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My biggest problem is: How do you break up a software system? I understand how you break up a company that mines ore, produces steel, builds railways, runs tran

My biggest problem is: How do you break up a software system? I understand how you break up a company that mines ore, produces steel, builds railways, runs transportation - those are all separable ventures that can negotiate contracts almost as easily as when they had a single owner. But the tech giants run a single system: Amazon in the delivery, FB in the social graph (DB), Google in the knowledge graph. Those would be incredibly hard technically to break up. The less technically complicated split would mean that one new company has all the revenue and the other has all the costs. I haven’t heard any credible proposal on how this “breakup” would actually physically work. If anyone has links to good sources I’d be interested.

neonate 7y ago
Could you fork it instead? Make a copy of the whole thing and then let the two compete over time. Counterargument: you can't copy the people who know how it works.
zajd 7y ago
Easy, stop letting them dump other services for free on the backs of their other businesses. Search can stay ad-supported. Youtube, Gmail, Drive, Cloud, Stadia, Android, News? Should all be broken out into their own businesses and forced to be profitable on their own. As it is, nobody can enter those spaces without being willing to lose hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars.
- wolco 7y ago
  Prevent a global company from giving away products? So other big company can gain space? All of the virtuals you mentioned have different stories. Cloud is profitable, and is not the top company anyhow. News is not a product it's a grouping of news stories. Youtube makes money through ads and better access and could be considered a loss-leader but shutting it down will not make the field more competitive. Android is open source.. and perhaps could be seen as dumping to prevent others. Gmail is a mail service, others exist.. and starting a new company will not cost you billions unless you plan on serving billions of people. Drive is one of many companies that didn't cost a billion to start but might be worth it now.. try dropbox or box.com or rapidgator.
  - zajd 7y ago
    Yes, global companies should not be able to give away products or operate services at absurdly unprofitable rates (see: Ridesharing, a myriad of other Google services) just because they have billions to burn. It's horrifically anti-competitive and raises the barrier of entry unnecessarily. It's not like vertical integration is some new invention, its historically been fought against by anti-trust regulators. We just live in a world where they effectively don't operate any more.
mikl 7y ago
Split the search from Adsense. Allow the search company to only sell ads on its own properties so they can’t reestablish ad-hegemony. For good measure, ban them from making their own browser.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
david-gpu 7y ago
Say Alphabet and its myriad of ad-supported services, such as Youtube. Instead of serving first-party ads, they would need to serve third-party ads, or charge their users, or a combination of the two (e.g. freemium model). The facebook conglomerate could similarly be broken into Instagram, Facebook, etc. Each would get a portion of their current ad business unit. In terms of software, each baby Facebook could get a flexible royalty-free license to all the software currently owned by Facebook, and they would be free to derive from it to differentiate over time. If there is a will, there is a way.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  They should break Alphabet up into 26 different companies, each getting a different letter.
  - type0 7y ago
    This is the best logical conclusion so far
- bagacrap 7y ago
  What does it mean to serve first party ads? The ads are (mostly) for third party products/companies. Newspapers also run ads for third party products. The only difference is that the ads/sales department at the NY Times is substantially less complex (and lucrative) than the same at Google.
booleandilemma 7y ago
Just to continue picking on Google: Google has: - Android OS - Nest - Search - Advertising - Chromebooks - Pixel - YouTube - Google Cloud There are clear lines where they could be broken up. I’m not saying they should be broken up.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
arrosenberg 7y ago
https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big... Fair point - there are certain cases where software platforms are too valuable and complex to break up, and should be regulated like utilities with rules for fair play. Amazon shouldn't be able to use it's marketplace data to monopolize entire categories, Google Search needs to be a public platform, with regulated rates for API access (which Google itself will have to abide by). You don't have to break up many software systems to prevent the worst abuses. Facebook can keep the knowledge graph, but they can't keep WhatsApp or Instagram. Amazon can keep their store, but they can't own a FedEx competitor or AWS - those need to be broken off. Google can keep Search, but Ads, Doubleclick, Analytics, Waze, GCP, Google Home - all of that needs to be broken up. Some of the resulting businesses may have to update their model or may not remain profitable, but historically break-ups have resulted in an increase in value for the new businesses.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >Google can keep Search, but Ads, Doubleclick, Analytics, Waze, GCP, Google Home - all of that needs to be broken up. >Some of the resulting businesses may have to update their model or may not remain profitable, but historically break-ups have resulted in an increase in value for the new businesses. All of this teaches one lesson: be more like Apple. Treat your customers poorly and massively overcharge them. Make sure you are never the biggest in your field. Essentially, don't offer products that are too good for the price. I'd also like to point out that if those companies have to be spun off on their own, then the only way for some of them to make money is to sell your data to third parties. Right now Google doesn't seem to do that, but how else would Analytics monetize itself, if it cannot offer ads?
