5 ms·

If you watched the hearing, you will have noticed many of the congressmen and women, after asking their questions in a harsh, accusatory manner, sometimes speak

If you watched the hearing, you will have noticed many of the congressmen and women, after asking their questions in a harsh, accusatory manner, sometimes speaking over the witnesses, turn down to their laps to look at their Apple or Google phones, Google search something, post it to Twitter and or Facebook, and maybe purchase something on Amazon for good measure. That kind of illustrates the point that these companies just might be too big, but what I don't hear anyone discussing are the potential consequences of breaking these companies up--they are a hard dependency in some way for most of the American populace if not the world's day to day operations and the quality of their services is largely reliant on their scale--I don't think the analogy to Standard Oil does justice to the complexity of the situation. We're not talking about a simple consumer product here, we're talking about complicated data-driven services, services that all rely on access to massive pools of information collected over years at this point, once you fragment the access to that data, the services will no longer perform as they currently do--then what will happen to the little guy we're trying to protect from the big boys who relies on Facebook and Google to advertise, Amazon to feed part of his supply chain, and Apple hardware? How might his business look if you suddenly swap out all of these behemoth quality services he depends on for disjointed shadows of their former selves, many of which will no longer be able to justify the gratis offerings and free tiers they currently can? Not saying it these giants shouldn't be broken up, just saying it's a process that will require a lot of incredibly careful thought and to be honest I'm not confident those with the power to make the decisions in this case have all the tools they need to ensure such a transition happens without having catastrophic side-effects.

