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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

#751

Post by agent281 »

davedx wrote: post #649
agent281 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google funds Chrome. Other browsers use Chrome as a base. The majority of Firefox's funding is from Google. They will suffer as well. MS would need to step back up with browsers and you would also have Safari left over. I think it would be a major shock to the browser ecosystem.

"Won't somebody please think of the browsers!" This is not a good reason to break up anti-competitive monopolies: that it would harm the technology their monopoly depends on

I'm not saying that they should stop anti-trust work for browsers. I'm saying that it won't necessarily make things better for the browser ecosystem as things stand. Things would definitely get worse before they got better in browser land.

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

#752

Post by hightrix »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #469
hightrix wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s hard for you to understand? Plumbing is good and useful. Plumbing using lead pipes is harmful. Advertising can be good and useful. Modern advertising that requires tracking everything a user does is harmful.

> What’s hard for you to understand? They're looking for depth where there isn't any. You're attempting to prove advertising is bad by claiming it's like lead pipes, on the basis of them both being bad. It's tautology. One could similarly "prove" ad blockers or puppies by this analogy to be whatever because they, too, can be good or bad.

Please read again.

Modern advertising is what I'm against, not advertising as a whole.

Similarly, I'm against lead pipes for plumbing, not plumbing as a whole.

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

#753

Post by rockskon »

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.

And you are not entitled to kill off your competitors by operating at a loss until they're dead and then raise your price (e.g. amount of time you demand from people for them to see ads, amount of personal data you collect, and all but hiding content that isn't up to the standards you present to advertisers) to ridiculous levels.

You don't like it? Go out of business and have companies that are able to operate at the price consumers are willing to pay rise up in your place.

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

#754

Post by agent281 »

stephenr wrote: post #577
agent281 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google funds Chrome. Other browsers use Chrome as a base. The majority of Firefox's funding is from Google. They will suffer as well. MS would need to step back up with browsers and you would also have Safari left over. I think it would be a major shock to the browser ecosystem.

> I think it would be a major shock to the browser ecosystem. To repeat the question from above, where is the downside? Microsoft only abandoned EdgeHTML and adopted Blink because Google owned sites like YouTube were deliberately breaking in Edge. At this stage I don't imagine they'd go back (to EdgeHTML as their engine) specifically, but it's not hard to imagine a world where MSFT maintains its own fork of Blink for…

I was replying the GP:

> So if Google dies then we'll have more diverse browser and mobile ecosystem

Initially, this won't be true. A lot of the browser ecosystem relies on Google right now. Eventually it would be replaced. I just don't think that it would be immediately true.

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

#755

Post by hightrix »

pawelmurias wrote: post #426
hightrix wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose you wouldn't consider yourself an optimist. With regard to modern advertising, you are absolutely correct! That said, I fully understand and agree with the usefulness of advertising. What I'm against is the modern state of advertising. If all ads were simply contextual based on the content being shown and not the user, I don't think many of us would have problems with the ads industry.

How are ads for less relevant products better? If the user tracking data is used only for showing ads and doesn't leak I would guess 99% of people would care about getting tracked.

They wouldn't be less relevant.

If I were browsing a mountain biking forum, I'd see ads for mountain bikes and other related services. They would be MORE relevant, rather than the current ads I get for the product I bought 2 months ago.

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

#756

Post by hightrix »

WalterBright wrote: post #453
hightrix wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short and simple response. > *Advertising in it's current form* is a plague on humanity. Magazine ads were not highly targeted towards every user that bought one. We liked magazine ads, they were high quality and usually contextually relevant. Modern advertising is nothing like magazine ads. We don't take screenshots of ads on webpages, print them out, and hang them on our walls like we did with magazine ads. > Why d…

What would you do without a search engine? Who do you think is going to pay for it?

These are problems unrelated to the topic at hand. We aren't going to solve every bit of this situation in this comment thread.

Who pays for it? Not my problem. I'll use whatever free service exists, there will always be one.

Without a search engine? The internet would fail and targeted ads would cease to exist.

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

#757

Post by lupusreal »

IX-103 wrote: post #493
T-Winsnes wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the value of controlling the platform that you base all your revenue from. Chrome controls the internet and android has a huge market share on mobile. The latest changes to chrome that breaks plugins like ublock origin allows them to keep maximising their advertising revenue. I think these two being open source is a major reason why they have been so successfully adopted. It isn’t direct rev…

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…

All ads are psychological warfare being waged by corporations against the public. They ruthlessly exploit human psychology to sell product.

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

#758

Post by lupusreal »

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.

Websites aren't forced to send me their content even though I use an adblocker. If they do, then the "" harm"" to their business is Not My Problem.

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

#759

Post by lupusreal »

lolinder wrote: post #711
wvh wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much effort do Chrome and Android require from a company the size of Google? It's a genuine question. Jolla/Sailfish make a mobile operating system with a handful of people, and even though that system pretty minimal, I'd say the added value on the Android side is the ecosystem of apps and porting to devices, which is done by other developers and manufacturers than Google. And I'm not sure how many people work on…

> Jolla/Sailfish make a mobile operating system with a handful of people My biggest question is how long they can stay at a handful if they become popular. The increased burden of security patches alone would likely turn that handful into a small army. Security through obscurity is often mocked (for good reason), but it actually does work in cases like this as long as you don't reach Android's scale.

I wonder what percentage of the workforce Google has working on Android is dedicated to fixing security issues. Probably a sizable minority... Maybe one in ten? I'd love to know the real numbers.

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

#760

Post by s1artibartfast »

simiones wrote: post #680
s1artibartfast wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's exactly the point I was getting it. Who decides what efficient is, and what do they measure. You might care about vision algorithms, and I might care about hamburgers. From the economics perspective, something being Monopoly doesn't mean it's inefficient. Depending on the situation, they can be far more efficient then diverse companies, or much less

> From the economics perspective, something being Monopoly doesn't mean it's inefficient. From an economics perspective, if there is a monopoly, there is no free market, so you can't rely on the market for efficiency. A monopoly can be efficient, but it can also be arbitrarily inefficient and still keep its position.

you are correct and I agree.

I was trying to make the point that monopoly isnt defined by inefficiency, either by the technical definition or the colloquial one.

Rality is complex, and few monopolies can be arbitrarily inefficient. I think this is where a lot of the public confusion about monopiles comes from.

If you have the only grocery store or gas station in town, it might seem like there is a monopoly. There is probably a wide leeway to raise prices or be inefficient, but not without limit or else someone would compete.

If Amazon, Google, or whomever 10X'd their prices, competitors would arise.

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