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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]

#681

Post by tsunamifury »

diffuse_l wrote: post #673
thaumasiotes wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

Nitpick - Maps and Chrome were also acquisition. Also Android, for that matter

Highly “regarded” take and you know it. Android was made in house by an acquired team. Same with the rest. Jesus this intentionally stupids

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

#682

Post by JustExAWS »

lolinder wrote: post #679
scarface_74 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of those services are a “monopoly”?

I didn't use that word and no one in the chain above me did either. I specifically chose "anticompetitive behavior" to emphasize that a monopoly is not required to do damage to the free market or to trigger antitrust action.

So out of the list, how has Google behaved “anti competitively” in any of these?

  - Google Maps
  - Google Mail
  - Google Drive
  - Google Docs
  - Google Groups
  - Google Forms
  - Google Cloud
  - Google OAuth
  - Google Analytics
  - Android
  - Android Auto
  - Fitbit
  - Google Fi
  - Google Fiber
  - Google Flights
  - Google Translate
  - Google Pay
  - Waymo

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

#683

Post by colechristensen »

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.

mapquest was free maps going back to the early days of the internet

dropbox was free synced storage several years before google drive

youtoube was an independent free ad supported video site before google bought it

there are a million and one free website hosting services

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

#684

Post by braza »

rs186 wrote: post #483
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…

Let them die. The world will be a better place. Some of the services you mentioned are already very irrelevant: * Fitbit -- no explanation necessary * Google translate -- I don't know about if people use their APIs, but for me personally, I have not used translate for a few years. ChatGPT has been my go-to. * Google Pay -- it has a smaller market share than Samsung Pay. Then next tiers of services -- they are doing o…

> Google translate -- I don't know about if people use their APIs, but for me personally, I have not used translate for a few years. ChatGPT has been my go-to.

Hard to agree on this one.

Most of the time when I’m the country side of Hungary and some Nordic countries Google Translator it’s essential for communication of foreigners that lives I those places. I can tell several anecdotes of international people being able to communicate with their local in-laws via Google Translator conversational feature; or even cases of people being able to read after a mechanical translation.

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

#685

Post by BrenBarn »

jahsome wrote: post #614
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'm reading your comment as "someone should have done something a long time ago so it's not worth considering the consequences of doing it now." That fantasy doesn't seem to take into account the specific realities of current day.

No, my point is that things are bad now because we didn't do it a long time ago, and things will be worse later if we don't do it now.

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

#686

Post by animal_spirits »

lolinder wrote: post #659
animal_spirits wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The consumer did pay the price. Google built on empire on making consumers believe they were getting things for free while selling other businesses a direct line to its customers' wallets. It's been a very effective sleight of hand operation, to the point where even relatively savvy people on HN seem to forget that advertising pays the bills by getting its targets to spend money they would not have otherwise spent. A…

> A world without Google would not be a world with less disposable income for regular people, but it might be a world with less disposable junk.

If the argument is "more ads = more junk" then the argument is essentially "my values are more important than other peoples values". I'm also anti-consumerism, but if someone sees an ad and finds a product intriguing enough to purchase, they believe that thing might have value in their life. We might not agree, but we should not have the ability to control what other people find value in. I think this is equivalent to an argument of coercing people to conform to our values instead of convincing them to have our values.

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

#687

Post by BrenBarn »

scarface_74 wrote: post #675
lolinder wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the comment is saying that the situation is only going to get worse from here. There will never be a better time to solve Google's anticompetitive behavior. The consequences should be weighed and considered, but shrugging and letting Google keep on keeping on because it's too big to fail isn't a viable option.

Which one of those services are a “monopoly”?

I set the bar even lower than the other commenter. I don't care if it's a monopoly, nor even really if it's engaged in anticompetitive practices. I just care if it's big, like big enough to have outsized market power. I think that markets with large disparities in size and market power among participants are inherently anticompetitive. I think that in most market sectors --- banks, automakers, airlines, media, you name it --- there are a small number of large companies with outsize market power, and those should all be broken up.

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

#688

Post by JustExAWS »

Ekaros wrote: post #198
xiphias2 wrote: post #113

AI is the most competitive and healthy large industry I have seen. Having a search index helps just like having tweets for x.ai, but data isn’t the deciding factor.

Competitive maybe. Healthy almost certainly not. My definition for healthy industries is being able to fund operations and development either by revenues or debt. Not by continuously raising capital from investors and then burning it on hardware and operating costs.

So no YC companies are healthy…

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

#689

Post by lolinder »

JustExAWS wrote: post #682
lolinder wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't use that word and no one in the chain above me did either. I specifically chose "anticompetitive behavior" to emphasize that a monopoly is not required to do damage to the free market or to trigger antitrust action.

So out of the list, how has Google behaved “anti competitively” in any of these? - Google Maps - Google Mail - Google Drive - Google Docs - Google Groups - Google Forms - Google Cloud - Google OAuth - Google Analytics - Android - Android Auto - Fitbit - Google Fi - Google Fiber - Google Flights - Google Translate - Google Pay - Waymo

Maps/mail/drive/docs/flights/translate: provided for free using their dominance in ad tech to bankroll it and feeding the data back in to the ad platform. No one else can compete, and using dominance in one market to ensure dominance in others has historically been a clear trigger for antitrust.

Android: they lost a court case over this one that has lots of details if you care to look.

The rest are a weird mix of paid services that should be fine to stand up on their own or not even products at all (OAuth).

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

#690

Post by JustExAWS »

lolinder wrote: post #689
JustExAWS wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So out of the list, how has Google behaved “anti competitively” in any of these? - Google Maps - Google Mail - Google Drive - Google Docs - Google Groups - Google Forms - Google Cloud - Google OAuth - Google Analytics - Android - Android Auto - Fitbit - Google Fi - Google Fiber - Google Flights - Google Translate - Google Pay - Waymo

Maps/mail/drive/docs/flights/translate: provided for free using their dominance in ad tech to bankroll it and feeding the data back in to the ad platform. No one else can compete, and using dominance in one market to ensure dominance in others has historically been a clear trigger for antitrust. Android: they lost a court case over this one that has lots of details if you care to look. The rest are a weird mix of pai…

Docs and GSuite gets plenty of money from businesses abs school districts.
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