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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

#881

Post by ineedasername »

kelnos wrote: post #599
ineedasername wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google will let you target on the following. Especially by combining criteria you can narrow things down to very small specific groups of people. If a person in that campaign then clicms and enters a name and email I have a better profile on them as a person than many of their neighbors. Demographics: Target users based on age, gender, parental status, household income, and more Interests: Target people based on thei…

Not sure what point you're trying to make, though: you buy ad placement from Google, not data about people. Sure, you can make the inference that people who visit your site via a Google ad fall into one of the categories you've targeted (though you won't know which one, unless you've only chosen one), but that's it.

You can target all and only all criteria at once so only people who fall into all criteria will see the ad. A variation may target a different group and have its own tracking.

If they see the ad they fall into the category combination I specify. If they click the ad then I known all of that stuff about a visitor because I know which visitors clicked and which found their way outside of ads. If they signup or enter email or anything like that then I know exactly who they are for most people. Even if I have only an email but no name I can create a shell profile and use a data broker to find the name behind the email a lot of the time. Then I have everything tied to a person.

Multiply this times thousands upon thousands of ad impressions across multiple campaigns and you can bud a pretty good database with highly specific data. Sure 100% accuracy isn't guaranteed but neither is it guaranteed through more direct data brokers.

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

#882

Post by ineedasername »

shiroiushi wrote: post #538
ineedasername wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people think it's common sense, but plenty of them disagree on what that common sense approach actually is.

I think it should be common sense that both Google and Apple should be treated equally on this issue, regardless of what you think about the actual issue. Instead, we have two virtually identical cases, and they were decided in completely opposite fashions.

That I agree with in general, though they have different enough business practices that the remedy re:antitrust action could look much different. Perhaps for apple it's allowing multiple storefronts or payment vendors, similar (I know not identical) to MS being required to allow other browsers with parity of access to the OS. For Google maybe some sort of splitup. I'm just throwing these out there though I don't claim to know the best option.

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

#883

Post by nickpp »

Apocryphon wrote: post #879
nickpp wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they themselves become incumbents […] after the previous incumbents were brought low by antitrust action Haha, you’ve never built a startup have you? Try it and let me know how easy it is to become incumbent. :)

Antitrust solves this

No, it doesn’t.

Besides, a vicious cycle in which antitrust creates monopolies to only take them down later is a nightmare for consumers.

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

#884

Post by nickpp »

Apocryphon wrote: post #880
nickpp wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> foreign companies Incumbents by definition. Besides, crushing your local businesses in favor of foreign competition is not a very smart strategy. > boutiques and lifestyle businesses Which are also obeying startups laws and thus are simply not started under an onerous regulatory regime.

Antitrust laws do not impact startups, but entrenched incumbents deemed monopolies. Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is generally not considered a startup. Wikipedia has information if you need to learn about it. > Besides, crushing your local businesses in favor of foreign competition is not a very smart strategy. Customers don’t care.

> Antitrust laws do not impact startups

They do, through second order effects. Read up on them.

> Customers don’t care.

Of course we care. We get attached to the brands we buy and value the services and products they provide. And most of all we care about reduced competition.

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

#885

Post by KoolKat23 »

consteval wrote: post #860
KoolKat23 wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand perfection is the enemy of good but if you can't reach perfection, good exists on both sides of the coin. It's purely tribal thinking i.e. this one is on my side so I can't go near that one.

> good exists on both sides of the coin No, not really. Some sides of the coin are just bad. I get very frustrated at this "tribal thinking" notion that I hear a lot these days. It's not bad to have values and then at least try to stick to those values. If someone doesn't like something they shouldn't be forced to endure it. I see this with so-called "cancel culture" too. It's not a cancel culture if you say somethin…

Your chick-fil-a example is egregious, that's fair enough.

I'm saying there's some other dirt on something you currently using instead that makes the whole endeavor pointless.

It's hypocritical if you say I disagree with you and I'm boycotting and then go ahead and use another company who has said something you disagree with in the past anyway.

It's the equivalent of the village mob roaming house to house for whatever reason. And then targeting one house specifically as it has better sun than the rest.

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

#886

Post by Apocryphon »

nickpp wrote: post #883
Apocryphon wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antitrust solves this

No, it doesn’t. Besides, a vicious cycle in which antitrust creates monopolies to only take them down later is a nightmare for consumers.

Seems to have worked out okay in tech, because we have the benefit of technological progress. WinTel dominance is moot because smartphone is the name of the game, and MS was unable to execute. The Mac and Linux were also able to catch up in the meantime, even though Windows is still numerically dominant on desktop.

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

#887

Post by Apocryphon »

nickpp wrote: post #884
Apocryphon wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antitrust laws do not impact startups, but entrenched incumbents deemed monopolies. Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is generally not considered a startup. Wikipedia has information if you need to learn about it. > Besides, crushing your local businesses in favor of foreign competition is not a very smart strategy. Customers don’t care.

> Antitrust laws do not impact startups They do, through second order effects. Read up on them. > Customers don’t care. Of course we care. We get attached to the brands we buy and value the services and products they provide. And most of all we care about reduced competition.

We get attached to newer brands if they provide greater value, especially at equal or lower cost.

Why do we care about "competition" when it's ultimately all about the user experience? The streaming market has a surfeit competition right now and customers loathe having to juggle between half a dozen different services just to get the content they want to watch. In that space, some are even yearning for a return to monopoly, or cable.

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

#888

Post by aiauthoritydev »

asdff wrote: post #171
aiauthoritydev wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer's time was not worth Google reader. If you think it was a useful product you could have created it yourself for profit.

Highly useful software is not always profitable. Limiting our species to developing technologies that are profitable rather than merely useful is a severe blow to our path of innovation.

I sympathize with your sentiment but if you dig a little deeper you are asking Google and its shareholders to suffer a loss because you find something useful but do not want to pay of it. At its core this is a selfish argument. I am sure many users would be willing to pay Google a small amount to keep Google Reader alive but the problem is Google being a super large corp can not run the product with that much money. The same users can actually pay half that money to a company in India to build an equivalent product and get much superior and customer focused product than Google could build.
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