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]

#601

Post by int_19h »

dataflow wrote: post #479
worik wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ta. I'm very curious what other companies people would trust more with their data. The problem is one company with all the data.

> The problem is one company with all the data. I realize, but the idea that we won't have another giant company succeeding at achieving the same seems like wishful thinking.

Making sure another company doesn't get into the same position is precisely what antitrust laws and enforcement agencies are for.

The only reason why we have the mess we do is because we have made our antitrust toothless starting in 1980s, and it's only gradually coming back now.

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

#602

Post by int_19h »

root_axis wrote: post #465
ardit33 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is juvenile thinking... none of them will go away. They can be independent services themselves, and be pretty profitable at it. The upshoot is if they are independent, they will be forced to compete fairly with other services. Which, does increase competition and choice.

Most would go away and be replaced by another monopolist. Likely Microsoft or Apple.

So do the same thing to them.

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

#603

Post by [deleted] »

bcraven wrote: post #592
actinium226 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 apologies but I can't work out if your Google Drive example is some deep satire that's going over my head. What functionality are you expecting?

[deleted]

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

#604

Post by zelphirkalt »

dannycastonguay wrote: post #550
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…

Why do antitrust proposals always suggest breaking up Google by function—Search, Ads, Gmail, etc.? What if, instead, we cloned the whole company? Start by splitting Google into two identical, full-stack companies, each with all the core products. A year later, split them again. Over time, you get 4 or 8 Googles competing across the board. Employees could be assigned algorithmically to avoid chaos. This feels more lik…

I would rather have us all weaned off the Google services. That would be a great outcome actually. I am guessing your idea is, that those 2 or 4 Googles would then compete and make better products. But I am not sure how likely it is, that they can fix the mess and pile of bloat, that their software is.

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

#605

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

Yeah, the unfortunate thing is reigning in one monopolist today seems like more an invitation to the other monopolists.

How many potentially world dominating mega-corps are there? Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Musk-corps, OpenAI, Nvidia...

It seems like any reasonable rejigging of things would require attacks on multiple sources of monopoly. And any other attack on a given player is just going to strengthening other players.

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

#606

Post by ajross »

pixl97 wrote: post #240
ajross wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bell Labs being defunded by a deregulated/competetive AT&T was precisely what led to the attempted commercialization of Unix and the near death of what would eventually be called "open source", though. In history as it stands, we had GNU and Linux and all that we lost was a few years. But it's easy to imagine a world where that didn't happen and BSD was just killed dead. So no OS X, no iOS, no Android, no ChromeOS, a…

>Monopolies fall on their own all the time (Microsoft's did too!) What in the heck are you talking about??? After Microsoft was convicted, even though they never received any actual punishment, the were very internally cautions about any behaviors that could be perceived as monopolistic. This is like a total misinterpretation of what actually occurred on your part. And yes, monopolies do fall, after very long periods…

You responded to a parenthetical. The point was about AT&T, not Microsoft. And yes, they effectively killed BSD, relenting only in the late 90's once it became clear that (post-Linux) there was little value left in Unix. In a different universe, they go to the mattresses with SysV against Windows NT and lose, and we have nothing.

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

#607

Post by JoshTriplett »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #593
doctorpangloss wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube, Gmail and Docs are pretty good. All the alternatives to them really suck...

YouTube sucks in terms of usability. It only survives, because it is at no cost except for ads viewing and not even that, when using uBlock Origin properly and because of most of the content being there. Other than that is has become so enshittified, it is one of the worst sites I visit. Gmail and Docs are children's toys for people, who don't know much about e-mail and proper documents. Those are the majority of peo…

> proper documents

If by that you are talking about anything that doesn't have built-in version control and simultaneous editing, good riddance to it and the v4-edited-copy-FINAL-edited it rode in on. But there are a few actual competitors to Google Docs that have built-in versioning and simultaneous editing.

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

#608

Post by [deleted] »

echelon wrote: post #507
fsh wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We need a better word than "duopoly" to describe what Apple and Google are. They're just as bad as a monopoly - and they're impossible to compete with. Both Apple and Google need to be disrupted here. We should be able to see lots of healthy verticals for every single one of these product categories. They shouldn't accrue to two players and be impossible to dislodge. I propose the word "Googolith" to describe {Google…

[deleted]

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

#609

Post by JoshTriplett »

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

This isn't something that has anything to do with size or property. Just 1) eliminate advertising, and 2) actually enforce the most basic of antitrust, namely using one product to subsidize another operating at a loss that prevents competition.

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

#610

Post by londons_explore »

lelandbatey wrote: post #597
londons_explore wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to the click stream is the big bit. Ie. Knowing which users clicked which search results. Without the click stream, one cannot build or even maintain a good ranker. With a larger click stream from more users, one can make a better ranker, which in turn makes the service better so more users use it. End result: monopoly. The only solution is to force all players to share click stream data with all others.

I don't think that's quite true, as competitors like Kagi have been able to compete well with effectively zero clickstream (by comparison). It'll help, but it's not the make-or-break that the index is.

Kagi sends searches to other providers (Bing?) and then simply re-ranks the results, so they're effectively inheriting the click stream data of those other providers.
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