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What I genuinely don’t understand about all these split up tech companies arguments, is I don’t see how you’ll end up with a small company from this process (I

by cactus2093 7y ago

What I genuinely don’t understand about all these split up tech companies arguments, is I don’t see how you’ll end up with a small company from this process (I also don’t see why smaller is necessarily better, but that’s a separate point). If you split google search and ads from everything else in alphabet, it’s still a multi hundred billion dollar business. If you split Facebook proper from Instagram from the rest, you’ll have a couple of multi hundred billion dollar companies. What makes a 500 billion dollar company less likely to do shitty things than a 900 billion dollar company, for any given definition of shitty?

jariel 7y ago
Chrome, Android, Search/Ads/Gmail/Apps, Google Cloud could feasibly be split.
goatinaboat 7y ago
What makes a 500 billion dollar company less likely to do shitty things than a 900 billion dollar company, for any given definition of shitty? Because it’s constrained to its niche. Let’s say split search/ads from the rest of Google. It’s still a money-printing machine but what can it spend that money on? It has to pay dividends to shareholders rather than propping up YouTube and GMail and Google Cloud and cross-pollinating data with them. Ditto if any of them become profitable. Shareholders win, regulators win, its good for everyone. Us split-advocates aren’t just knee-jerks, we have thought about this.
Traster 7y ago
The problem of these companies isn't size, it's their make up. Google only has an advertising business because they're dominant in search. The point of these businesses isn't to make the total size of the companies smaller, it's to increase competition. The advertising side of Google might be as big as it was before the split, but once it actually has to compete with other companies for ad space on Google's search engine there's suddenly a competitive market for advertising on search that previously there wasn't. Without the monopoly on search result ads Google's ad business suddenly won't be able to leverage that into being dominant selling adverts through their Adsense. It's about the fact that there is an entire market that has been closed because Google has a monopolistic power to bundle.

jariel 7y ago

Chrome, Android, Search/Ads/Gmail/Apps, Google Cloud could feasibly be split.

goatinaboat 7y ago

What makes a 500 billion dollar company less likely to do shitty things than a 900 billion dollar company, for any given definition of shitty? Because it’s constrained to its niche. Let’s say split search/ads from the rest of Google. It’s still a money-printing machine but what can it spend that money on? It has to pay dividends to shareholders rather than propping up YouTube and GMail and Google Cloud and cross-pollinating data with them. Ditto if any of them become profitable. Shareholders win, regulators win, its good for everyone. Us split-advocates aren’t just knee-jerks, we have thought about this.

Traster 7y ago

The problem of these companies isn't size, it's their make up. Google only has an advertising business because they're dominant in search. The point of these businesses isn't to make the total size of the companies smaller, it's to increase competition. The advertising side of Google might be as big as it was before the split, but once it actually has to compete with other companies for ad space on Google's search engine there's suddenly a competitive market for advertising on search that previously there wasn't. Without the monopoly on search result ads Google's ad business suddenly won't be able to leverage that into being dominant selling adverts through their Adsense. It's about the fact that there is an entire market that has been closed because Google has a monopolistic power to bundle.