esperent 6y ago
If Google search vanished overnight the world would turn to DDG within a day. Ok, that would probably crash their servers but I'm sure they and other search engines could scale up quickly.
- voidhorse 6y ago
  Right, but the average person doesn't know about DDG--sure word would catch on, but the initial break would cause major friction for the vast majority of people. Also, what happens to all that data in stowed away in other services? What happens, with Gmail if it's separated from the ads division? Do they suddenly start charging everyone to use it? Can they still run ads in Gmail? Would they have access to the infra serving those ads? If they flame out completely do we lose all our data? Will they give us a chance to export it? In what format?.... I just can't help but feel these sorts of breaks would be extremely difficult to get right.
- Talanes 6y ago
  I mean, honestly, it would just be a massive surge of users to Bing. I don't think any of the other competitors have the existing public name recognition.
  - sidibe 6y ago
    In the west there's just two full search engines backing all the others anyways. None of the others have the infrastructure to index the internet
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    After switching to DDG (and recently, Bing after switching to Edge), I don't think Google's stock web-search is that much better. Not saying it's not better - it is - but if it disappeared from the face of the Earth, we'd all survive perfectly well on the alternatives. Google Maps, though, is still unquestionably king. It is ludicrous how poor the alternatives are.
- plusCubed 6y ago
  DuckDuckGo "most commonly" uses Bing for link search results, so it would mostly be redirecting queries to Microsoft: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
- losvedir 6y ago
  You're trivializing search. DDG only works because for the hard stuff it's grandfathered into an old Bing API. DDG is small and scrappy but it's built on the shoulders of a giant investing billions of dollars.
  - m463 6y ago
    Nonetheless, they have customers because a need (for privacy) hasn't been met by others. They're also probably making microsoft money. (I just wonder if microsoft has some sort of method of identifying or matching queries with actual people)
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Swapping one monopoly for another really isn't the answer we want. Speaking as one who worked with many who'd cheared Microsoft over IBM, who myself once saw Google, and later Apple, as just deserts for Microsoft's own monopoly abuses, and presently relies principally on DDG for Web search, and acknowledges that it too relies heavily, though not exclusively, on Microsoft's Bing. Providing a useful tech capacity without winner-take-all monopolies should be the goal. And result.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    Search naturally tends towards monopoly; nobody wants to navigate to half a dozen separate sites to and parse through the results of each individually to find what they want. All of them would be ad supported too, thanks to the fact that we in the software industry have conditioned users to expect things for "free" and advertisers would also want to put the bulk of their ad dollars toward the most effective search engine to get the most bang for the buck, again reinforcing the trend toward monopoly. The only alternative that comes to mind is to make search a government run public utility but, as I'm sure a number of you are thinking rather loudly right now, that comes with its own set of problems.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      How does one address monopoly in similar circumstances?
kumarvvr 6y ago
>That kind of illustrates the point that these companies just might be too big While these companies are big in every sense, they are not load bearing structures of the economy. What I mean is that they are big, but say Google fails overnight. None of the phones work, none of their services work. There will be short term pain, losses and perhaps some economic impact too. However, the world will move on relatively quickly. There will be another tech company, or a bunch of companies to replace it. There will be new areas of economy opening up to competing products and services. Youtubers will move to platforms like Twitch, email gets moved to Hey (perhaps?), communication moves to platforms like Zoom and what not. In a few months or perhaps a year, hardware makers will pivot to a new OS, new services, new products. Business will go on, with or without whatsapp / gmail / what not. Credit flow will not stop, businesses will not stop producing goods and services. If a business depends on Google for distribution of it's services, it will eventually find other ways to do it, perhaps through twitter, or email marketing or SMS or what not. Coming to data collected over the years. Lets say all the data google ever collected gets deleted this instant. The most hurt people are the advertisers, who will start buying generic, non targeted ads for some time and then slowly move to other platforms. However on the flip side, a company like Google has very real power to influence public thought, manufacture consent, hide facism, nudge elections, lobby congress for unfair playing grounds, etc. Companies like Google, Facebook & Apple are big, but in a lopsided way. Too much power to do harm, but not really a 'catastrophic' effect on daily lives of people, in the long term. They are important, but not structural. They provide jobs, but are not irreplaceable. Their power to do good is substantial, but their goal to increase shareholder value comes first. In my view, big tech companies ought to be churned, by force if necessary, to prevent monopolistic or oligopolistic entities. Imagine what havoc Facebook can wreak with society, if it actively starts promoting one political spectrum, and suppresses the other. The sad part is, it may already be doing that and we just can't damn know.
- vosper 6y ago
  There isn't a company in the world (except maybe Microsoft, with Outlook, and Azure to build on) who are in a position to even think about stepping in to replace Google's biggest services, and the businesses that are built on, and integrate with, them. Even with a year's notice, let alone overnight. I think you're drastically underestimating the scale (and number - you missed Google Maps, which is bordering on an essential service) of these systems, the degree to which people rely on them - both businesses and individuals - and the difficulty of replacing them. If Google failed overnight it would be a macro-economically significant event.
m463 6y ago
> ... turn down to their laps to look at their Apple or Google phones, Google search something, ... This reminds me of the article where the newspapers know when a senator or congressman is reading their article. Maybe these are seasoned politicians, but I wonder how much subtle influence will wend its way into government going forward.

esperent 6y ago

If Google search vanished overnight the world would turn to DDG within a day. Ok, that would probably crash their servers but I'm sure they and other search engines could scale up quickly.