  - arrosenberg 7y ago
    > All of this teaches one lesson: be more like Apple. Treat your customers poorly and massively overcharge them. Make sure you are never the biggest in your field. Essentially, don't offer products that are too good for the price. Or just don't abuse your customers by hiding the ball on what you do with their data. Don't buy up all your competitors, so you can squeeze more and more money out of small businesses who have to buy impressions because the organic ways (which the same companies own) don't work any more. The products aren't too good for the price - we don't even fully know what the price is. > I'd also like to point out that if those companies have to be spun off on their own, then the only way for some of them to make money is to sell your data to third parties. Right now Google doesn't seem to do that, but how else would Analytics monetize itself, if it cannot offer ads? The same way Mixpanel, KissMetrics, Adobe and dozens of other web analytics vendors monetize (including Google's own 360 Suite). Or make it clear, up front, how the data will be used on free accounts, and give the user a way to monitor and revoke that agreement at any time. As an independent business, they will be free to find the best path.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zozbot234 7y ago
> How do you break up a software system? Turn the relevant parts of it (the ones which are affected by network effects, or other barriers to entry) into an open platform that can be accessed on an equal basis. That's quite a bit easier than breaking up a mining company. For example, Android is already "broken up" from this POV, since the likes of Amazon can use AOSP to create their own Google-free platform, and applications written to run on AOSP will work on either version.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  What's the relevant part of building a search engine that's affected by network effects? Is it the index itself? There's already a fairly decent open-source equivalent to that in the form of Common Crawl, which has been out since 2011. People (including me) have tried to build search engines off of it, but it never seems to work quite as well as Google. Is it the computing infrastructure? That's already been commoditized and offered as a service by multiple providers - AWS, Azure, GCP, SoftLayer, etc. Is it the serving infrastructure? Commoditized by ElasticSearch, which uses many of the same techniques as Mustang and in many ways does it better. Is it the ranking algorithm? It used to be that Google would agree with you. However, the ranking algorithm changes basically continuously - the one in use now is very different from the one that was used when I left in 2014, which was different from the one where I learned how it worked in 2011. I've heard the new one is heavily machine-learning based: given a suitable training set and some learning-to-rank papers you could construct something similar. Is it the log & clickthrough data? Imagine the privacy advocate conniptions if that were open-sourced. AOL got in huge trouble when they open-sourced their click-logs circa 2002. Is it the evaluation system? Mechanical Turk exists, and Google's rater guidelines are public. I'd argue that the real competitive advantage of Google now is the brand and associated consumer habits, and it's really hard to break up a brand. Same reason Coca-Cola remains dominant 150 years after they started selling cocaine-laced sugar water. This is a recurrent problem in the economy today - brands fuel not just Google, but also other giant monopolies like Coke, Nike, J&J, P&G, DeBeers, McDonalds, Wells Fargo, and so on, and in many cases the companies that own them get to practice some exceptionally bad behavior. But short of reaching into each consumer's head and getting them to consider each purchase on purely rational factors, I don't see how to fix this.
wczekalski 7y ago
As many people point out, breaking up is a reductive measure. The whole legal and technical process of breaking Google up would be 10 years? Maybe longer? I heard some tech journalists give those numbers; don't quote me on that. If you really want to change the landscape and make it actually feasible, force companies to expose APIs or impose standards on them. Both of these are very hard things to do in practice but at least they give a hope of a better future - increasing competition. Breaking up big tech, depending on the specifics, will cause either worse productivity or (in the best case) change nothing.
rhizome 7y ago
Amazon is a deliverer, FB is a social graph, Google is a knowledge graph. Don't think of the companies nor their roles (such as they are) as immutable. Look at GM in the 50-60s, or Paramount Studios in the 40s. >My biggest problem is: How do you break up a software system? There are people who have created entire careers about exactly that: antitrust remedies. I defer to experts where I can. We entrepreneurial wannabes on HN are only going to provide unrealistic answers that become battles of will for the rest of this Sunday before all is forgotten overnight.

