5 ms·

Google et al are no saints. However, I can’t help but feel like all this misdirection and grandstanding is the establishment’s territorial reaction against the

Google et al are no saints. However, I can’t help but feel like all this misdirection and grandstanding is the establishment’s territorial reaction against the rise of another powerful opponent. Whoever wins we lose.

foepys 6y ago
This isn't just an American move. The EU is preparing similar antitrust cases and the introduction of a digital tax.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  You can trick a Eurocrat into regulating anything, though. The seeds of Euro proceedings against Google were planted years ago by a Microsoft astroturf campaign called FairSearch and the tree was watered since then by incumbent interests like putrescent newspaper conglomerates and software industry also-rans that nobody ever heard of.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    nobody ever heard of. If I were a European, I would benefit a lot more from a flourishing ecosystem of "also-rans" (yuck, so harsh) building their own local workforces and communities. As an American, I miss the days when it was considered acceptable to run a business that makes yourself and your local area rich, instead of the only "cool" thing being an extractive VC-launched all-or-nothing gluttonous monopoly (joining in the harsh adjectives I guess). We would have many more opportunities for all levels with thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies.
    - BrianOnHN 6y ago
      > thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies Great point. To me, it seems like those $500bil companies have perfected the art of wrangling those people who could be building the $50 million companies. I mean, why risk failure when, did someone say free lunch?
      - njarboe 6y ago
        That and $1/2 million in comp (pre-tax, of course).
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      I'm not willing to take it on faith that in the industries where Google has dominant market share there was formerly a better ecosystem. Many of these efforts are being driven by lobbyists for newspapers who are sad that they lost their local influence and extortionate local advertising monopolies. It's also not obvious to me that in the realm of indexing and searching the web it would be better to have numerous worse choices instead of one big one. Say what you want anecdotally about Google search quality, but it is better than anything else on the market in objective terms. What will the searching public lose if you impair Google's ability to pay for search quality? That's my main beef with the European line of thinking on antitrust, that it considers for some reason the well-being of certain failing companies and doesn't really seem to take into account what the public harms and benefits might be. Whereas in the American approach of the last 40 years, regulators need to show that customers are being harmed, without much regard for competitors.
      - an_opabinia 6y ago
        How can you tell the difference between an earnest concern for public harms and an opinion from a lobbying campaign?
        jeffbee 6y ago
        I don't know why, I just find it rather easy to identify astroturf campaigns run by spammers, SEO outfits, and Microsoft. Maybe it is just my age but the answer of the question "is Microsoft sincerely trying to save the Web?" is "LOL obviously not." When I read what seem to me to be rational and legitimate criticism of Google, it tends to come from a disinterested source like a law school or philosophers of ethics, or economists. But these also tend to be even-handed, recognizing that it might be globally optimal to have a single search provider, while criticizing Google for things where it is vulnerable to criticism, such as the fact that it both operates the major ads marketplace and owns the largest participant in that market.
    - gumby 6y ago
      These smaller businesses are still the dominant model. VC in total is a vanishingly minuscule portion of the financial sector, and really only works because that is the case. Bigger companies get more press as they employ more people and (more significantly) more people tend to be their customers. Wal Mart is in the press more than Lockheed because Lockheed has few customers. But the Mittlestand (as the Germans call it) is a big part of the US economy.
mhh__ 6y ago
A lot of this is basically just the republican establishment pissing into the unknown. They don't understand the scale at which google operates - the people at the committee Google's CEO testified at seem to think liberals with dyed hair get to go through and manage every single search result one byone. Trump would not have won without social media, for example. The republican party didn't even ratify any policy at their convention, just sweating allegiance to the man - that is the position they base their actions from. This isn't an establishment thing as much as an explicitly partisan play by part of the establishment.
- actuator 6y ago
  > Trump would not have won without social media That's the most hilarious thing about this whole thing. They talk as if there is someone out to get them in Facebook, even though it seems they were most helped by it.
  - ByteJockey 6y ago
    Isn't that normal in a power struggle? For example, if someone makes you king, you kill that person as soon as it's official. They have the ability to confer legitimacy, and that's too dangerous if your opponents would be able to use it. The things you want when you have power aren't always the same things as when you're trying to gain power.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Yes but that doesn't mean it should be accepted without question - i.e. checks and balances rely on consensus
- salawat 6y ago
  Given the other side of the aisle's behavior, the Republican party doesn't have to. They just have to point at looting, riots, unmanageable fires, monument and cultural destruction, things cancel culture, etc... and say "Say what you want about how we do things, but that isn't us." And the sad thing is, it isn't right, it shouldn't work. It shouldn't be convincing. It shouldn't be reasonable. They should have to fight to articulate, react to, uphold, and reify the values of the public at large. They should have to claw and change, evolve, and do something. In this year though, it's laughable. I can't take any political party in the United States seriously given the repeated failures at generating reasonable candidates. The fact we have the fundamental dysfunctional logic that we have to put up with the big two National conventions candidates because the anything else is a wash just demonstrates how broken the system has become, and why the Founders were wary of the social construct and institution in the first place!
chance_state 6y ago
What do you mean by this? Isn't Google and their army of lawyers/board members/consultants/lobbyists/etc already the establishment?
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Establishment is always relative matter of age plus power and even a sickly irrelevant establishment is still an establishment. Landowning nobility were still an establishment even when industrialists were making more money for centuries and respectable families had to marry in overseas tycoons for money. The United States is an upstart compared to European nations which existed for millennia. Google is still fundamentally young even though they have grown older. Pedantically I would use "the" for the current eldest establishment with any power and "an" for any that are newer and even eclipsing.
- woofie11 6y ago
  Sort of. It's AN establishment with a lot of power, but it's not well-connected to THE establishment. There are a few types of ultrarich: 1) People whose power is in institutions. For example, wealthy European land-owning families, Saudi princes, etc. These vary in liquid wealth, but can swing trillions of dollars in power. 2) People who made money long enough for money to be liquid. Bill Gates is in the class. They have money, and can use all of it. Gates has a lot less power than people in the above class. 3) People whose money is all in one place. Jeff Bezos is like this. If he tried to sell all his Amazon stock at once, Amazon would tank. His paper worth is in the same ballpark as Gates, but he has a lot less power. 4) People whose money is locked down. E.g. pre-IPO founder of a unicorn. They can have astronomical paper net worth, but little real power in comparison to Bezos.
pwned1 6y ago
This is what antitrust had always been about.
andrewjl 6y ago
Who is "the establishment" in this case? And who is "we"? I suspect the answer to the first question consists of direct or indirect Google shareholders. Some opponent. Most small business would benefit from more competition for ad-placement and consumer eye-balls. Their savings would be passed on in the form of lower prices or greater investment in new products. Hard to see that as a loss for anyone.

