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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]

#891

Post by belorn »

morsecodist wrote: post #862
belorn wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I totally get that there are reasons to use proton mail and I even use it. But I was purely talking about product here. I think some people allow their feelings about data privacy and business practices to cloud their judgement about product.

I think you misunderstand me there. When it comes to email (and postal service), trust is the product.

It is a bit like comparing a bank, a stock option broker, and a gambling site, and discussing which provide a better product to hold your money. It make no sense comparing them unless we view them as providing the same service.

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

#892

Post by mattmaroon »

padjo wrote: post #815
mattmaroon wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody thinks otherwise so what’s the point of such a comment?

Have you been paying attention to the current US administration? Whatever your opinion of them I don’t think anyone could reasonably say they’re doing things carefully and thoughtfully.

Disagree. They’re not doing everything carefully and thoughtfully, but some things they are. Just because you disagree with it doesn’t mean it isn’t careful and thoughtful. What’s going on with immigration for instance has been in the planning phases for years.

And while Trump may set tariffs based on his mood at any given moment, this case isn’t a whim. I think a lot of thought is being given to what to do about Google. We may or may not like the results, but that doesn’t mean it was slapdash.

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

#893

Post by stevenhuang »

sakoht wrote: post #464

Currently most websites have a snip of code that posts to Google when a visitor arrives. The cookie there is linked to an identity and later used to push ads, and metrics for the site user. It seems like this is the thing to make broadly available. Anyone with $ can index the web. But nobody can get every websites to update to post to 2+ destinations. Multiple companies should be able to listen to that feed, and then…

> Multiple companies should be able to listen to that feed, and then be responsible for tracking and indexing on their own.

How about no. If I must I'd really rather just Google than some fly by night companies having that access. Not to mention it'd be easier to block too.

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

#894

Post by loki49152 »

jmatthews wrote: post #661
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 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.

"You essentially outline why it should be broken up."

No, they didn't. They explained why breaking Google up would kill all of those "free" services.

"Google is a monopoly, they exert monopoly power and enjoy monopoly pricing."

No, they aren't. There are a multitude of other ad platforms available for anyone to use. Google has no power to stop them. "Most desirable service" does not constitute a monopoly in an open market. Monopolies can only be created by government dictate, like old AT&T or modern cable companies.

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

#895

Post by mattmaroon »

natebc wrote: post #262
mattmaroon wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are sites really that averse to having a few more crawlers than they already do? It would seem that it’s only a monopoly insofar as it’s really expensive to do and almost nobody else thinks they can recoup the cost.

A few? We routinely are fighting off hundreds of bots at any moment. Thousands and Thousands per day, easily. US, China, Brazil from hundreds of different IPs, dozens of different (and falsified!) user agents all ignoring robots.txt and pushing over services that are needed by human beings trying to get work done. EDIT: Just checked our anubis stats for the last 24h CHALLENGE: 829,586 DENY: 621,462 ALLOW: 96,810 This…

I mean sure but if there were 3 search engines instead of one would you disallow two of them? The spam problem is one thing but I dont think having a ten search engines rather than two is going to destroy websites.

The claim that search is a natural monopoly because of the impact on websites of having a few more search competitors scanning them seems silly. I don’t think it’s a natural monopoly at all.

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

#896

Post by stickfigure »

ReptileMan wrote: post #854
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

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.

I have been hearing some version of this refrain since Mosaic was invented. "Make the web suck so that someone solves this problem" is just going to result in the web sucking.

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

#897

Post by ChuckMcM »

sizzle wrote: post #819
ChuckMcM wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every AI chatbot to date suffers from the "Film expert" effect. That is when a script writer presents data from an "expert" in a movie or show to the audience in response to some information need on the part of the other characters. Writers are really good at making it sound credible. When an audience member experiences this interchange, generally they have one of two experiences. Either they know nothing about the s…

What happens when search engines start displaying AI generated/human seasoned content? Everything written online is being seasoned by ChatGPT et al. and human behavior is being conditioned to think by its highly convincing outputs. Why should I trust an ad supported search engine with the bastardized search experience displaying top rank results by highest paying advertiser and now mixing in AI slop pretending to be…

Before you can do any of that I'd challenge you to write an AI agent that can crawl the web and only retain "real" information in it's data set.

One can pick an arbitrary set of attributes that define "real", I like "accurate", "complete", and "verifiable."

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

#898

Post by grues-dinner »

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…

> 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later

The original marketing was the the storage would grow forever, and you could believe it. Google was riding the an incredible high from smashing out what felt like constant Amazing New Things throughout the noughties. In fact, when they originally made the claim, back when Don't Be Evil was still the motto and they hadn't bought DoubleClick, I'm sure they believed it. By the time the final upgrade (or rather joining, of 5GB photos/Drive to 10GB mail) to 15GB came round in 2013, there was definitely a hint of the horns in the hairline.

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

#899

Post by asadotzler »

scarface_74 wrote: post #674
dcow wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox was also extraordinary for the price. point being that Google has never been the only option, just the most popular because why not your gmail is already plugged in.

Firefox is 90% funded by Google ads.

Firefox existed before Mozilla's contracts with Google. Firefox was actually funded by AOL (to the tune of a couple million in sending off money when they shuttered Netscape) and Mitch Kapor (hundreds of thousands because he's a great guy who saw the potential) with some other donations from IBM, Oracle, and a few more big tech players.

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

#900

Post by asadotzler »

sofixa wrote: post #419
fsh wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This list is very telling. Instead of a healthy marketplace of companies competing to sell their software and services, we end up with one monopolist who gives away mediocre products and in return taxes everything you buy (in the form of ad spending), and then annoys you with the same ads. How is this a desirable outcome?

Because the vast majority of people don't want to and have zero intention pf paying separately for email, maps, navigation, browser, etc. In fact, that's how things used to be before Google and their ilk used ads to make an ecosystem, and their ecosystem was better and free at the point of use than what came before

Our expectations and intentions aren't some magical gift from god, they're simply the stuff we're used to, and Google got us used to ad-based everything when before many of us did pay for things like our blogging platform, our domain names and even our email and other hosting services.
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