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US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

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Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#701

Post by azemetre »

robsh wrote: post #530
azemetre wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has operating systems, hardware, and software. Maybe Apple should spinoff OSX into its own company? They clearly abuse their positions with OS X and their hardware to push Apple specific software that only they benefit from. If they had to separate their operating systems into another company, they would have to freely compete to put their app stores on their devices. Or even better, spin off their hardware div…

Vertical integration is not monopolistic. A dairy farm can make great ice cream, like McConnell’s or Strauss. Apple’s acquisition of Beats is maybe the one that shouldn’t have been allowed since they were in competition for headphones. Most of their other acquisitions are pretty small companies with specific integrations into Apple products or services.

Ah yes the humble dairy farmer is obviously equivalent to the trillion dollar transnational corporation. Here I am thinking that since Apple makes it harder to repair their devices or install other operating systems on them that they are in a position to abuse their marketplace, silly me!

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#702

Post by SR2Z »

thayne wrote: post #595
hzia wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are drastically overestimating the revenue gain from ad blockers But I agree that default search with being Google must have heavily blocked competition. Comparing how much they pay Mozilla and Apple to maintain search, it would be reasonable to estimate Chrome’s implementation to save them $1b a year But I highly doubt they make any back given > 1k people work on it

Possibly a greater benefit to Google is the influence it gives them over web standards. For example, if google didn't control the most popular browser, they probably would have had to say goodbye to third party cookies a long time ago, but since they do they've been able to delay it for quite a while, at least for a considerable portion of users.

Google is the group pushing hardest for the removal of third party cookies; they don't need them because they get your data from other sources.

It's everyone else who wants to keep them around.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#703

Post by thurnderbong »

xdennis wrote: post #127
geor9e wrote: post #113

HN is a special place but among the average folk, I get why 90% of people use google. I'm no google fan, but it still baffles me how bad the alternatives still are. Especially with so many companies scraping the whole web for AI data, and so many GPUs chugging on that data. I suppose they are all focused on replacing the concept of search results with LLM prose. Ironically bing is down at the moment https://downdetec…

> it still baffles me how bad the alternatives still are Hard disagree. Google almost delights in not showing what you want. For political stuff it's very biased. If you search for something more obscure, Google really likes to "correct" your search and eliminate terms. Although Google is better in my maternal language and for images (but AI is ruining image search for everyone).

[dead]

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#704

Post by gizmo »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #672
hzia wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s revenue not profits. Majority goes to app devs. Profits are all that matter

This is a naive take. Companies want their book-profit to be as close to zero, because they make their income tax to the IRS close to 0. Most companies intentionally waste money on expenses to help drive future growth, or atleast avoid taxes. This is why you hear constantly Amazon pays almost no taxes compared to their revenue.

Amazon was the exception actually. That's why it's the poster child for being perpetually break-even. The surge in AI capex spending of the last couple of years is partially because big tech has finally found something to shovel their billions into. Before that big tech just sat on their billions with no plan of what to do with it. But even AI spending doesn't really put a dent in the money pile because big tech is so astonishingly profitable. Apple makes $100 billion in accounting profit annually. Google and Microsoft each $75 billion. How can you reinvest that kind of money? You can't. It's too much. Even Amazon gave up and booked $44 billion in net profit.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#705

Post by km144 »

crabmusket wrote: post #312
anon291 wrote: post #206

I wish that instead of wasting time on antitrust cases, that the government would just directly fund competition by incentivizing it. I.e, the first company to reach x% browser market share will receive $x million (billion?) in prize money or, the first company to build an LLM-based search engine with x% market share will receive $n million Or structure as a direct investment or heavy tax breaks. Always better to inc…

Instead of spending millions or billions on giveaways to private companies, why not fund a public alternative? Sure, search isn't cheap. But governments should consider information access to be of key importance to democratic participation. An open source, public benefit search engine would be a really valuable thing to have, which no private company does or ever will find it viable to provide. And I don't even want…

The bleak reality is that most Americans trust private corporations more than their own government. Government-sponsored search is literally 1984. If it's just a competitor, we've seen that unless there is an external force driving the initiatives, government ventures are often just less successful than unfettered private corporations (e.g. NASA post Space Race).

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#706

Post by josephd79 »

WalterBright wrote: post #375
sirspacey wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What MSFT learned from that was to open offices in Washington DC, lobby and sell to the federal gov. Hard to find the sense in this action.

Before the anti-trust action against Microsoft, Microsoft did not lobby nor donate to politicians. After Bill Gates rode on a golf cart with Bill Clinton, he realized the need to pay the expected tribute to the politicians.

yep, have to pay the toll trolls.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#707

Post by Workaccount2 »

rockskon wrote: post #589
IX-103 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing up Manifest v3 like it's some evil plot to show people ads. Nevermind that Chrome already ships with its own adblocker which blocks bad ads. The fact is that with the Spectre mitigations added to Chrome, the performance of networking with manifest v2 was bad. Having to keep sending every network request through 3 different processes just in case there is a plugin (uses by the minority of users) t…

Bad ads? No, that is horseshit . The goal of blocking ads isn't to only allow in "good ads". It's to block ads . Not some ads. Not a few ads. Not just malware delivered via ads. Not just Google's competitors. It's to block ads. All of them. To stop the relentless harassment of the advertising industry claiming other peoples' screens and time as their own.

At least be intellectually honest here

Ads might suck a lot, but you are also not entitled to free content.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#708

Post by thfuran »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #522
nox101 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works. Rather, Google realizes someone else would take over their business if they didn't make their product better. If Google stuck to no data and XYZSearch used data, then XYZSearch would provide a better product and Google would go out of business. It doesn't take greed, the "could make even more money" part, to have an incentive to do better. All it takes is a desire not to go out of business.

> if they didn't make their product better Odd take IMO that Google's ever encroaching ads make their product better . Heck, Larry and Sergei even wrote a treatise (it used to be available directly off google.com, can't remember the name) about how they would be different from search engines at the time, how they wouldn't sell search position, and how the ads model was fundamentally at odds with end user experience.…

Clearly identified and few in number.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#709

Post by mission_failed »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #707
rockskon wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad ads? No, that is horseshit . The goal of blocking ads isn't to only allow in "good ads". It's to block ads . Not some ads. Not a few ads. Not just malware delivered via ads. Not just Google's competitors. It's to block ads. All of them. To stop the relentless harassment of the advertising industry claiming other peoples' screens and time as their own.

At least be intellectually honest here Ads might suck a lot, but you are also not entitled to free content.

Ads force you to pay for some thing

Actually no, it's worse. Ad companies take everything they can from you using any method they can including monitoring everything you browse or watch on TV or say near your phone or TV or in your car or what you look at in every shop or what you buy or who you chat to, compile massive secret databases and sell 'you' to anyone willing to pay, regardless of what the information is used for.

Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

#710

Post by mossTechnician »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #707
rockskon wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad ads? No, that is horseshit . The goal of blocking ads isn't to only allow in "good ads". It's to block ads . Not some ads. Not a few ads. Not just malware delivered via ads. Not just Google's competitors. It's to block ads. All of them. To stop the relentless harassment of the advertising industry claiming other peoples' screens and time as their own.

At least be intellectually honest here Ads might suck a lot, but you are also not entitled to free content.

Likewise, no third party is entitled to loading resources on my computer or displaying content on my screen without my permission.
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