voidhorse 6y ago
Right, but the average person doesn't know about DDG--sure word would catch on, but the initial break would cause major friction for the vast majority of people. Also, what happens to all that data in stowed away in other services? What happens, with Gmail if it's separated from the ads division? Do they suddenly start charging everyone to use it? Can they still run ads in Gmail? Would they have access to the infra serving those ads? If they flame out completely do we lose all our data? Will they give us a chance to export it? In what format?.... I just can't help but feel these sorts of breaks would be extremely difficult to get right.
Talanes 6y ago
I mean, honestly, it would just be a massive surge of users to Bing. I don't think any of the other competitors have the existing public name recognition.
- sidibe 6y ago
  In the west there's just two full search engines backing all the others anyways. None of the others have the infrastructure to index the internet
- nmfisher 6y ago
  After switching to DDG (and recently, Bing after switching to Edge), I don't think Google's stock web-search is that much better. Not saying it's not better - it is - but if it disappeared from the face of the Earth, we'd all survive perfectly well on the alternatives. Google Maps, though, is still unquestionably king. It is ludicrous how poor the alternatives are.
plusCubed 6y ago
DuckDuckGo "most commonly" uses Bing for link search results, so it would mostly be redirecting queries to Microsoft: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
losvedir 6y ago
You're trivializing search. DDG only works because for the hard stuff it's grandfathered into an old Bing API. DDG is small and scrappy but it's built on the shoulders of a giant investing billions of dollars.
- m463 6y ago
  Nonetheless, they have customers because a need (for privacy) hasn't been met by others. They're also probably making microsoft money. (I just wonder if microsoft has some sort of method of identifying or matching queries with actual people)
dredmorbius 6y ago
Swapping one monopoly for another really isn't the answer we want. Speaking as one who worked with many who'd cheared Microsoft over IBM, who myself once saw Google, and later Apple, as just deserts for Microsoft's own monopoly abuses, and presently relies principally on DDG for Web search, and acknowledges that it too relies heavily, though not exclusively, on Microsoft's Bing. Providing a useful tech capacity without winner-take-all monopolies should be the goal. And result.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Search naturally tends towards monopoly; nobody wants to navigate to half a dozen separate sites to and parse through the results of each individually to find what they want. All of them would be ad supported too, thanks to the fact that we in the software industry have conditioned users to expect things for "free" and advertisers would also want to put the bulk of their ad dollars toward the most effective search engine to get the most bang for the buck, again reinforcing the trend toward monopoly. The only alternative that comes to mind is to make search a government run public utility but, as I'm sure a number of you are thinking rather loudly right now, that comes with its own set of problems.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    How does one address monopoly in similar circumstances?

kumarvvr 6y ago

>That kind of illustrates the point that these companies just might be too big While these companies are big in every sense, they are not load bearing structures of the economy. What I mean is that they are big, but say Google fails overnight. None of the phones work, none of their services work. There will be short term pain, losses and perhaps some economic impact too. However, the world will move on relatively quickly. There will be another tech company, or a bunch of companies to replace it. There will be new areas of economy opening up to competing products and services. Youtubers will move to platforms like Twitch, email gets moved to Hey (perhaps?), communication moves to platforms like Zoom and what not. In a few months or perhaps a year, hardware makers will pivot to a new OS, new services, new products. Business will go on, with or without whatsapp / gmail / what not. Credit flow will not stop, businesses will not stop producing goods and services. If a business depends on Google for distribution of it's services, it will eventually find other ways to do it, perhaps through twitter, or email marketing or SMS or what not. Coming to data collected over the years. Lets say all the data google ever collected gets deleted this instant. The most hurt people are the advertisers, who will start buying generic, non targeted ads for some time and then slowly move to other platforms. However on the flip side, a company like Google has very real power to influence public thought, manufacture consent, hide facism, nudge elections, lobby congress for unfair playing grounds, etc. Companies like Google, Facebook & Apple are big, but in a lopsided way. Too much power to do harm, but not really a 'catastrophic' effect on daily lives of people, in the long term. They are important, but not structural. They provide jobs, but are not irreplaceable. Their power to do good is substantial, but their goal to increase shareholder value comes first. In my view, big tech companies ought to be churned, by force if necessary, to prevent monopolistic or oligopolistic entities. Imagine what havoc Facebook can wreak with society, if it actively starts promoting one political spectrum, and suppresses the other. The sad part is, it may already be doing that and we just can't damn know.

vosper 6y ago
There isn't a company in the world (except maybe Microsoft, with Outlook, and Azure to build on) who are in a position to even think about stepping in to replace Google's biggest services, and the businesses that are built on, and integrate with, them. Even with a year's notice, let alone overnight. I think you're drastically underestimating the scale (and number - you missed Google Maps, which is bordering on an essential service) of these systems, the degree to which people rely on them - both businesses and individuals - and the difficulty of replacing them. If Google failed overnight it would be a macro-economically significant event.

m463 6y ago

> ... turn down to their laps to look at their Apple or Google phones, Google search something, ... This reminds me of the article where the newspapers know when a senator or congressman is reading their article. Maybe these are seasoned politicians, but I wonder how much subtle influence will wend its way into government going forward.