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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]

#851
post #750

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…

- OpenStreetMap, MapLibre - GMX, ProtonMail, Tutanota - Nextcloud, Seafile - Collabora, Etherpad, CryptPad - Discourse, Flarum - LimeSurvey Framaforms - Nextcloud, OpenStack, Hetzner, OVHcloud, Wix - Keycloak, Gluu, eduID, SAML2, OAUTH - Qwant, DuckDuckGo - Matomo, Plausible Analytics - Firefox, Brave - LineageOS, /e/ OS - OpenAuto, AGL (Automotive Grade Linux) - Open Health, Gadgetbridge - Fairphone, Various MVNOs (…

thank you for these good alternatives. I will take a look at them later

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

#852

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 it is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

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

#853
post #750

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…

- OpenStreetMap, MapLibre - GMX, ProtonMail, Tutanota - Nextcloud, Seafile - Collabora, Etherpad, CryptPad - Discourse, Flarum - LimeSurvey Framaforms - Nextcloud, OpenStack, Hetzner, OVHcloud, Wix - Keycloak, Gluu, eduID, SAML2, OAUTH - Qwant, DuckDuckGo - Matomo, Plausible Analytics - Firefox, Brave - LineageOS, /e/ OS - OpenAuto, AGL (Automotive Grade Linux) - Open Health, Gadgetbridge - Fairphone, Various MVNOs (…

> Collabora, Etherpad, CryptPad

+ OnlyOffice

> Qwant, DuckDuckGo

+ Mojeek

> Matomo, Plausible Analytics

+ Wide Angle Analytics, Simple Analytics

> Firefox, Brave

+ Vivaldi

> GMX, ProtonMail, Tutanota

+ Infomaniak, Mailo, Runbox

and tons of others

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

#854

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.

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

Or for someone finally to solve the micropayment problem. I don't mind paying the 53 cents it costs google to provide me their services per month with 30 or 40% margin. But I refuse to subscribe for close to zero value services for 10 or 20 dollar a month.

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

#855
post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -…

They don't need to embed ads into the browser if the websitet that the user will load are already loaded with google ads. They also don't need to replace competitor ads with google ads if there is no meaningful market share by any competitor.

Why should they siphon data to a third parties when they themselves want the data, and its a competitive advantage to keep that data for themselves.

What we are seeing is chrome becoming the new IE where alternatives browsers are not longer allowed on the internet. "You’re using a web browser that is not supported. In order to use [Insert website], please download Chrome for the best experience. Download Chrome here!". (https://www.datanyze.com/browser-support/ie/index.html)

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

#856

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…

> Here's a small number of things that will die when Google dies. Can you imagine how the world will be affected when these go away?

From your list, I (+family, circle of friends and most non-StartUp businesses) only use Android so yes, I can imagine a life without these.

Bring it on.

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

#857

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…

[deleted]

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

#858
post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set the bar even lower than the other commenter. I don't care if it's a monopoly, nor even really if it's engaged in anticompetitive practices. I just care if it's big, like big enough to have outsized market power. I think that markets with large disparities in size and market power among participants are inherently anticompetitive. I think that in most market sectors --- banks, automakers, airlines, media, you na…

Absolutely right. Customers benefit most if there is a working market and monopolies and other kinds of capture are restricted. When I compare the cost cutting happening in my supermarket over pennies and then compare it to the exuberant prices at airports, festival venues and sport stadiums it is clear how much many industries are ripping customers off.

Yes customers will benefit from even more competition in the privacy invasive adtech companies.

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

#859

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 think it was Heinlein who came up with it, but it's a principle that basic logic dictates is obvious:

Power and Responsibility - those must be 2 sides of the same coin, or very very bad things happen.

The mindset of 'too big to fail', i.e. if things go badly wrong there, government must bail it out for the sake of avoiding seriously deleterious effects on the wider populace, more or less nixes out the responsibility part of the chain there, at least for 'the company' as a whole. At least, the way bailouts have so far been done with banks, which is basically: Give em money, _possibly_ require some sacrifices amongst the board or c-level execs, but the company continues effectively independently.

And, wouldn'tcha know it, bad things happen when you do that.

"Too big to fail" is, to me anyway, all I need to hear. If that's true: Kill that company. Right now. And do a governmental post mortem on how government could have failed so badly as to have just let it happen without writing out laws and regulations to stop it. Too big to fail is a really, really bad thing to ever happen. The only thing that should ever be too big to fail is the government itself. Where there certainly _is_ a balance between power and responsibility: If government fucks up badly enough, very bad things happen to what it represents, namely, the people.

Therefore then, if the consequences are indeed as gigantic as you say they are, then there are only two options:

1. Bite the bullet, split up google, suffer the consequences, and then find ways to break up any other companies that are 'too big to fail', and find out ways to write laws to avoid it from happening again.

2. Government writes some laws to eminent-domain it, so that it becomes part of government, so that bailouts can be done without breaking the balance between power and responbility.

Of course, given the current political climate in the US, that will never happen. But logic dictates that it should.

At any rate: Yeah, it's going to hurt. And it should be done.

Your final 3 paragraphs are missing the mark entirely. They just do not make any logical sense.

If google gets completely asploded by law, you think they all move to apple and apple will turn itself into a monopoly? After it just saw government make a meal out of google? That seems epically stupid, but then a judge just more or less literally called Tim Cook epically stupid for deciding to just flaunt a court judgement, so, sure, let's say Tim Cook did not learn his lesson and remains blind to this. Then.. government will make a meal of apple just the same. Once the first 'tech company too big to fail breaking monopoly laws gets thrown through a meat grinder' has concluded, the meat grinder is built and functional, so (threatening to) toss apple through it is easy at that point, relatively speaking.

I also think you're underestimating the viability of the web and the pernicious brokenness of where we are at today. If google ads just collapses overnight, however will people find stores? That's your argument? That it will simply be impossible to find the online presence of some store or other? I.. doubt that.

A whole company will just disappear because gmail failed? Proton costs 3.50 a seat a month, and that's just to make the point that the most gold plated alternative I know about does not seem like a company killer. Everything google does has an alternative. If a company cannot deal with the fallout of inventorying the services that it uses and making a decision on which alternative to employ plus the costs associated with updating their employees and policies to deal with it, that company was operating on a highly risky precipice already, if the margins are that low. Something was going to unbalance that company and it would fall into the abyss sooner rather than later. Might as well be this.

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

#860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing mediocre about the search engine, gmail, maps, android, chrome etc.. etc. Search Engine: Google is fantastic with its index. Very poor with the results it returns. Sampling of the problems: - There's a reason people add site:reddit.com - the default results are often very low quality. Sure, Google has the good quality stuff indexed, but over the last 5 years they've been declining like crazy in act…

I feel that people are so weirdly negative about Google's products. I have some concerns about Google but I need to admit their products are good. I think a lot of people on here don't like them as a business and it clouds their views of the products. > Gmail Gmail is the best email provider of all time by a huge amount and has been since it's inception. I use proton mail as well and it's worse, a lot worse. It's slo…

Email providers is about who you trust to have access to your correspondence, and in terms of a company, access to customer information and any sensitive information related to operations, staff and so on. Worst provider is the one you don't trust.
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