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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

#741

Post by zuminator »

someluccc wrote: post #293
dartos wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A) Do you pay them? - No: then yes it is free And here we see the ostrich. When faced with the horrors of reality, sticks its head in the sand. It’s simpler in there.

Your data is worthless. Please do tell me how much you could sell your “data” for right now.

There are companies like Nielsen that will pay you directly for you to provide personal data. But regardless of that, there are plenty of things that we do for free, like babysitting our own kids or answering our own phones, that if provided to someone else we would get paid for. So if your data is worthless to you, that doesn't mean it's not valuable to someone else. And we know for a fact that data is valuable, so why are you even raising this point, except to be argumentative for its own sake?

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

#742

Post by KoolKat23 »

arghwhat wrote: post #722
KoolKat23 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand your point. The links points however are a bit ridiculous, they're entitled to their opinion but may be surprised to find people, at the businesses they use, have opinions that differ to theirs, and these businesses aren't always well-oiled machines.

Differences in opinions and values (in particular what money is used for) is one thing, failing (and refusing) legal obligations and getting surprised by something as basic as tax is something else entirely.

Obviously legal obligations is an issue.

For a consumer facing business with no lock in, the tax thing makes absolutely no difference in your life using the product.

If it was really a concern you'd simply no longer have access and change search engine, until then it doesn't matter. You'd be surprised what tax issues even large billion dollar companies have.

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

#743

Post by consteval »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #725
mossTechnician wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So the people who view the ads and make it possible for you to load just the content are suckers for doing so?

I'm not concerned with the business' model or how they plan to make a revenue. That's the CEO decision and he's smarter than me.

I'd be happy to pay for no ads, and I have before for streaming services. But as time goes on it gets harder and harder. Often the only choice is ads, at which point I block or move on to a different service.

Ads use up my time and attention. Which, to me, is much more valuable than a small amount of money.

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

#744

Post by willi59549879 »

AceFromOttawa wrote: post #497
bsimpson wrote: post #328

It's gonna be wild if they make paying to be default search illegal, and then Google gets to keep all the money it pays out while still being the default (because nothing else is worth using).

This seems like it would have side effect punishments to companies like Apple, Samsung, Firefox etc. Sorry guys, but because Google made itself into a monopoly you can no longer sell default positions on your platform (Which is essentially a company buying an ad placement). I'm really curious what the Judge decides the remedy is for this issue. Anyone have any possible remedies in mind that doesn't completely tank so…

I was interested in that as well. What would be recommendations to break Google up? I am not sure that breaking up Google would work. All their systems are built to run on Google infrastructure. Outlawing tracking of the population (for ads and other things) I think would have a better effect.

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

#745

Post by arrosenberg »

gerash wrote: post #461
arrosenberg wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big Tech is stagnant and mostly good at milking the US consumer for cash. The tech industry would be better serve the average American if the market was more dynamic, and that requires breaking up the big players who are (often illegally) stifling competition.

What industry is not stagnant then? Auto? Medicine? Food?

Most of them are stagnant. That's why breaking up incumbents under antitrust laws is a great idea. GenAI and some sectors of the entertainment industry are pretty robust, but otherwise it's not great out there broadly speaking.

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

#746

Post by jmb99 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #646
jmb99 wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're spending their money rather than your money. Ok, and from whom did their money come? They didn’t magic it into existence. Google spending money that came from advertisers who got it from people buying their products isn’t much different than a research team spending public money, just with fewer middle men and a (generally) lower negative impact on society.

The money came from people selling (or trying to sell) products that other people want to buy for the price that includes the ads, as it's valuable. This is far better than the old school ad industry, which made advertising much more expensive and products more expensive.

$400 billion was spent on advertising alone in the US in 2023. In 1970, that number was $19 billion ($150 billion in 2023 dollars). Relative to GDP, that’s and 0.014% and 0.018% respectively. Depending on how you want to argue, there is either more spending on advertising (in dollars) than there was 50 years ago, or about the same (in relative GDP). Neither would account for products in the past being substantially more expensive than they are today.

