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EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

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Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#91

Post by pmoriarty »

wongarsu wrote: post #80
pmoriarty wrote: post #48

"The Commission is concerned that Google’s allegedly intentional conducts aimed at giving [Google’s ad exchange] AdX a competitive advantage and may have foreclosed rival ad exchanges." So the goal is for there to be more competition among advertisers? That might help ad purchasers (ie. mostly corporations), but consumers are still going to be screwed as this does nothing to stop the spying and advertising that are w…

The EU already made multiple attempts to get that under control, notably first with the Cookie Law and later with GDPR. The problem is that those have mechanism that allow the user to accept tracking, and Google does its best to get website owners to make their user agree by any means nessesary. In analytics there's some competition, and I can run self-hosted cookieless Maomo or plausibly.io if I want to get actionab…

Cookies have not been necessary for user tracking for decades.

Browser fingerprinting and countless other techniques can and are being used as well.

The outrage over cookies is quaint, and only demonstrates that people who freak out over them don't understand modern tracking technology at all.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#92

Post by aurareturn »

olau wrote: post #76
nisegami wrote: post #39

As expected, the comments here seem generally in support of such a move. But, it is really unclear to me how such a move would improve my life or the lives of most typical users. Genuinely open to having it explained to me.

Online store sells great products. But nobody knows about them. Online store buys ads on Google to tell people about their products. People click the ads, and buy the products so the store can scale up and lower their per unit cost. Everyone are happy. Now fast forward a decade. Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Online store now pays 10 times as much for their ads and have to raise prices to…

>Now fast forward a decade. Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Online store now pays 10 times as much for their ads and have to raise prices to cover the costs.

This is just not true and not how Google's ads work.

Google has a bidding system. You don't have to pay their prices if your ads aren't profitable. You can pull out. You can go somewhere else. You can try other forms of marketing. You can make a better product, better landing page, better messaging so you can convert more users per click.

Your company is essentially competing with other companies for the click. If the price 10x, it's because other companies are willing to pay 10x more. If other companies are willing to pay more for the ads, then your product/business/marketing isn't as good as theirs.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#93

Post by bee_rider »

Detrytus wrote: post #8
panragon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. Not to discredit the rest of what you're saying, because it is true the EU has jurisdiction and that anti-trust is a lost art in many places in the world. Still, saying Google Ireland 'alone' is a bit funny when Google (like all multinationals) is known to take advantage of Ireland's tax laws to funnel as much of their EU business through. Whatever money Google is making…

Yep, and that's how you get Ireland's GDP per capita artificially inflated to $114k, when in reality it should be maybe a third of that...

Eh, we can’t really complain. The international capitalist system owes Ireland a bit more; its predecessor, colonialism, screwed Ireland over for generations.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#94

Post by piaste »

aurareturn wrote: post #57
_vere wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing a giant supercorperation to exist is generally not in the interest of the public. Google has been using the incomparable amount of money they have in many ways that do not serve the interests of anyone but themselves. Allowing one company to own the most visited websites, the most used browser, the most used advertising tools + marketplace, half of the mobile market and much more has not really brought us a…

You can say the same about LVMH in the luxury goods market. I don't see Europe trying to break up one of their own companies.

The difference is that LVMH-type products are irrelevant to 98% of the population, and have a highly questionable impact to the top 2%.

De Beers had an iconic monopoly on diamonds for over a century, but as far as I know the only time a major government really went after them was for colluding over industrial diamonds, which are actually important.

Ensuring that jewelry diamonds and checkered handbags are available at a competitive price would be an awful use of government resources, not least because the inflated price is the point of those products.

Luxottica (but only after the 2018 merger with their main competitor) would be a much better example.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#95

Post by madeofpalk »

panragon wrote: post #4
flexie wrote: post #2

Before anyone makes the argument that the EU should have no jurisdiction over an American entity, please remember that Google sells its services in Europe. It's well within the jurisdiction of the EU to regulate how anyone does business here. Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legisl…

>Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. Not to discredit the rest of what you're saying, because it is true the EU has jurisdiction and that anti-trust is a lost art in many places in the world. Still, saying Google Ireland 'alone' is a bit funny when Google (like all multinationals) is known to take advantage of Ireland's tax laws to funnel as much of their EU business through. Whatever money Google is making…

You can't have it both ways though. You don't get to take advantage of Irish law to reduce your tax/costs, but then also say that Ireland (and the EU) has no jurisdiction over you.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#96

Post by nologic01 »

Adtech (helping sellers surface advertising to buyers) should be cleanly split from tech provision (selling IT products and services to buyers).