neonate 7y ago

Could you fork it instead? Make a copy of the whole thing and then let the two compete over time. Counterargument: you can't copy the people who know how it works.

zajd 7y ago

Easy, stop letting them dump other services for free on the backs of their other businesses. Search can stay ad-supported. Youtube, Gmail, Drive, Cloud, Stadia, Android, News? Should all be broken out into their own businesses and forced to be profitable on their own. As it is, nobody can enter those spaces without being willing to lose hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars.

wolco 7y ago
Prevent a global company from giving away products? So other big company can gain space? All of the virtuals you mentioned have different stories. Cloud is profitable, and is not the top company anyhow. News is not a product it's a grouping of news stories. Youtube makes money through ads and better access and could be considered a loss-leader but shutting it down will not make the field more competitive. Android is open source.. and perhaps could be seen as dumping to prevent others. Gmail is a mail service, others exist.. and starting a new company will not cost you billions unless you plan on serving billions of people. Drive is one of many companies that didn't cost a billion to start but might be worth it now.. try dropbox or box.com or rapidgator.
- zajd 7y ago
  Yes, global companies should not be able to give away products or operate services at absurdly unprofitable rates (see: Ridesharing, a myriad of other Google services) just because they have billions to burn. It's horrifically anti-competitive and raises the barrier of entry unnecessarily. It's not like vertical integration is some new invention, its historically been fought against by anti-trust regulators. We just live in a world where they effectively don't operate any more.

mikl 7y ago

Split the search from Adsense. Allow the search company to only sell ads on its own properties so they can’t reestablish ad-hegemony. For good measure, ban them from making their own browser.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

david-gpu 7y ago

Say Alphabet and its myriad of ad-supported services, such as Youtube. Instead of serving first-party ads, they would need to serve third-party ads, or charge their users, or a combination of the two (e.g. freemium model). The facebook conglomerate could similarly be broken into Instagram, Facebook, etc. Each would get a portion of their current ad business unit. In terms of software, each baby Facebook could get a flexible royalty-free license to all the software currently owned by Facebook, and they would be free to derive from it to differentiate over time. If there is a will, there is a way.

DonHopkins 7y ago
They should break Alphabet up into 26 different companies, each getting a different letter.
- type0 7y ago
  This is the best logical conclusion so far
bagacrap 7y ago
What does it mean to serve first party ads? The ads are (mostly) for third party products/companies. Newspapers also run ads for third party products. The only difference is that the ads/sales department at the NY Times is substantially less complex (and lucrative) than the same at Google.

booleandilemma 7y ago

Just to continue picking on Google: Google has: - Android OS - Nest - Search - Advertising - Chromebooks - Pixel - YouTube - Google Cloud There are clear lines where they could be broken up. I’m not saying they should be broken up.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

arrosenberg 7y ago

https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big... Fair point - there are certain cases where software platforms are too valuable and complex to break up, and should be regulated like utilities with rules for fair play. Amazon shouldn't be able to use it's marketplace data to monopolize entire categories, Google Search needs to be a public platform, with regulated rates for API access (which Google itself will have to abide by). You don't have to break up many software systems to prevent the worst abuses. Facebook can keep the knowledge graph, but they can't keep WhatsApp or Instagram. Amazon can keep their store, but they can't own a FedEx competitor or AWS - those need to be broken off. Google can keep Search, but Ads, Doubleclick, Analytics, Waze, GCP, Google Home - all of that needs to be broken up. Some of the resulting businesses may have to update their model or may not remain profitable, but historically break-ups have resulted in an increase in value for the new businesses.

