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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]

#781

Post by davkan »

CommenterPerson wrote: post #631

Garmin user here. Maybe the last one on the planet? (my kid thinks I'm nuts). Many of the comments are about how great Google's products are (or aren't). But the case is about anti-competitive behavior. Personally, I hate how a bulk of the internet now consists of surveillance. All this amazing tech brilliance.. resting on a foundation that's about getting us to buy more junk. I will be happy if this lawsuit reduces…

As in a standalone car gps unit? A ton of people use Garmin fitness and backcountry gear.

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

#782

Post by imiric »

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're talking like there are no alternatives to all of these products. There are, and not just from Apple. The reason Google's products are popular is because they're advertised as being "free", and Google has enough resources to run them as loss leaders, while also exerting pressure as a giant corporation and monopoly.

If they happen to disappear tomorrow it would cause a minor disruption in the markets, but the world would quickly adjust, and smaller companies would have a chance at competing. Until a new monopoly pops up, and governments are "forced" to break them up again. The circle of capitalism.

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

#783

Post by tsimionescu »

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…

Propaganda, which is what advertising is, is generally a way to trick people into doing things that they wouldn't otherwise have done, typically by making them believe things that are not true.

In the case of advertising, those untrue things are usually "X is a much bigger problem than I thought" and "Y will solve problem X and make my life a lot easier". That you can convince people of these things doesn't make them true in all cases. Washing machines are extremely useful; egg cookers, very much unnecessary. Yet commercials will often look the same for both kinds of products (not for washing machines today, obviously, as the case for why they are useful to have has long since become obvious, and commercials are mostly about which brand is better).

This is an often overlooked thing in discussions about advertising. A major part of the propaganda effort is not "which brand of X should I buy", it's "I need to own an X". That's where they lie to people the most, and convince them to waste money, not on an inferior product, but one that shouldn't have existed at all.

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

#784

Post by starfezzy »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #628
echelon wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a better word than "duopoly" to describe what Apple and Google are. They're just as bad as a monopoly - and they're impossible to compete with. Both Apple and Google need to be disrupted here. We should be able to see lots of healthy verticals for every single one of these product categories. They shouldn't accrue to two players and be impossible to dislodge. I propose the word "Googolith" to describe {Google…

Google works because of it's ad network and tracking. Everything Google does is a money furnace without a centralized ad network. People may celebrate the break-up of google, but it will be short lived when they find that now everything they do on the internet that they used to do through google costs a monthly sub. Or is ad supported with zero tolerance for ad-blocking. The reason competing with google is impossible…

> People may celebrate the break-up of google, but it will be short lived

You know what will be short lived? The disruption itself. We're not talking about the death of Sol.

The most significant fact in all of this is that everything will stabilize and we'll all be fine (except the monopoly, which is the point). And when it's all said and done, we'll come out the other side better for it.

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

#785

Post by kdmtctl »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #727
RajBhai wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember hotmail before gmail. Attachments had a 2 MB limit. I couldn't even share HQ photos using hotmail. And the whole inbox had a 25 MB capacity. I do believe there were paid alternatives with more storage. Gmail came in with 1 GB storage and grouping emails as conversations. To me, both of these aspects were revolutionary, and other email providers shortly followed suit.

* "other email providers shortly followed suit" means that it was never out of their reach to begin with, they just needed more competition to convince them to try: which didn't have to be Google and didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported. * 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later suggests that something vital has stalled. Every other storage metric (price of RAM per MB, price of hard drives per M…

It could also mean that you can't invest indefinite amount of storage to ever growing user base, if storage metrics would not improve indefinitely. There is a break down and 15GB cap is nothing comparing with Google Photos cut, which is a strong sign that storage is the problem even for behemoths.

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

#786

Post by tsimionescu »

nl wrote: post #723
lolinder wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where you got that I'm trying to impose anything on anyone—sounds like you latched onto a side note and decided to reply to what you thought the side note was implying instead of the substance of my comment? The argument has nothing to do with values or imposing them on others, it's simply this: These things are not and never were free. Google wants you to think they're free, but either the ads are effec…

It’s possible to reject the argument that consumers seeing ads is the same as monetary payment. I'm fine seeing ads. I wouldn't pay commercial rates for the services I use. I find ads maybe 20% useful and for me that's a good deal.

You have to explain why and how you are rejecting it.

The point of the poster above is that you're ultimately paying for your free email with a Google tax on every carton of milk and every smartphone you buy. That is, if advertising were banned and you had to pay for Gmail, most of your other purchases would be just a little bit cheaper, because they wouldn't be paying for Google ads to support your free email.

And this is just basic finance: the advertising budget has to be paid for somehow, so it is priced into the goods themselves (either through higher prices or lower quality, of course).

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

#787

Post by anukin »

josephg wrote: post #584
zelphirkalt wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure there are many capable people working at Google, but the exaggerating of their skill level needs to stop. Some leet coder doesn't necessarily deliver better designed systems than any another engineer. And with that, the cult of believing in whiteboard coding interviews also needs to go away.

I’ve worked there. They certainly aren’t all geniuses. But there are a huge number of brilliant engineers there - many of whom spend their lives schleping protobufs around for a fat paycheck. It’s not the whiteboard interviews that makes that possible. It’s the prestige (especially from a few years ago), job security and salary. And the opportunity to work with other smart people. Google has an excellent talent pool.

The current crop of googlers are largely normal and it’s hard to find exceptionally talented engineers until you meet an l7 and up. The faang engineers as exceptional engineers is largely marketing to attract experienced engineers to join faang at below average market rates.

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

#788

Post by hgomersall »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #711
WesBrownSQL wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you don't get. You aren't just watching ads. You are giving them data about you, a lot of data. That data is used to heavily manipulate you. This isn't like the old days of broadcast TV where ads air and you aren't directly tracked. If you ever find a product that is free, it isn't. You are the product that is being sold.

I do get that, and I’m fine with it.

The data is not just used to manipulate you, but everyone like you. Also you are giving away data from everyone that contacts you. You are non consensually making that decision for everyone in your inbox (and, I suspect, many others too).

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

#789

Post by qwertox »

intended wrote: post #775
jmatthews wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DOGE should read your comment.

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

#790

Post by airspresso »

odyssey7 wrote: post #706
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…

I don’t buy it. I suspect that a reason Google Cloud remains a laggard in market share is that Google’s core business, as an advertiser that feeds off user data, gives parts of the available market the heebie jeebies. The monopoly is possibly self-defeating at this point. Maybe the reason for the Google graveyard is that too big to fail has somehow turned into too big to succeed .

Yes, some companies certainly avoid using Google Cloud due to the strong link between Google and advertising. Especially in Europe you'll find that kind of sentiment. Pushing them to strongly prefer AWS for all things cloud.
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