That is ignoring the many moral arguments against targeted advertising, unnecessary consumerism, etc.

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

#747

Post by troyvit »

hzia wrote: post #446
stego-tech wrote: post #188

Loving the discourse in the comments here. Speaking as someone who grew up alongside Google in a sense, I fall on the side of the "break it up" camp. It was novel at the time to have a single company so nicely provide us with everything digitally that we could need - G Suite, YouTube, Search, Maps, Advertising, Books, Reader, etc - but in hindsight, we gave too much power to too unaccountable an entity, who in turn u…

I think most people do not understand that Google funnels a lot of their profits to make Chrome and Android into OSS. Youtube may be the only viable company that can come out of Google. Rest will either have to charge a lot of money or die. And we will be left with an even more profitable ad giant, that sends back all profits to it's share holders.

Speaking to search, both DDG and Kagi seem to be doing fine, each with very different models. Google could figure out something there.

Google ads would be fine on its own. They'd continue to dominate.

Google Analytics would probably have a problem. The big thing going for it is that it's free. Without being able to funnel their data hoovering into the rest of the ecosystem they'd probably lose that. If they _did_ have to charge, would they release a simpler tier that isn't so mind-bogglingly complex? That'd be nice.

Docs? Yeah, I don't see a way forward with that unless they charge a lot. There are some competitors, but they suck, and they struggle, and google docs seems one of the major nodes of interoperability between a lot of their products. It's be really hard to replicate that if you're broken up.

Calendar. Hah. Well. Everybody gets to suffer given that google calendar uses its own protocols. It's not like everybody could just switch to DAV and have close to the same functionality, at least out of the gate.

I agree with you re: Chrome and Android, but I will say that current FOSS forks of Android seem to do well. I think they have enough runway to continue making a good product. It would put phone makers into a bind, but I personally think their suffering is also a good thing. Fewer phone makers == less e-waste. Maybe people start holding onto their phones for a few years.

Honestly I couldn't care less about Chrome, except that I hope it does die. But Microsoft could take over the engine and use its hegemony to continue funneling money into developing it.

Firefox would be in a tough spot. They'd have to find another sponsor. I know they've been trying to diversify but I think we'd see a very different browser from them within 3 years of the breakup.

The good news is that there is no shortage of oligarchs to help pick up the pieces. Which is good because I bet Alphabet is going to start whinging about "massive layoffs" soon.

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

#748

Post by sitkack »

edg5000 wrote: post #579
baby_souffle wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure? Google has a search and location data, Google email is on one side if not both of most email chains, receipts, etc. Absolutely not discounting all of that; there are some pretty strong parallels between the data you can infer on a person based on their gmail graph versus their fb messenger graph, for example. Meta has a lot more "self-revealed-preference" data, though. Which of $thesePosts did you eng…

WhatsApp is huge in the EU, we don't really text much here; I'm guessing you are from the US. Meta has full access to that.

WhatsApp also demands full access to your address book, this means that Meta has a nearly global FoaF graph for anyone that has ever installed WhatsApp.

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

#749

Post by 11101010001100 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #699
whaaaaat wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just type MS. I understand that it was cool to use M$ in the 90s, but like, all the tech giants are bad at this point and M$ looks silly.

I’m happy for people to keep writing M$. It’s a great way to quickly identify comments to scroll past.

The irony is begging....

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

#750

Post by verdverm »

hzia wrote: post #724
mumblemumble wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that similar arguments were made about Ma Bell and Bell Labs back in the day. And it's true, a lot of great things did come out of Bell Labs. In fact, it almost seems like the only people able to produce great things in the 1970s were massive entrenched corporations like Ma Bell. Funny, that. Come to think of it, wasn't there a much more vibrant browser ecosystem in the late 90s and early 2000s, before Google…

I agree on the Bell Labs analogy Most browsers have consolidated over time because we are constantly updating web standards and bar for security is so high. On top of that everything has to be insanely backward compatible WebGPU is a good example. Implementing that securely in a nightmare

It might be time more of us think about the browser/chromium like Linux/kernel

There are lots of distos out there, but we all use the same core and make it better & safer together.

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