Mirioron 7y ago
>Google can keep Search, but Ads, Doubleclick, Analytics, Waze, GCP, Google Home - all of that needs to be broken up. >Some of the resulting businesses may have to update their model or may not remain profitable, but historically break-ups have resulted in an increase in value for the new businesses. All of this teaches one lesson: be more like Apple. Treat your customers poorly and massively overcharge them. Make sure you are never the biggest in your field. Essentially, don't offer products that are too good for the price. I'd also like to point out that if those companies have to be spun off on their own, then the only way for some of them to make money is to sell your data to third parties. Right now Google doesn't seem to do that, but how else would Analytics monetize itself, if it cannot offer ads?
- arrosenberg 7y ago
  > All of this teaches one lesson: be more like Apple. Treat your customers poorly and massively overcharge them. Make sure you are never the biggest in your field. Essentially, don't offer products that are too good for the price. Or just don't abuse your customers by hiding the ball on what you do with their data. Don't buy up all your competitors, so you can squeeze more and more money out of small businesses who have to buy impressions because the organic ways (which the same companies own) don't work any more. The products aren't too good for the price - we don't even fully know what the price is. > I'd also like to point out that if those companies have to be spun off on their own, then the only way for some of them to make money is to sell your data to third parties. Right now Google doesn't seem to do that, but how else would Analytics monetize itself, if it cannot offer ads? The same way Mixpanel, KissMetrics, Adobe and dozens of other web analytics vendors monetize (including Google's own 360 Suite). Or make it clear, up front, how the data will be used on free accounts, and give the user a way to monitor and revoke that agreement at any time. As an independent business, they will be free to find the best path.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zozbot234 7y ago

> How do you break up a software system? Turn the relevant parts of it (the ones which are affected by network effects, or other barriers to entry) into an open platform that can be accessed on an equal basis. That's quite a bit easier than breaking up a mining company. For example, Android is already "broken up" from this POV, since the likes of Amazon can use AOSP to create their own Google-free platform, and applications written to run on AOSP will work on either version.

nostrademons 7y ago
What's the relevant part of building a search engine that's affected by network effects? Is it the index itself? There's already a fairly decent open-source equivalent to that in the form of Common Crawl, which has been out since 2011. People (including me) have tried to build search engines off of it, but it never seems to work quite as well as Google. Is it the computing infrastructure? That's already been commoditized and offered as a service by multiple providers - AWS, Azure, GCP, SoftLayer, etc. Is it the serving infrastructure? Commoditized by ElasticSearch, which uses many of the same techniques as Mustang and in many ways does it better. Is it the ranking algorithm? It used to be that Google would agree with you. However, the ranking algorithm changes basically continuously - the one in use now is very different from the one that was used when I left in 2014, which was different from the one where I learned how it worked in 2011. I've heard the new one is heavily machine-learning based: given a suitable training set and some learning-to-rank papers you could construct something similar. Is it the log & clickthrough data? Imagine the privacy advocate conniptions if that were open-sourced. AOL got in huge trouble when they open-sourced their click-logs circa 2002. Is it the evaluation system? Mechanical Turk exists, and Google's rater guidelines are public. I'd argue that the real competitive advantage of Google now is the brand and associated consumer habits, and it's really hard to break up a brand. Same reason Coca-Cola remains dominant 150 years after they started selling cocaine-laced sugar water. This is a recurrent problem in the economy today - brands fuel not just Google, but also other giant monopolies like Coke, Nike, J&J, P&G, DeBeers, McDonalds, Wells Fargo, and so on, and in many cases the companies that own them get to practice some exceptionally bad behavior. But short of reaching into each consumer's head and getting them to consider each purchase on purely rational factors, I don't see how to fix this.

wczekalski 7y ago

As many people point out, breaking up is a reductive measure. The whole legal and technical process of breaking Google up would be 10 years? Maybe longer? I heard some tech journalists give those numbers; don't quote me on that. If you really want to change the landscape and make it actually feasible, force companies to expose APIs or impose standards on them. Both of these are very hard things to do in practice but at least they give a hope of a better future - increasing competition. Breaking up big tech, depending on the specifics, will cause either worse productivity or (in the best case) change nothing.

rhizome 7y ago

Amazon is a deliverer, FB is a social graph, Google is a knowledge graph. Don't think of the companies nor their roles (such as they are) as immutable. Look at GM in the 50-60s, or Paramount Studios in the 40s. >My biggest problem is: How do you break up a software system? There are people who have created entire careers about exactly that: antitrust remedies. I defer to experts where I can. We entrepreneurial wannabes on HN are only going to provide unrealistic answers that become battles of will for the rest of this Sunday before all is forgotten overnight.