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> Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, andr

> Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff all comes from? This needs a citation, as well. This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level. My unsubstantiated opinion is that many talented folks are/have been dissuaded from trying their hand at anything that may go up against Google, et. al., unless their looking for an aquihire. (And we know how Google treats those after a few years.) And there's another argument to be made: that Google's habit of purchasing competition stifles the innovation since it's nipping it in the bud. (I majored in Econ in uni.)

friedman23 9y ago
Congrats on your degree in econ. You would think that someone with a degree in econ would believe it wise to first establish what the negative externalities are and what externalities regulating away the existence of large business would produce before defending the idea of doing so. We already know that with the existence of Google we get free products like search, mail, video, etc. Do you have evidence that when we destroy google that we will still retain all of these benefits?
- 0x737368 9y ago
  Even if we assume that allowing Google to exist as a monopoly does bring better services, that's a small price to pay for not having to be subjugated by a conglomerate. Countries can already barely withstand pressure from big companies, by allowing them grow even further everything would just turn in a way that would allow such companies to make even more money, whilst increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. And with regards to better services, I think the open source community has shown us that it's possible to make great services without having to work for a company. In many cases even better services because the prime objective is to make a program that would help the user, not make money for the company.
  - friedman23 9y ago
    > Even if we assume that allowing Google to exist as a monopoly does bring better services How is google even a monopoly? Bing exists, yahoo still exists. In Asia Google isn't even the most popular search engine. Want me to show you how google is not a monopoly? A company with monopoly power would be able to raise the price of its service to the price the market can bear. If google put search behind a pay wall, Bing would destroy it in market share. > that's a small price to pay for not having to be subjugated by a conglomerate. So now you are not using economic arguments but appealing to emotion. I just need to point this out First you felt the need to off hand mention your (clearly undergraduate) degree in economics which had absolutely zero relevance to the discussion. Secondly, you are using appeals to emotion without any basis in fact. "Google is an extremely successful company and we use them in so many things! They must be evil!" Try using evidence. I'm not going to argue against your fear mongering only point out that like almost all fear mongering, it is not based on fact. > Countries can already barely withstand pressure from big companies There is absolutely zero evidence of this. None of your arguments are based on evidence. The US just fined Volkswagen billions of dollars. The EU is ready to fine Google billions of dollars. Apple paid japan hundreds millions of dollars in fines. All the banks responsible for the financial crisis in America and the EU paid hundreds of billions > In many cases even better services because the prime objective is to make a program that would help the user, not make money for the company. Again you have no evidence of this. If smaller businesses were able to provide better services people would be using dedicated email providers, not gmail. They would be using flickr instead of google and apple photos.
    - 0x737368 9y ago