foepys 6y ago

This isn't just an American move. The EU is preparing similar antitrust cases and the introduction of a digital tax.

jeffbee 6y ago
You can trick a Eurocrat into regulating anything, though. The seeds of Euro proceedings against Google were planted years ago by a Microsoft astroturf campaign called FairSearch and the tree was watered since then by incumbent interests like putrescent newspaper conglomerates and software industry also-rans that nobody ever heard of.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  nobody ever heard of. If I were a European, I would benefit a lot more from a flourishing ecosystem of "also-rans" (yuck, so harsh) building their own local workforces and communities. As an American, I miss the days when it was considered acceptable to run a business that makes yourself and your local area rich, instead of the only "cool" thing being an extractive VC-launched all-or-nothing gluttonous monopoly (joining in the harsh adjectives I guess). We would have many more opportunities for all levels with thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    > thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies Great point. To me, it seems like those $500bil companies have perfected the art of wrangling those people who could be building the $50 million companies. I mean, why risk failure when, did someone say free lunch?
    - njarboe 6y ago
      That and $1/2 million in comp (pre-tax, of course).
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    I'm not willing to take it on faith that in the industries where Google has dominant market share there was formerly a better ecosystem. Many of these efforts are being driven by lobbyists for newspapers who are sad that they lost their local influence and extortionate local advertising monopolies. It's also not obvious to me that in the realm of indexing and searching the web it would be better to have numerous worse choices instead of one big one. Say what you want anecdotally about Google search quality, but it is better than anything else on the market in objective terms. What will the searching public lose if you impair Google's ability to pay for search quality? That's my main beef with the European line of thinking on antitrust, that it considers for some reason the well-being of certain failing companies and doesn't really seem to take into account what the public harms and benefits might be. Whereas in the American approach of the last 40 years, regulators need to show that customers are being harmed, without much regard for competitors.
    - an_opabinia 6y ago
      How can you tell the difference between an earnest concern for public harms and an opinion from a lobbying campaign?
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        I don't know why, I just find it rather easy to identify astroturf campaigns run by spammers, SEO outfits, and Microsoft. Maybe it is just my age but the answer of the question "is Microsoft sincerely trying to save the Web?" is "LOL obviously not." When I read what seem to me to be rational and legitimate criticism of Google, it tends to come from a disinterested source like a law school or philosophers of ethics, or economists. But these also tend to be even-handed, recognizing that it might be globally optimal to have a single search provider, while criticizing Google for things where it is vulnerable to criticism, such as the fact that it both operates the major ads marketplace and owns the largest participant in that market.
  - gumby 6y ago
    These smaller businesses are still the dominant model. VC in total is a vanishingly minuscule portion of the financial sector, and really only works because that is the case. Bigger companies get more press as they employ more people and (more significantly) more people tend to be their customers. Wal Mart is in the press more than Lockheed because Lockheed has few customers. But the Mittlestand (as the Germans call it) is a big part of the US economy.

