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When a country regulates Google, they raise borders. Google, like any other global internet compnay, is across borders. I would hate to be blocked form accessin

When a country regulates Google, they raise borders. Google, like any other global internet compnay, is across borders. I would hate to be blocked form accessing US Google when I live in Canada. Putting up barriers on the Internet is contrary to an open Web. It does exist for content. For example Netflix content in Canada is different than in the US. You just can't do that for web pages. In addition, nothing prevents Google from moving outside of the USA. Assuming the US wants to break them up, Google could just turn around and say "I'm moving to another country". The loss of jobs, intellectual property, etc would be too big. The government would back down. In the end the consumer decides which search engine to use. Today, that's Google. This leads me to this question. What do you do when FAANGs become larger than some countries? Apple revenues for example are larger than the GDP of some countries. Facebook has 2B users. More than any other country. It then only makes sense to regulate them at a international level. Not possible today. Maybe in 100 years. Until then, FAANG will continue growing and gobbing up companies and industries.

cmehdy 6y ago
I must be misunderstanding your example, because as a francophone living in Canada, google still shoves English-Canadian and French-Quebecois results + articles + maps my way when I search for information on Google.FR.. so I fail to see how Google isn't already doing exactly what you would hate to see them do.
- martin_drapeau 6y ago
  It is but I can switch to Google.US. With borders that won't be possible anymore. Here too Netflix is a good example. Content differs in US vs Canada based on IP. There is a walled garden. It is not open. And that's fine because it is paid for content. However web sites are not.
badRNG 6y ago
> What do you do when FAANGs become larger than some countries? This seems to be a bigger issue than tech companies. The tendency towards monopoly is a problem that every industry faces, where many international trusts hold more power than many of the governments in the countries they do business in. Worse, in some cases these trusts can exert undue influence over these governments. It isn't unreasonable that at some point in the future they could have similar power over even the US. How exactly to deal with these power imbalances between countries and international businesses seems largely to be uncharted territory.
- martin_drapeau 6y ago
  Last century companies sold or produced physical goods. You could always tie them to a geographical area. With FAANGs it is a digital world without borders. I think it's different. Your last point is dead on. FAANGs have carte blanche for now.
opportune 6y ago
I don’t understand the comparison of tech companies to countries. It only makes sense on a very superficial level. They provide vastly different goods , services, and roles in society. Their monetization schemes are completely different. I honestly don’t believe any major tech company, with the exception of Facebook (who tries to acquire every perceived competitor), is anticompetitive and I don’t think any needs to be broken up. It’s not hard to find alternatives to any individual service. They should only be broken up if they abuse their market share to prevent competitors from existing.

cmehdy 6y ago

I must be misunderstanding your example, because as a francophone living in Canada, google still shoves English-Canadian and French-Quebecois results + articles + maps my way when I search for information on Google.FR.. so I fail to see how Google isn't already doing exactly what you would hate to see them do.

martin_drapeau 6y ago
It is but I can switch to Google.US. With borders that won't be possible anymore. Here too Netflix is a good example. Content differs in US vs Canada based on IP. There is a walled garden. It is not open. And that's fine because it is paid for content. However web sites are not.

badRNG 6y ago

> What do you do when FAANGs become larger than some countries? This seems to be a bigger issue than tech companies. The tendency towards monopoly is a problem that every industry faces, where many international trusts hold more power than many of the governments in the countries they do business in. Worse, in some cases these trusts can exert undue influence over these governments. It isn't unreasonable that at some point in the future they could have similar power over even the US. How exactly to deal with these power imbalances between countries and international businesses seems largely to be uncharted territory.

martin_drapeau 6y ago
Last century companies sold or produced physical goods. You could always tie them to a geographical area. With FAANGs it is a digital world without borders. I think it's different. Your last point is dead on. FAANGs have carte blanche for now.

opportune 6y ago

I don’t understand the comparison of tech companies to countries. It only makes sense on a very superficial level. They provide vastly different goods , services, and roles in society. Their monetization schemes are completely different. I honestly don’t believe any major tech company, with the exception of Facebook (who tries to acquire every perceived competitor), is anticompetitive and I don’t think any needs to be broken up. It’s not hard to find alternatives to any individual service. They should only be broken up if they abuse their market share to prevent competitors from existing.