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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]

#731

Post by dev_l1x_be »

robertlagrant wrote: post #721
lolinder wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> while selling other businesses a direct line to its customers' wallets What does this mean? > Even if you discount the effectiveness of ads (which seems foolish given how many people have so much staked on them working), the eye-watering prices Google charges for them get directly passed to the consumer in the form of higher prices. But then...why is anyone buying them if they don't work? How do you run this experi…

There are mire dark patterns in this than you can think of. Have you ever wondered what does Amazon do on the top of the search results typing “something ebay” into google?

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

#732

Post by hilbert42 »

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…

"The whole web will shrink, and huge swaths of the worldwide economy will disappear."

Even if that were to be true and comes to pass then who is to blame? Clearly both Google and Government and its regulators who let Google get out of hand and allowed it to violate monopoly laws for so long when it's been obvious for years.

OK, what's to be done? You can't allow the law to continue to be violated especially now that everybody knows that it has been—if you do then you are giving all and sundry carte blanche to ignore laws as they see fit. That's a recipe for the break down of law and order.

If the Government legislates to give Google exemptions or some form of special privilege then it's not only further entrenching Google's monopoly but also further weakening democracy by favoring the rich and powerful (they'd be further privileged).

Now let's assume some compromise or whitewashing where Google is restructured or bits sold off without strong financial sanctions/fines etc.—ones that actually hurt shareholders' stocks significantly then no one will be happy. Google won't be happy because its already optimized its business structure for maximum income and a restructure would reduce revenues, and those who've been hurt would claim it was too little too late and they'd cry foul.

Yes, government has to take much of the blame but so do shareholders and Google executives. If little is done and there are no penalties that actually hurt the pocket of the perpetrators to a significant extent then it'll be back business as usual in short order. We need strong penalties to set an example to the world that violating the law won't be tolerated.

I'm not a Google shareholder but if I were I'd be selling my shares just in case.

Now with that in mind give me your solutions.

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

#733

Post by sofixa »

fsh wrote: post #435
sofixa wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the vast majority of people don't want to and have zero intention pf paying separately for email, maps, navigation, browser, etc. In fact, that's how things used to be before Google and their ilk used ads to make an ecosystem, and their ecosystem was better and free at the point of use than what came before

The vast majority of people are paying separately for all kinds of stuff. I don't see a reason why software and digital services have to be different. In the early days, payment was difficult, but this has been long solved. I am convinced that the quality would improve dramatically if there was some actual competition. Also most people would probably prefer not to pay for the ad fees that google extorts from pretty m…

> The vast majority of people are paying separately for all kinds of stuff.

And a lot of them already suffer from subscription fatigue.

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

#734

Post by snackernews »

MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #484
snackernews wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Kagi is bad. As evidence I present Siri.”

[flagged]

For someone guarding the platform from weaksauce nonsense comments you picked a strange one to defend.

I was commenting on the weakness of the analogy. There’s nothing in any of the 4 entities mentioned other than the author’s opinion about them.

Sorry my comment missed the mark for you.

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

#735

Post by MyOutfitIsVague »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #639
makeitdouble wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google services are not a gift. They are not actually free. Google is not a charity nor is it a non-profit. I want people in this discussion to stop arguing as if Google isn't making money on all these services.

If the parents were slowly siphoning off enough of the teen's money through a convoluted set of channels such that the teenager indirectly paid for the truck anyway and the parents ended up effectively taking a share of the money, that would be definitely worth hating.

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

#736

Post by ezfe »

xyzzy9563 wrote: post #529
ezfe wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then why do they pay Apple $25,000,000,000 a year to default search to Google?

Because they have the money and Apple wants them to pay. Why should Google let a competitor pay a lesser amount to be the default?

Because $25 billion is a large amount of money and you just made the claim that people would use Google regardless

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

#737

Post by ezfe »

dismalaf wrote: post #467
ezfe wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two ways to remedy an anti competitive monopoly: Behavioral remedies where the government gets involved with google’s business and maintains ongoing control to ensure they behave. Structural remedies where the government separates the company into parts and then-crucially-leaves them alone for the most part. The “ideal” solution is to magically stop Google from being anticompetitive but that is unrealistic.…

Except no one is providing much evidence that Google is anti-competitive. It's more like they're simply too good at competing so competitors want to knee-cap them... Exhibit A: Bing's top search query is "google".

They literally determined they were in a court of law. Lol.

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

#738

Post by hilbert42 »

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…

"The whole web will shrink, and huge swaths of the worldwide economy will disappear."

Even if that were to be true and comes to pass then who is to blame? Clearly both Google and Government and its regulators who let Google get out of hand and allowed it to violate monopoly laws for so long when it's been obvious for years.

OK, what's to be done? You can't allow the law to continue to be violated especially now that everybody knows that it has been—if you do then you are giving all and sundry carte blanche to ignore laws as they see fit. That's a recipe for the break down of law and order.

If the Government legislates to give Google exemptions or some form of special privilege then it's not only further entrenching Google's monopoly but also further weakening democracy by favoring the rich and powerful (they'd be further privileged).

Now let's assume some compromise or whitewashing where Google is restructured or bits sold off without strong financial sanctions/fines etc.—ones that actually hurt shareholders' stocks significantly then no one will be happy. Google won't be happy because its already optimized its business for maximum income and a restructure of any significant size would reduce revenues, and those who've been hurt by Google's monopoly would claim it was too little too late and they'd cry foul.

Yes, Government has to take much of the blame but so do shareholders and Google executives. If little is done and there are no penalties that actually hurt the pockets of the perpetrators to a significant extent then it'll be back business as usual in short order. We need strong penalties to set an example to the world that violating the law won't be tolerated. Perhaps the dominoes have to fall to right things.

I'm not a Google shareholder but if I were I'd be selling my shares just in case.

Now with that in mind give me your solutions.

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

#739

Post by YetAnotherNick »

jmatthews wrote: post #661
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.

Google is an ad monopoly and ad business should be broken up somehow(I don't know how). Here we are breaking up every business other than ad business.

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

#740

Post by Brian_K_White »

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…

The services are not free. Argument invalid.
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