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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

#791

Post by Suppafly »

mumblemumble wrote: post #713
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.

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…

>Come to think of it, wasn't there a much more vibrant browser ecosystem in the late 90s and early 2000s, before Google used its dominant position in the ad market to undercut the competition?

No? It used to be IE and Mozilla, and now it's Edge, Chrome, and Mozilla. Opera existed then and now, and probably more people use it now, but it's still small enough that no one cares. I suppose you could make a point about Edge using Chrome's engine, but that's because the IE one sucked and the new one Microsoft made for Edge sucked so they eventually switched to using Chrome's. But the idea that the browser market was somehow better back in the day is hilarious and wrong.

>There used to be a lot more mobile operating systems out there, too.

Not really. I suppose early on during the smartphone era, blackberry was still around, but they mostly lost out due to Apple finally getting decent MDM, and not bothering to improve their product after a while, than the fact that Android was growing in popularity. Microsoft entered kinda late and never really developed their phone OS enough and eventually gave up, but that's because their product wasn't good enough, not because of anything the others were doing to stop them.

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

#792

Post by gerash »

davedx wrote: post #650
gerash wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google ruling shows how inconsistent the ruling are on such a common sense situation. So I don't want Google to be broken up and lose business only for MS, Apple, Amazon and Facebook to gobble up its business

What's common sense about the App Store rulings?

IMO Apple and Google app store are the same thing.

It'd be ridiculous if Epic sued Pepsi and Coca Cola for something about their Soda and the same court ruled against Pepsi but for Coca Cola.

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

#793

Post by bloppe »

kelnos wrote: post #614
bloppe wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started a small business selling candles during the pandemic. It's crazy how quickly you change your opinion about advertisements once you start needing to advertise your own business. All of the sudden, they're this amazing benefit for society. Advertisements can be good (when the business is good and genuinely wants you to know about good new product), and they can be bad (when the business if bad / misleading /…

> All of the sudden, they're this amazing benefit for society. No, they're an amazing benefit to your business . I'm sure your candles are great, but society doesn't need them (your candles, specifically) to survive. People would continue to find candles without your advertisements. Maybe candles that aren't as nice as yours, but people will get by just fine, and wouldn't know (or care) what they were missing. > Adve…

If you know you need something, great! You don't need advertisements. But there are a lot of things that you never would have thought of if they hadn't been advertised to you. Things that you would now consider necessities. Like toilets. You better believe it took a ton of advertising to get everybody to stop crapping in holes or buckets. I'm sure those people were annoyed by those advertisements too.

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

#794

Post by ladzoppelin »

CAPSLOCKSSTUCK wrote: post #773
Workaccount2 wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I completely agree. These discussions are so frustrating because the "ads are evil!" people never acknowledge that they're consuming ad-supported content. "If you don't like ads, stop watching YouTube, or pay for the ad-free version" just gets met with "well they show ads even on the paid version", totally sidestepping the point with BS.

Not disagreeing with you but I think people underestimate how many users would not watch Youtube if there were no Adblockers, I only say this because many in the content space and sometimes in the SAS/Webapp space are severely overestimating there products value and would not even with bother with Youtube specifically because of the unknown factor when they deliver adds. I think something like Tubi does it better and feels more like they actually respect the viewer while Youtube, like all Google, respect nothing which makes the breakup so so funny but I digress.

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

#795

Post by adamc »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #726
adamc wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that would be a bad thing.

If Google doesn't survive being broken up, then this move would be essentially nuking a 2 TRILLION dollar company into the ground for zero gain. Again, that's 2 TRILLION DOLLARS worth of value getting thrown onto a garbage pile and burned up, just because "it seemed like a good idea at the time". You can speculate that something better would emerge from the ashes. It's possible you're right. But you have to admit thi…

There are lots of competing alternatives for most cases -- not search, but I doubt search would die.

If gmail disappears, people could move to another provider. Etc.

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

#796

Post by Workaccount2 »

Trompair wrote: post #788
Workaccount2 wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 heav…

You may or my not recall, but the OG ad-blocker, ad-block plus, struck a deal with the advertising industry where they would let through vetted ads that were deemed non-invasive. Basically a truce where users would get "lite" ads and advertisers would get more impressions.

