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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]

#661

Post by jmatthews »

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…

You essentially outline why it should be broken up.

I'm not convinced making the ad tech sector more competitive would prompt that outcome but, "It would disrupt mature products" isn't a compelling argument to allow the existence of a monopoly.

Google is a monopoly, they exert monopoly power and enjoy monopoly pricing.

I think the more likely outcome would be more dynamic products under smaller bannerheads.

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

#662

Post by ppsreejith »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #250

The real killer is that Google perfected the ad-paid model, and launched an entire ecosystem on top of it Paid competitors cannot compete because people won't pay. People want the death of Google because people hate ads and tracking. Ultimately it is an everyone loses situation. No one is going to fly in a replace Google without either 1.) Charging a monthly sub or 2.) Invasive (yet most profitable) ad tracking. This…

> People want the death of Google because people hate ads and tracking.

> Paid competitors cannot compete because people won't pay.

Seems to me they're different groups of people. Otherwise, if people hate ads, why don't they pay?

I don't agree it's an everyone loses situation. Enough people don't mind or prefer the ads based ecosystem for it to continue.

IMO, more sophisticated ad blockers (I.e real control over one's devices) used by more people, would make the ad tech ecosystem a lot less profitable. After all, ads only work when you can control what the other person sees.

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

#663

Post by mrDmrTmrJ »

dangrossman wrote: post #540
dvdhnt wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very ungrateful and childish perspective. It assumes that these things exist out of thin air rather than things google has created. Products don’t just appear, they’re built. Nothing is stopping someone from usurping google. Ever hear of oracle, intel, xerox, blackberry or Microsoft?

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…

Google maps Gmail Chrome Waymo

Were all built within google. For most people (who do not sell software on the internet) we get a great trade from the current state of things!

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

#664

Post by dangrossman »

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #663
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…

Google maps Gmail Chrome Waymo Were all built within google. For most people (who do not sell software on the internet) we get a great trade from the current state of things!

Gmail is the only product you listed that Google started itself.

Google Maps was built on the acquisitions of Where 2 Technologies, Keyhole and ZipDash.

Chrome is based on WebKit, built at Apple.

Waymo's hardware came from the acquisition of 510 Systems, and the software came from the acquihiring of the team that developed Stanford's self-driving cars for the 2005 and 2007 DARPA challenges, who brought their code with them.

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

#665

Post by dcow »

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…

I genuinely do not use a single service on your list and my life is absolutely indistinguishable from that of one who does. I’m digitally literate and normally functional. Do people really believe these services are irreplaceable let alone the best of the best? That’s the trap…

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

#666

Post by thaumasiotes »

animal_spirits wrote: post #651
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…

I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyone would still be paying for email. The enormous amount of free education on YouTube would not have been accessible to the world. The economy that we know today would be vastly different and in my opinion far worse off. So much of the economic growth came off…

> I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyone would still be paying for email.

People weren't paying for email before gmail. It was predated by hotmail, Yahoo mail, and innumerable free online email offerings by small players. Being free wasn't even a selling point for gmail; the selling point was that they gave you a lot of storage.

Speaking of things that happened before Google, Yahoo Maps and Firefox are older than Google Maps and Chrome. And... Google Flights is a Google acquisition, not a product that they developed.

And then...

> Can you imagine how the world will be affected when these go away?

> Google Fi

> Google Fiber

> Google Pay

Yes, no one will notice.

> Google Groups

It already has gone away. Also, Usenet is something else older than Google.

> Google OAuth

Eliminating "sign in with [popular site]" would be a hugely positive change.

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

#667

Post by mortos »

windexh8er wrote: post #641
FridayoLeary wrote: post #491

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…

> But they are simply incredibly, breathtakingly good products. I literally laughed out loud at this. There is nothing further from the truth when you look at what else is out there. I feel like a lot of these comments are shilling for Google they're so biased. Search is not amazing. Search is littered with garbage. Try out Kagi or even DDG for a day, but let's not pretend search hasn't been a dumpster fire for years…

DDG is definitely not better IME, and also relies heavily on Bing. I still use it as my default, it's good enough, but I mostly default to it to avoid the Google captcha hell.

Here's a prior comment of mine explaining one poor search scenario: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43348712

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

#668

Post by dcow »

animal_spirits wrote: post #658
handoflixue wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone would still be paying for email. Free email existed before Google - Hotmail and Yahoo come to mind immediately, but there were plenty of others. You also got a free email address from your ISP - even AOL users had email.

Fair point. Maybe I'm too young and have bought into the narrative that Google was the first widely available and free email. Still I think though, the plethora of their other services widely available for free (maps, drive, sites, youtube) were extraordinary for the price, at least for me.

Firefox was also extraordinary for the price. point being that Google has never been the only option, just the most popular because why not your gmail is already plugged in.

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

#669

Post by Den_VR »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #553
TechDebtDevin wrote: post #546

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…

People literally buy phones from Apple so they can have a blue bubble in iMessage. Movies carry out social campaigns about how they were “filmed” on iPhone. And there’s no shortage of alternatives on those devices, from WhatsApp to Signal.

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

#670

Post by josephg »

sitkack wrote: post #638
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…

Sycophant much? Incredible, Brilliant… Please.

You think my comment is sycophantic? If so, only on the surface. Another way to read what I wrote is that google has robbed the world of many smart people. Instead of contributing meaningfully, these people - trapped through money and inertia - spend their days doing useless work for an ad company. What a pity.
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