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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

#781

Post by johnnyanmac »

tehjoker wrote: post #523
hzia wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ideological blindness that causes people to speak past each other is this. Innovation requires reliable funding, such as monopoly profits or government funding. Monopoly leads to undemocratic concentrations of power and various private taxes on the public (e.g. in the case of Google, your personal information). Bell Labs was funded by monopoly funding with a law directing a certain amount to research. Competition…

it's not blindness to me. It's as simple as me rather accepting some short term chaos for a healthier long term market. Big changes are never without sacrifices.

>Innovation requires reliable funding, such as monopoly profits or government funding.

we have more than enough angel vestors, normal investing, bank loans, etc. to get any innovation off the ground. And I think people forget that the original innovation hubs for big adacement came from Acedemia. Now retrofitted to be a recruiting wing for private businesses who pay to capture that knowledge.

The only downside here is that they then cannot proceed to offer that product for free for a decade to capture a market before squeezing said market they captured. Is that a downside for people who don't/can't pay? Yes. But that is historically how every business has operated. Figure out how to optimize costs so they can profit, and balance it against the market you are targeting. Big tech has forgotten about that and simply throws money around like it's monopoly money (and it kind of is).

We need a huge overhaul of how all this works. Ironically enough by going "backwards" in a few areas.

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

#782

Post by Apocryphon »

WalterBright wrote: post #780
Apocryphon wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2017 article so pretty old by now, but: > Microsoft in the year ended June 2016 had $20.1 billion in foreign income and a domestic loss of $300 million. Microsoft’s income tax expense was $3.3 billion, for an effective rate of 16.5%. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, posted a $4.7 billion tax expense, or 19%. Such “avoision” will continue as long as foreign income is subject to lower rates than domestic. https:…

> Who's to say that the other country's Google-killer won't prove to be a greater boon to American consumers? If you do it by hobbling American businesses, they aren't a greater boon.

But maybe the consumers derive greater service satisfaction or pay less. Why should the American customer care for the plight of American businesses?

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

#783

Post by Apocryphon »

WalterBright wrote: post #623
PlattypusRex wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay for Kagi or any other good, paid search engine, which is already superior to Google today?

Right, you get ads, or you pay. Businesses aren't charities.

So the existence of for-pay search engines would disprove the assertion that advertisements are necessary, as there are alternate ways to find information and fund businesses that fetch you that information, without relying on ads.

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

#784

Post by johnnyanmac »

briandear wrote: post #727
tehjoker wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ideological blindness that causes people to speak past each other is this. Innovation requires reliable funding, such as monopoly profits or government funding. Monopoly leads to undemocratic concentrations of power and various private taxes on the public (e.g. in the case of Google, your personal information). Bell Labs was funded by monopoly funding with a law directing a certain amount to research. Competition…

So how did Apple invent iPhone? What monopoly did they have? Nationalizing anything is an absolute disaster for innovation. What innovations did Aeroflot develop? The free market and a thriving entrepreneur ecosystem creates innovation. The profit motive is a powerful one. Taking risks to invent the next big thing is what drives entrepreneurship in the first place. Governments are corrupt, inefficient, and don’t get…

>This idea that governments are democratic is a myth. I didn’t vote for tethered bottle caps in the EU. I didn’t vote to send money to fund wars... If we could choose to pay taxes on a line-item basis, that would be the most democratic thing ever.

The last thing we want is the common people, unaware of the intricacies of all the things a government pays for, voting on what and how government is funded. That's a great way to get some huge budgets for circuses while forgetting to allocate for bread. The most important aspects of life are not glamorous, but they need to be funded for.

There's some merit here (maybe people can choose where 5-10% of the federal budget goes), but before we can even think about that we'd need to get the national debt under control. There's negative money to allocate as is.

>In the U.S., one can vote, but the policies that actually happen are the result of what lobbyists spent the most money buying the relevant congressmen.

That's more of a lobbying issue than a democracy issue, no? Ideally a democracy would uncover a large gift and the PR would completely tank chances of re-election. But alas, the people aren't caring or well-tuned enough.

>The most democratic thing there is is the free market.

THe endgame of a free market is monopoly. So a small government would give the exact result we have here with lesser chances of an antitrust.

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

#785

Post by Apocryphon »

WalterBright wrote: post #779
mulmen wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this breakup hand anything to another country? Competition is good for the economy. Breaking up Google allows new innovators to thrive.

> Why would this breakup hand anything to another country? For the same reason Google is dominant today. Hobbling American business creates opportunities for other countries to take the top dog position.

Why should the market care about the fate of nations?