Further, the adtech business should be highly regulated, with the collection of data and profiling of individuals based on online behavior ideally prohibited. Digital ads are probably unavoidable, but should really just revert to be like the TV and newspaper ads of old.

Surveillance capitalism cannot be reformed, it must be banned. The "market" has malfunctioned big time and produced a monster.

There is nothing workable about the status quo. It holds back potentially tremendous potential and value, even just using conventional, monetary, yardsticks.

There is no way you can rollout next-gen "AI" and deeply impactful innovations around e.g., finance while the well is poisoned by this commingling of unsavory business models with legitimate pursuits.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee until regulators, politicians but also economic actors and the public wake up and smell the coffee.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#97

Post by tremon »

Fyrezerk wrote: post #40
hfkwer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How quickly would public opinion change if Google decided to just shut off their service in the EU for a day? Always this same old tune. Do you realize how outlandish and naive it is to even suggest that? Google is fighting tooth and nail to make sure that EU laws are laxist. You know why? Because they know that they will have to comply, in the end. The market is just too big to let go of. And I don't think you're…

My point, though, is where do we draw the line between antitrust enforcement because it serves the public's best interest, and enforcement that results in a net negative experience?

What makes you think that there's a single sharp line between those?

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#98

Post by baridbelmedar »

gylterud wrote: post #67
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that company breakups should happen automatically when they reach 1% of the country's GDP. There are lots of ways companies could avoid having the government decide how to break them up such as issuing dividends instead of hording cash, spinning off non-core businesses, setting up independent IP companies that would license back IP to the core company (and as an indpendent company, be required to li…

How about an automatic nationalisation in stead? Where you take companies which have grown too big out of the private ownership’s hands.

What precisely would that solve in this case?

Previous attempts to nationalize companies have not, as far as I know, been a shining success?

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#99

Post by endisneigh »

break every company up!

Each "bet" in Alphabet needs to be broken. Each business unit within Google needs to be broken.

Same with Apple. Break that up to between services and hardware. Force them to open up their new silicon. Why can't other companies use the H1 or H2 chips for their headphones? why are we letting Apple have the competitive advantage? Open up the App Store and force new payment methods.

Microsoft also needs to be broken up. force them to sell their OpenAI stake and separate Office, Windows, Azure and Xbox.

Once we're done with that we need to break up Adobe (artistic tools and stock assets need to be separate), Uber (Eats and Driving again need be separate) and others as well.

moving away from tech, we need to break up these luxury conglomerates to spur more innovation in the fashion industry as well. same for food conglomerates such as Nestle and consumer goods like Unilever.

we've only begun the Great Breaking.

and while we're at it, we need to put a end to the madness of corporate greed and institute strict profit limits and tax the rest. when you really use your big brain - you'll realize nothing is more anti-competitive than excessive profits! money is power and profit is money, and no company need have power similar to the government. those profits are ultimately what are used to acquire more companies and begin their treacherous anti-competitive practices.

break the companies up and lock up the execs for being complicit in literal criminal activity. you show me a BigCo with profit and I'll show you criminal activity.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#100

Post by hnbad »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #22

Google will rather split up the internet by pulling out of Europe than follow this. And isn't ads the only profitable business Google has? If they sell it, there Google search, Gmail etc couldn't exist.

Breaking out the ad business doesn't mean selling it, it means creating red tape through layers of indirection between the ad business and the rest of the company. In essence, this would be no different than the split between Alphabet and Google (or Waymo, even): https://www.kamilfranek.com/what-companies-alphabet-google-o...

"Pulling out" would be a massive blow to Google's revenue and shareholder value, even compared to the massive costs of restructuring the business to comply with the breakup. It would be economical suicide and career suicide for the CEO.

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