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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]

#631
Garmin user here. Maybe the last one on the planet? (my kid thinks I'm nuts).

Many of the comments are about how great Google's products are (or aren't). But the case is about anti-competitive behavior. Personally, I hate how a bulk of the internet now consists of surveillance. All this amazing tech brilliance.. resting on a foundation that's about getting us to buy more junk. I will be happy if this lawsuit reduces that (even a little bit).

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

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as good This is a point that will be recurring and merits more thought IMHO. Google services are mostly better because they crushed competition. Cutting their advantage will also mean better alternatives (money will flow to competitors instead of being sucked by Google). As an analogy, it's like athlete doping: they sure were faster than the other athletes, but that's part of the issue.

The fundamental issue is that people don't want to pay money for things. Google tapped into that by creating an ad economy, which since it's inception also comes with a payment optional feature (ad-blocking). People may hate google, but by god do they ever love the internet google created.

Yes, that's why anti-dumping laws were put into place, except it's complicated to expand to online markets.

I actually wonder how much people actually like the current web. People bitching about popups and ads is enough of a staple of our culture.

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

#633
post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone would be subscribed to YT premium, if people were ok with paying for ad-free experience.

Honestly, I feel like people are subconsciously aware that Google is trying to bludgeon them into getting YouTube premium, and they're simply sticking it to Google rather than giving in. Google's gone through: - one skippable 5s ad - two skippable 5s ads - one unskippable 5s and one skippable 15s ads - aforementioned or two 15s ads, one skippable - two 15s unskippable ads - removed the prerenderer 'skip' button to ma…

Everytime someone blocks an ad, someone else has to watch it.

It's crazy to me how entitled people are and how completely blind they are to how the ad supported model works.

Then these same people complain that youtube has no competitors. Yeah, no shit, who in their right mind would invest in a customer base like youtubes? Oh, that's right, Vid.me, and they went bankrupt in a year. Wonder why...

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

#634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about, there are competitors for all these products, they simply just aren't as good...

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…

Apple user software is legitimately awful in a systematic way. Although I like the Chess app. :)

Google, interestingly, is much better.

I don't know what to say. It's clear that the Internet Ecosystem has a megafauna of Google and taking it out would be an ecosystem collapse, but the other Megafauna are... worse.

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

#635

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…

Just to pick one of these: google Flights sucks. It had a better competitor - Hipmunk - which went under because Google ate their lunch by integrating flights search into the main search product. Don't know how many of these Google products have similar stories, but it's probably a non zero numbers. What we're getting, in many of these cases, is an inferior product that drove out better competitors through Google sea…

I remember Hipmunk, it was horrible! Google flights is by far the best flight search platform, competition aren't even close. 10x faster search of flights and the calendar view for prices is incredible!

I consider Google Maps to be the best application ever created. Products like Google Mail, Calendar, Search, Chrome, Android are absolutely best in class. To call them inferior is laughable.

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

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing mediocre about the search engine, gmail, maps, android, chrome etc.. etc. Do they all have room for for improvement? Probably. But they are simply incredibly, breathtakingly good products. Search, maybe has gotten worse in recent years, but it's still amazing. Maps and Satelleite view are astounding, especially when you consider that they are free. >How is this a desirable outcome? The list speaks fo…

Having used alternatives to a few of their products… I’ll accept part of that list. Gmail is well below mediocre, it’s so sluggish and unresponsive even on fast hardware. Compare with fastmail; it’s hard to go back. The search engine consistently gives me pages of blog spam before a useful result. Eg Kagi is dramatically more useful despite having a tiny fraction of the resources to work with.

[dead]

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

#637

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…

They won't be killed, they'll be forced to stand up as their own businesses, like the Baby Bells after Ma Bell broke up, or the split of Standard Oil. I can see most of these being reasonable standalone businesses. And if they can't be they'll die and get replaced by one that is better.

The problem is that it is ingrained in people that these services are free, and the only way they are free is by having them feed a centralized ad network.

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

#638
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to try and de-googleify your life if only so you don't get caught up in making such an exaggerated sky-is-falling point. All of these could literally vanish tomorrow and the world would go on, they all have their alternatives, some of them arguably superior. For some, the near term pain would be greater than for others -- even just on my personal level I'd be caught with my pants down for email, becaus…

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…

Sycophant much? Incredible, Brilliant… Please.

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

#639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental issue is that people don't want to pay money for things. Google tapped into that by creating an ad economy, which since it's inception also comes with a payment optional feature (ad-blocking). People may hate google, but by god do they ever love the internet google created.

Yes, that's why anti-dumping laws were put into place, except it's complicated to expand to online markets. I actually wonder how much people actually like the current web. People bitching about popups and ads is enough of a staple of our culture.

People hate the current web the way a teenager hates the Blue 2023 F-150 his parents got him because a Black 2025 Dodge Ram is what he wanted.

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

#640

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…

I have actively moved away from all of these services you listed years ago. The only one that is truly impactful is Gmail, again because of the monopoly they have in mail. But I don't understand your argument. There are options and you're worried about Apple, yet admit they don't have competing products in many of those segments.

Google is exactly the monopoly we need less of. These arguments for it are uninformed. You don't need any of these products. In fact, when Google is out of the way it opens the door for new and better options. Google's products aren't great. They're good enough. And they're only good enough to keep users in the platform to continue to siphon off user data and serve as a conduit for their true business: ads.

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