There was a user revolt, people flocked to U-block, and ad-block plus died.

Advertisers are greedy, but don't be a fool and think users are not equally (if not eve more) so.

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

#797

Post by thayne »

SR2Z wrote: post #702
thayne wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly a greater benefit to Google is the influence it gives them over web standards. For example, if google didn't control the most popular browser, they probably would have had to say goodbye to third party cookies a long time ago, but since they do they've been able to delay it for quite a while, at least for a considerable portion of users.

Google is the group pushing hardest for the removal of third party cookies; they don't need them because they get your data from other sources. It's everyone else who wants to keep them around.

Firefox and Safari have disabled third party cookies years ago, but chromium based browsers still have them on.

And then look at Google's "privacy sandbox proposals, that aim to replace third party cookie functionality. They have largely been rejected by Mozilla and Apple, over privacy concerns.

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

#798

Post by thomastjeffery »

burningChrome wrote: post #231

As someone who spent time researching the Ma Bells breakup and being knee deep in the local telecom deregulation, I see a lot of the same proposals when discussing the breaking up of Google and Facebook. This is the short story of what happened in the local telecom deregulation, which I'm pretty sure will happen if you were to break up Google. Consider this took place over the course of 20+ years, but I see the same…

> Suddenly anybody could start a local telecom, lease lines from Qwest Communications (now CenturyLink), resell them and then compete with them in the local market.

Here in Utah, if you are very lucky, you can get an intentionally-designed version of that: UTOPIA. UTOPIA works by leasing a municipal fiber network to anyone interested in running an ISP. Because the same network is sold by many separate ISPs, each ISP must actually offer a competitive price. It's very effective: while Comcast (XFinity) will charge anyone it can >$100/mo. for 1000/40mbit, while every UTOPIA provider has their price set to ~$60/mo. for 1000/1000mbit. Actually, I just checked, and UTOPIA prices have actually gone down to ~$45-50, and ~$75 for 2.5G!

The only problem left is that this only creates competitive pricing for areas where UTOPIA owns the network. Anywhere Comcast or CenturyLink owns still has predatory pricing. The worst part (in my experience) is that a handful of apartment developers have shady deals with specific ISPs, where they write the price, but not the speed, into each tenant's lease. For example, I must pay $100/mo. for what ends up being ~300/300mbit from SenaWave. That's better than my last apartment (owned by the same company) where the price and ISP were the same, but I was lucky to get any more than 100/100mbit.

Competition works, so long as it is actively maintained.

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

#799

Post by thomastjeffery »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #656
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…

to be blunt: screw the GDP. things get worse for the middle class even when the country does well. Why should I be concerned that money not going to benefit me is dwindling because a company that exploited me can't exploit me anymore? Reap what you sow. More on topic: It was a neat idea, but given how consistently every single walled garden has ended up hindering progress and exploiting users in the long term, I'd ra…

The only people here who are going to materially benefit from a larger GDP are the temporarily embarrassed billionaires.

And that's the entire point here: Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, etc. are hoarding the wealth. For the rest of us to actually benefit from the monetary value of the increased productivity of tech, that money has to be taken back.

In a country where 50 people own more wealth than 50%, the only beneficiaries to GDP growth are those 50 individuals. The rest of us are just getting fucked.

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

#800

Post by Ajedi32 »

adamc wrote: post #795
Ajedi32 wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google doesn't survive being broken up, then this move would be essentially nuking a 2 TRILLION dollar company into the ground for zero gain. Again, that's 2 TRILLION DOLLARS worth of value getting thrown onto a garbage pile and burned up, just because "it seemed like a good idea at the time". You can speculate that something better would emerge from the ashes. It's possible you're right. But you have to admit thi…

There are lots of competing alternatives for most cases -- not search, but I doubt search would die. If gmail disappears, people could move to another provider. Etc.

You're missing the point. We're talking about the government potentially burning a 2 trillion dollar private company to the ground, and your response is to just shrug and say "oh well, the world will survive"? Yes, of course people will find alternatives. But you still just lit 2 trillion dollars of other people's private property on fire for no discernible benefit!
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