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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]

#771

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

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…

digital advertisement is a mass-surveillance technology in the hands of corporations. I cheer its collapse

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

#772

Post by Aded1989 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #633
jorvi wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I feel like people are subconsciously aware that Google is trying to bludgeon them into getting YouTube premium, and they're simply sticking it to Google rather than giving in. Google's gone through: - one skippable 5s ad - two skippable 5s ads - one unskippable 5s and one skippable 15s ads - aforementioned or two 15s ads, one skippable - two 15s unskippable ads - removed the prerenderer 'skip' button to ma…

Everytime someone blocks an ad, someone else has to watch it. It's crazy to me how entitled people are and how completely blind they are to how the ad supported model works. Then these same people complain that youtube has no competitors. Yeah, no shit, who in their right mind would invest in a customer base like youtubes? Oh, that's right, Vid.me, and they went bankrupt in a year. Wonder why...

Ads spread malware that threatens my financial security.

Remove active content from online advertising and I'll disable my ad blocker.

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

#773

Post by ArinaS »

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…

If this is the price we'll pay to break up a monopoly, then be it. Maybe we don't need these services, and maybe people will finally learn to not be dependent on a single provider for everything they have on the Internet.

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

#774

Post by ArinaS »

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…

> "If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened."

People didn't need them 20 years ago, so why do they need them now?

> "They are all FREE too, mind you."

No proprietary software is free. You either pay with your money (you do this with games, for example), or you pay with your data (and this is what you do with Google). Sometimes with both (you do this with Microsoft).

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

#775

Post by intended »

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.

I think the point here is that it should be done carefully and thoughtfully.

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

#776

Post by intended »

animal_spirits wrote: post #686
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…

> 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 val…

Yes?

Economics is the distribution of finite goods amongst infinite desires.

It’s the objective way to optimize an economy given some normative set up.

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

#777

Post by hilbert42 »

BrenBarn wrote: post #766
hilbert42 wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That's why we need anti-trust in the first place." Moreover, it seems to me these laws ought to strengthened to make executives/decision makers even more accountable. The people who made Google a monopoly aren't stupid and knew full well what they were doing. They should not be able to hide behind Google's corporate structure and also should be penalized for their bad behavior.

Yes, this is one of the big changes that need to be made to really reform things. Companies act based on decisions made by individuals. Those individuals should be held accountable if the company's actions are found to be harmful. There should be lots of CEOs and board members of companies in oil, healthcare, housing, retail (as well as tech) who should be facing fines in the hundreds of millions (if not the billions…

One thing I forgot. There's another good reason to hold CEOs and others personally responsible and punish them accordingly as it acts as a deterrent. Whenever we see Google, Facebook, etc. get levied with fines we rarely learn who the nameless gnomes are who perpetrated the act, or approved it, etc. Knowing that their names would be in the public domain would send shivers down their backs, even if acquitted it would likely not bode well for future employment.

Moreover, CEOs, directors, boards etc. should also be held accountable even when they are not directly responsible (like captains of ships are). This would have the effect of ensuring that those in charge would mandate an ethics and behavior policy for the company and ensure that all employees were aware of it, and violation thereof would result in dismissal.

Thst said, to be fair, you can't blame management for the unacceptable behavior of a wayward or stupid employee. Commonsense must prevail and laws must allow for such things.

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

#778

Post by starfezzy »

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…

> That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed.

Who's gonna tell him?

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

#779

Post by ironbound »

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…

Yes, we should break it up so new startups can work in the space!

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

#780

Post by knowriju »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #593
doctorpangloss wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube, Gmail and Docs are pretty good. All the alternatives to them really suck...

YouTube sucks in terms of usability. It only survives, because it is at no cost except for ads viewing and not even that, when using uBlock Origin properly and because of most of the content being there. Other than that is has become so enshittified, it is one of the worst sites I visit. Gmail and Docs are children's toys for people, who don't know much about e-mail and proper documents. Those are the majority of peo…

What's funny about this comment is that YouTube is absolutely usable if you pay for YouTube Premium, but most won't. Goes to show, while everyone whines about how bad an ad based business model is, noone has any alternate strategy that works at scale, - especially one that's not exclusionary to people from the developing world who can't afford to pay for every single thing on the internet.
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