      > First you felt the need to off hand mention your (clearly undergraduate) degree in economics which had absolutely zero relevance to the discussion. That was a different person. >There is absolutely zero evidence of this. None of your arguments are based on evidence. The US just fined Volkswagen billions of dollars. The EU is ready to fine Google billions of dollars. Apple paid japan hundreds millions of dollars in fines. All the banks responsible for the financial crisis in America and the EU paid hundreds of billions Precisely, EU, USA and China(ones that I know, there might be more) are the ones who can actually fight back from the pressure. Once they're able to pay enough politicians even more to coax them into bringing laws that help them further, we won't even have that(like that hasn't happened before). Additionally, you need to consider if the fines are actually painful enough. Sure, sometimes it's enough to make them stop doing offences, but sometimes the companies are left with a net profit from illegal actions. > Again you have no evidence of this. If smaller businesses were able to provide better services people would be using dedicated email providers, not gmail. They would be using flickr instead of google and apple photos. Look up Linux. Whilst big companies did have a hand in making it, it's still driven a lot by the community. Compare how Linux performs against Windows(fast, no intentional backdoors, free, almost limitless customisability) and MacOS(no upgrades that make your completely fine hardware useless in 3-4 years after purchase). I neither use flickr not google/apple photos so can't judge the discrepancy in quality. But I do a lot of messengers, text editors, email clients and so on, and they're completely fine. You need to consider that perhaps people are using them because they didn't bother to look up alternatives and just went with what the company offered them because "hey! it's 'free'! and it's right here." You seem to be giving off some belligerent vibes, so I'm not going to argue much further, all I'm asking is that you consider that companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft and so on are not in the business of making people happy, but in the business of making money. And if that means the best path to that is to manipulate governments and try to control every aspect of people's lives for their own profit - they'll do it. If you break them apart you give them much less power to do that.
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- weirdstuff 9y ago
  Oh, I take that into account. There's only so much time/effort I can put into HN comments! But there is a lot more to consider besides what I wrote. > Congrats on your degree in econ. Thanks.
tajen 9y ago
Skyrocketing acquisitions by big companies also justify half VC economy (the other half being AirBnb-style dominance over a sector). It would be interesting to know, if the exit events were smaller, whether the seed/VC capital eould redirect to more conservative positions like old industries or emerging markets.
- anth1988 9y ago
  Or you could see a bunch more smaller companies that still make acquisitions, and a whole lot of smaller IPOs that return a decent profit.
pmoriarty 9y ago
"This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level." There are alternatives to many of these already. Firefox (and other browsers) for Chrome, Openstreetmap for maps. Vimeo for youtube. Flickr for photos. Dropbox for drive. Never heard of waze, so don't know what's an alternative for that, but I would be surprised if there wasn't one. I'm also of a rare breed who thinks Android is total an utter garbage compared to Palm OS, and much prefer the latter. I wish Google and Apple had never gotten in to the phone business. It's been an utter nightmare of spyware and bloatware ever since. I personally would not miss any of these products execept for youtube, and that only because of the content which is provided by users, not by Google. That content could be moved to another platform, and I'm sure if Google disappeared entirely and permanently tomorrow, just as good or better a storehouse of video content would be rebuilt to replace it.
- zanny 9y ago
  Waze is basically Google maps with a Skinner Box on top to make you contribute data to it for points and gold stars. Since Google bought them, they canibalized the crowdsourced data for Maps anyway, and have never updated the Waze UI so it looks like a Fisher Price toy today. There is really no reason to use it over Google Maps.
  - johnchristopher 9y ago
    I don't know about Google maps in the US but in Europe it doesn't warn of dangers on the road (cars on the side of the road, blocked roads, etc.). Waze do.
    - enraged_camel 9y ago
      It warns about police checkpoints as well.
      - seanp2k2 9y ago
        It also has better community mapping as of a few years ago. Everyone in Costa Rica uses it because some of the roads just aren't on GMaps. Also works better with e.g. Road closures due to trees falling in the jungle (and because everyone uses it).

