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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]

#841

Post by deanishe »

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…

> didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported

Which freemail service isn't ad- or surveillance-supported?

> suggests that something vital has stalled

Why does it have to be a technology-driven limit? I dare say Google thinks that anyone with more than 15GB of email is a serious enough user to pay for it.

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

#842

Post by HDThoreaun »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #735
Workaccount2 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hate the current web the way a teenager hates the Blue 2023 F-150 his parents got him because a Black 2025 Dodge Ram is what he wanted.

Google services are not a gift. They are not actually free. Google is not a charity nor is it a non-profit. I want people in this discussion to stop arguing as if Google isn't making money on all these services. If the parents were slowly siphoning off enough of the teen's money through a convoluted set of channels such that the teenager indirectly paid for the truck anyway and the parents ended up effectively taking…

> Google services are not a gift.

Which is why the services exists at all, thank god for that. What it is though, is cheaper and better than the alternatives, which is why their products are so overwhelmingly popular.

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

#843

Post by HDThoreaun »

dreghgh wrote: post #767
doctorpangloss wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

YouTube spent years showing children damaging content through an algo until the parental boycott became so bad that they had to do something, worried that a generation was going to grow up not addicted to their content.

Find a billion dollar company thats never done anything wrong and Ill find you a pig that flys.

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

#844

Post by yujzgzc »

casey2 wrote: post #814
roywashere wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Chrome would need to be sold off, or Android, or Maps, those can only become even more pressured to be monetized for user data, I’m afraid

More pressure than the max? Do you think they are going to start using your password hashes to mine bitcoin? Whatever Google stopped tracking they did because of regulation not out of user backlash or goodwill.

It's not the max yet. You could find yourself dealing with the same kind of dark pattern exploitation as you're dealing with in restaurant checkout experiences this day, around the preservation of your own data. I hope you have backups for yourself if you want to keep these docs and photos!

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

#845

Post by lolinder »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #739
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.

Google is an ad monopoly and ad business should be broken up somehow(I don't know how). Here we are breaking up every business other than ad business.

This case is about their search monopoly. There is another case pending about their ad monopoly.

And also: breaking everything else off of the ad company is the obvious answer to the ad monopoly. Every other part of Google exists to feed its advertising monopoly and maintain its edge there.

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

#846

Post by yujzgzc »

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…

All monopolies plow a fraction of their wins into loss leaders that look generous. Apple grabs a take on developer sales? It's to maintain a high quality app environment. AT&T is distorting prices in the long distance market? They use it to make local telephony a lot more affordable. Etc etc.

It often kills competition. Absent cross subsidies from the gusher of ad money, maybe Opera, Firefox, Garmin would have a chance to compete again in the browser and GPS world. Maybe Chinese companies that develop entry-level Docs alternatives (Lark) would enter the Docs market more favorably.

The alternative is not that all of Google's services stop existing, but that competition gets restored on a more even playing field.

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

#847

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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…

YouTube is profitable though. If their Google ties were severed they could still be ad supported, but they'd be able to pen deals with different ad networks and platforms.

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

#848

Post by rafaelmn »

casey2 wrote: post #814
roywashere wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Chrome would need to be sold off, or Android, or Maps, those can only become even more pressured to be monetized for user data, I’m afraid

More pressure than the max? Do you think they are going to start using your password hashes to mine bitcoin? Whatever Google stopped tracking they did because of regulation not out of user backlash or goodwill.

Have you started seeing browser embedded ads in Chrome ? It replacing competitor ads with it's own ? Rewriting referral links ? Pushing compromised extensions from "third parties" to siphon data they legally can't. Right now it's just there to cover Googles market position - it doesn't need to make a profit, if it had to make a profit and it couldn't do exclusive search default deal I guarantee you it will get ugly - like those scam search bars in IE in 2000s.

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

#849

Post by mlsu »

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…

God forbid we allow other browser vendors and email providers to compete!

Look outside. Competitors to _all_ of those product segments exist, there is a huge amount of untapped value waiting to be provided to consumers! They’re limping along, because there is a monopoly in the market distorting prices to maintain their market share.

“But just think: wherever will you get high quality oil if not for Standard! Think of the global economy!”

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

#850

Post by fibers »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #585
fibers wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Google Maps - this would be a big loss but at least this will open the field for Apple Maps and OSM (and I wonder if a competitor will be able to properly leave OSM as is an perhaps integrate traffic data like with Waze or another product like it) - Google Mail - I dumped gmail after Google google'd GDomains and sold it to squarespace so I moved to proton - Google Drive - lol, this is a literal multibillion industr…

I like your style, "lol" is the appropriate response to the notion of losing Google's entire list of products. Android? It's not a big loss. It's no longer the open platform it used to be. Hardware remote attestation will get us locked out of every app if we "tamper" with our devices. It's just a shitty version of iOS now so who cares?

it was a losing fight, by covid I switched to iOS when I realized safetynet really messed up with the ability to own your own hardware since banking apps would straight up break if you rooted your phone. at that point I also realized there was less fragmentation with iPhones and had more long term support.
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