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

#786

Post by johnnyanmac »

WalterBright wrote: post #621
elzbardico wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you don't simply walk into a Patek Phillipe store and ask to see the watches. Enzo Ferrari refused to sell ferraris for people he didn't think were deserving of having a ferrari. Corruption on the highest levels is very similar. Not everyone is on the buyers club.

Customer selection is not corruption. Ferrari still curates their customers. If you buy a Ferrari and paint it pink, you get on their "nope" list. You also cannot buy a new Ferrari today unless you have a previous relationship with them, or are very very rich.

>Customer selection is not corruption.

depends on the selection process, of course. At least in the US and I imagine most of the EU. You can paint a ferrari pink and get blacklisted. Not sure how it would go if they say they don't sell to women...

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

#787

Post by gerash »

kelnos wrote: post #605
idle_zealot wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you truly believe that tech monopolists are critical to national security then the only safe option would be to nationalize them. Incidentally, that would also remove the profit motive for bad behavior, solving one of the largest problems with allowing a monopoly to exist. But apparently that would be anti-free. Because nothing says Free Country like letting a handful of the most rich and powerful people on the pl…

Fully agree. And for the people who think nationalizing businesses leads to socialist/communist hell, at the very least, if you've decided that a business is critical to national security, it should be funded at least in part by the government (with the government having a real, if not controlling, stake in it), and heavily, heavily regulated.

I don't believe in nationalizing anything and there just needs to be competition.

Even if we do want to nationalize anything for security reasons, defense contractors should be at the top on the list but they have already bought the US government so DOJ is after those who haven't paid their dues

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

#788

Post by Trompair »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #718
mission_failed wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 us…

I mean, every other business I am aware of forces you to pay for something too? I don't see what is confusing here. Consumers love the ad-model because they can get things "free". If the real cost of ad-supported products is too much for you, then its too expensive for you to use. Like someone found the backdoor to the movie theater, and people just go in that way rather than pay for a ticket, and then these same peo…

Not paying for a movie ticket is a crime. Blocking ads is not. They're not equivalent.

Also, if the industry actually did something, anything to address the grievances of ad block users (a lot of whom I'm willing to bet aren't inherently against advertising and fully understand it funds the content they consume and enjoy), it might be less of, if not a complete non-issue. But no, ads are still distracting, still heavily affect page load speed, still track every little thing visitors do, and still infect millions of peoples' systems with malware every year, and the industry just collectively shrugs and ploughs on towards maximum profit at any cost.

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

#789

Post by s1artibartfast »

consteval wrote: post #763
jackcosgrove wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sell the drug for $X0000/dose, even if relatively few people can obtain it A rational company would lower the price if that broadened the market and netted more profit by volume. Drugs aren't Veblen goods. The impetus for jacking up drug prices is that the market is captive, and those who need the drug will obtain it. That and insurance/government is often the payor.

No, because once those people take the drug then cash flow disappears, because they're cured. It's ideal to stretch out the adoption of the drug as much as possible in that situation. It's the same reason SAAS took off so much. If you sell the product and consumers are (relatively) happy, now what? They might come back and buy another version in 5-10 years, but how do you generate enough cash flow between now and the…

Thats not very true for drugs, especially a theoretical cure all.

The time value of money means you want to sell every dose as soon as possible. with a 10% annual return, $1,000 today is better than $2,600 in 10 years.

Additionally, each day that passes, someone else can come in and outperform you or undercut your price.

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

#790

Post by johnnyanmac »

WalterBright wrote: post #620
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cisco reputedly avoided an anti-trust action by wining and dining DoJ lawyers Source? (They settled with Multiven.) > isn't it a bit naive to think it doesn't No, it's naïve to think that level of influence can be bought. Not an uncommon mistake. Bankman-Fried made it, and it's increasingly looking like Bytedance did too. But D.C. is a town obsessed with power over money. People regularly toss aside lobbyists and t…

> Source? An article I read around 2000 about why the DoJ didn't go after Cisco, despite Cisco having a monopolistic position at the time. Sorry I don't have a photographic memory. > it's naïve to think that level of influence can be bought. Not at all. Where do you think the money for the Clinton Foundation came from, for example?

>Where do you think the money for the Clinton Foundation came from, for example?

Bill attended Georgetown and Yale (where he met Hilary), was governor of Arkansas for 12 years and had a short stint of running the country before the foundation was founded. Hilary was a director at a school of law and worked under Carter's administration, and had decades of other legal feats before entering the senate right after founding the foundation.

If those two can't network in those 30 years for funds, then America as a whole is a sham.

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