friedman23 9y ago

Congrats on your degree in econ. You would think that someone with a degree in econ would believe it wise to first establish what the negative externalities are and what externalities regulating away the existence of large business would produce before defending the idea of doing so. We already know that with the existence of Google we get free products like search, mail, video, etc. Do you have evidence that when we destroy google that we will still retain all of these benefits?

0x737368 9y ago
Even if we assume that allowing Google to exist as a monopoly does bring better services, that's a small price to pay for not having to be subjugated by a conglomerate. Countries can already barely withstand pressure from big companies, by allowing them grow even further everything would just turn in a way that would allow such companies to make even more money, whilst increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. And with regards to better services, I think the open source community has shown us that it's possible to make great services without having to work for a company. In many cases even better services because the prime objective is to make a program that would help the user, not make money for the company.
- friedman23 9y ago
  > Even if we assume that allowing Google to exist as a monopoly does bring better services How is google even a monopoly? Bing exists, yahoo still exists. In Asia Google isn't even the most popular search engine. Want me to show you how google is not a monopoly? A company with monopoly power would be able to raise the price of its service to the price the market can bear. If google put search behind a pay wall, Bing would destroy it in market share. > that's a small price to pay for not having to be subjugated by a conglomerate. So now you are not using economic arguments but appealing to emotion. I just need to point this out First you felt the need to off hand mention your (clearly undergraduate) degree in economics which had absolutely zero relevance to the discussion. Secondly, you are using appeals to emotion without any basis in fact. "Google is an extremely successful company and we use them in so many things! They must be evil!" Try using evidence. I'm not going to argue against your fear mongering only point out that like almost all fear mongering, it is not based on fact. > Countries can already barely withstand pressure from big companies There is absolutely zero evidence of this. None of your arguments are based on evidence. The US just fined Volkswagen billions of dollars. The EU is ready to fine Google billions of dollars. Apple paid japan hundreds millions of dollars in fines. All the banks responsible for the financial crisis in America and the EU paid hundreds of billions > In many cases even better services because the prime objective is to make a program that would help the user, not make money for the company. Again you have no evidence of this. If smaller businesses were able to provide better services people would be using dedicated email providers, not gmail. They would be using flickr instead of google and apple photos.
  - 0x737368 9y ago
    > First you felt the need to off hand mention your (clearly undergraduate) degree in economics which had absolutely zero relevance to the discussion. That was a different person. >There is absolutely zero evidence of this. None of your arguments are based on evidence. The US just fined Volkswagen billions of dollars. The EU is ready to fine Google billions of dollars. Apple paid japan hundreds millions of dollars in fines. All the banks responsible for the financial crisis in America and the EU paid hundreds of billions Precisely, EU, USA and China(ones that I know, there might be more) are the ones who can actually fight back from the pressure. Once they're able to pay enough politicians even more to coax them into bringing laws that help them further, we won't even have that(like that hasn't happened before). Additionally, you need to consider if the fines are actually painful enough. Sure, sometimes it's enough to make them stop doing offences, but sometimes the companies are left with a net profit from illegal actions. > Again you have no evidence of this. If smaller businesses were able to provide better services people would be using dedicated email providers, not gmail. They would be using flickr instead of google and apple photos. Look up Linux. Whilst big companies did have a hand in making it, it's still driven a lot by the community. Compare how Linux performs against Windows(fast, no intentional backdoors, free, almost limitless customisability) and MacOS(no upgrades that make your completely fine hardware useless in 3-4 years after purchase). I neither use flickr not google/apple photos so can't judge the discrepancy in quality. But I do a lot of messengers, text editors, email clients and so on, and they're completely fine. You need to consider that perhaps people are using them because they didn't bother to look up alternatives and just went with what the company offered them because "hey! it's 'free'! and it's right here." You seem to be giving off some belligerent vibes, so I'm not going to argue much further, all I'm asking is that you consider that companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft and so on are not in the business of making people happy, but in the business of making money. And if that means the best path to that is to manipulate governments and try to control every aspect of people's lives for their own profit - they'll do it. If you break them apart you give them much less power to do that.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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weirdstuff 9y ago
Oh, I take that into account. There's only so much time/effort I can put into HN comments! But there is a lot more to consider besides what I wrote. > Congrats on your degree in econ. Thanks.

tajen 9y ago

Skyrocketing acquisitions by big companies also justify half VC economy (the other half being AirBnb-style dominance over a sector). It would be interesting to know, if the exit events were smaller, whether the seed/VC capital eould redirect to more conservative positions like old industries or emerging markets.

anth1988 9y ago
Or you could see a bunch more smaller companies that still make acquisitions, and a whole lot of smaller IPOs that return a decent profit.

pmoriarty 9y ago

"This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level." There are alternatives to many of these already. Firefox (and other browsers) for Chrome, Openstreetmap for maps. Vimeo for youtube. Flickr for photos. Dropbox for drive. Never heard of waze, so don't know what's an alternative for that, but I would be surprised if there wasn't one. I'm also of a rare breed who thinks Android is total an utter garbage compared to Palm OS, and much prefer the latter. I wish Google and Apple had never gotten in to the phone business. It's been an utter nightmare of spyware and bloatware ever since. I personally would not miss any of these products execept for youtube, and that only because of the content which is provided by users, not by Google. That content could be moved to another platform, and I'm sure if Google disappeared entirely and permanently tomorrow, just as good or better a storehouse of video content would be rebuilt to replace it.

zanny 9y ago
Waze is basically Google maps with a Skinner Box on top to make you contribute data to it for points and gold stars. Since Google bought them, they canibalized the crowdsourced data for Maps anyway, and have never updated the Waze UI so it looks like a Fisher Price toy today. There is really no reason to use it over Google Maps.
- johnchristopher 9y ago
  I don't know about Google maps in the US but in Europe it doesn't warn of dangers on the road (cars on the side of the road, blocked roads, etc.). Waze do.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    It warns about police checkpoints as well.
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      It also has better community mapping as of a few years ago. Everyone in Costa Rica uses it because some of the roads just aren't on GMaps. Also works better with e.g. Road closures due to trees falling in the jungle (and because everyone uses it).