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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

#91

Post by apercu »

molticrystal wrote: post #45

A lot of Google's features when integrated and leading to ads and other Google properties they are justified, but if you were to forbid cooperation between the divisions, they may be shut down or diminished, as on their own they would need to be subsidized considerably and the 3rd party alternatives for ads would take most of the profits probably leading to negative cash flow without decreasing the level of service o…

If they are shut down but valuable, some other company will produce similar products. That's how the market should work.

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

#92

Post by belter »

DinoDad13 wrote: post #77
teleforce wrote: post #8

There's side effect benefit of big kahuna companies mainly on the significant breakthrough and game changing research output because these excellent researchers are paid handsome money compared to conventional universities or research institutions. We saw this with AT&T Bell research labs with their inventions of transistor and Unix, among others. The same thing happened with Google research with (arguably) deep lear…

I love it when the top comments on a hacker news thread is justifying monopolies. Fuck economics right?

You should know 80% of Hacker News works for either Google or Facebook.

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

#93

Post by apercu »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #6

They biggest web advertising company definitely shouldn't control the world's most popular browser. Just like we all knew they would, they're blocking ad blockers, and this problem will only get worse. Tell your friends to use Firefox, people.

If the ads weren't invasive, covering the content, purposely distracting you and your data wasn't being collected and resold, we wouldn't need ad blockers.

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

#94

Post by busterarm »

This is all smoke and mirrors. DoJ does not have any intention of breaking up their friendly neighborhood Google.

What they're doing is seeing the writing on the wall of the upcoming election and seeing all of their jobs on the line and they're trying to shake down Google for golden parachutes.

I guarantee you in the next year, several high-level DoJ officials will secure senior positions at Google in order to defend against upcoming antitrust litigation. Those that don't will try to use their active litigation as an anchor to try and retain their jobs.

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

#96

Post by bpodgursky »

openrisk wrote: post #61
dtquad wrote: post #39

Hilariously shortsighted. Big Tech companies have been a GDP-doubling runaway success for the US economy. It would be like if we here in Denmark started breaking up Novo Nordisk. Our economists would probably do a public lynching of any government official who suggested doing that. However as a European I can't help but welcoming the US shooting themselves in the foot like this. Something tells me we will see more of…

Hilariously confused. Tech is different from Big Tech, which is yet further different from Big Ad Tech. For the avoidance of doubt, Wintel was Big Tech. The status quo now is Big Ad Tech. The main economically positive thing for the US (and something Europeans absolutely screwed up in relative terms versus the US and increasingly China) is the early investment and adoption of Tech. Digitization as such is a great ena…

> Hilariously confused. Tech is different from Big Tech, which is yet further different from Big Ad Tech.

Big Ad Tech has been a money spigot for R&D in both hard and soft tech. This comes via M&A but also spawning a generation of VCs willing to fritter away adtech money on fun hard tech startups.

There is not a big source of VC funding for hardware startups that doesn't come directly or indirectly from Big Tech / Big Ad Tech revenue and valuations.

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

#97

Post by tivert »

teleforce wrote: post #8

There's side effect benefit of big kahuna companies mainly on the significant breakthrough and game changing research output because these excellent researchers are paid handsome money compared to conventional universities or research institutions. We saw this with AT&T Bell research labs with their inventions of transistor and Unix, among others. The same thing happened with Google research with (arguably) deep lear…

I think you're getting it backwards. The research operations are a desperate attempt stave off regulation to keep the sweet, sweet monopoly profits coming in (and those profits are so big that the bean-counters allow it). I believe that was the explicit strategy at AT&T. We collectively pay way, way more.

It'd be way more efficient and cost effective to just set up a well-funded government labs to do that research.

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

#98

Post by spongebobstoes »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #24
shiroiushi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure this is a problem. They're not completely blocking ad-blockers, just neutering them somewhat with MV3. You can still use uBOL (the "Lite" version of uBO) and get a lot of ads blocked on Chrome. Remember, Chrome is not installed by default on Windows PCs; Edge is. People are using Chrome because they want to. They could just as easily download Firefox and uBO, like more-savvy users do. Unfortunately, t…

>Chrome is not installed by default on Windows PCs; Edge is Whenever this is brought up, the silence is deafening. Edge is a good browser, and users are notoriously lazy; most won't read a dialog box before clicking it away. And yet... ~everyone on Windows still downloads Chrome.

does google.com still push Chrome? I think it does, and it's most people's first website

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

#99

Post by busterarm »

shiroiushi wrote: post #53
ripped_britches wrote: post #32

It will be really ironic if this kills Mozilla / Firefox

That's one of several scary scenarios. What if it kills Android, and everyone has to buy an iPhone? (Yeah, I know, Android is OSS and the phone makers could just maintain/improve it as a consortium without Google, but looking at how these companies operate I don't think they're capable of doing this.) (And no, I don't think the USG will break up Apple if this happens. They're already showing highly preferential treat…

Samsung could easily maintain Android as they already have their own little Android software ecosystem that differs greatly from Google's. Full of spyware, but yeah.

There's tons of video hosting options but what makes YouTube special is access to a large audience and monetization. TikTok's monetization is garbage and not even a contender really. Large content creators are already negotiating their own brand deals to the point where YouTube's ad money is merely the cherry on top. I actually think breaking up YouTube would be good for audiences and in the long run creators themselves. Content creator networks would make a return in a big way.

There is already OpenStreetMaps. MapQuest existed before Google Maps and still does.

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

#100

Post by idle_zealot »

dtquad wrote: post #39

Hilariously shortsighted. Big Tech companies have been a GDP-doubling runaway success for the US economy. It would be like if we here in Denmark started breaking up Novo Nordisk. Our economists would probably do a public lynching of any government official who suggested doing that. However as a European I can't help but welcoming the US shooting themselves in the foot like this. Something tells me we will see more of…

There is no point in chasing a high GDP when it results in a materially worse world. The point of a society isn't to make the numbers go up. If a monopoly is super efficient at generating some nebulous concept of value by creating and operating the world's largest surveillance system and actively using it to sell influence over people's attention and habits then the only sensible thing to do is to dismantle it.
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