mhh__ 6y ago

A lot of this is basically just the republican establishment pissing into the unknown. They don't understand the scale at which google operates - the people at the committee Google's CEO testified at seem to think liberals with dyed hair get to go through and manage every single search result one byone. Trump would not have won without social media, for example. The republican party didn't even ratify any policy at their convention, just sweating allegiance to the man - that is the position they base their actions from. This isn't an establishment thing as much as an explicitly partisan play by part of the establishment.

actuator 6y ago
> Trump would not have won without social media That's the most hilarious thing about this whole thing. They talk as if there is someone out to get them in Facebook, even though it seems they were most helped by it.
- ByteJockey 6y ago
  Isn't that normal in a power struggle? For example, if someone makes you king, you kill that person as soon as it's official. They have the ability to confer legitimacy, and that's too dangerous if your opponents would be able to use it. The things you want when you have power aren't always the same things as when you're trying to gain power.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Yes but that doesn't mean it should be accepted without question - i.e. checks and balances rely on consensus
salawat 6y ago
Given the other side of the aisle's behavior, the Republican party doesn't have to. They just have to point at looting, riots, unmanageable fires, monument and cultural destruction, things cancel culture, etc... and say "Say what you want about how we do things, but that isn't us." And the sad thing is, it isn't right, it shouldn't work. It shouldn't be convincing. It shouldn't be reasonable. They should have to fight to articulate, react to, uphold, and reify the values of the public at large. They should have to claw and change, evolve, and do something. In this year though, it's laughable. I can't take any political party in the United States seriously given the repeated failures at generating reasonable candidates. The fact we have the fundamental dysfunctional logic that we have to put up with the big two National conventions candidates because the anything else is a wash just demonstrates how broken the system has become, and why the Founders were wary of the social construct and institution in the first place!

chance_state 6y ago

What do you mean by this? Isn't Google and their army of lawyers/board members/consultants/lobbyists/etc already the establishment?

Nasrudith 6y ago
Establishment is always relative matter of age plus power and even a sickly irrelevant establishment is still an establishment. Landowning nobility were still an establishment even when industrialists were making more money for centuries and respectable families had to marry in overseas tycoons for money. The United States is an upstart compared to European nations which existed for millennia. Google is still fundamentally young even though they have grown older. Pedantically I would use "the" for the current eldest establishment with any power and "an" for any that are newer and even eclipsing.
woofie11 6y ago
Sort of. It's AN establishment with a lot of power, but it's not well-connected to THE establishment. There are a few types of ultrarich: 1) People whose power is in institutions. For example, wealthy European land-owning families, Saudi princes, etc. These vary in liquid wealth, but can swing trillions of dollars in power. 2) People who made money long enough for money to be liquid. Bill Gates is in the class. They have money, and can use all of it. Gates has a lot less power than people in the above class. 3) People whose money is all in one place. Jeff Bezos is like this. If he tried to sell all his Amazon stock at once, Amazon would tank. His paper worth is in the same ballpark as Gates, but he has a lot less power. 4) People whose money is locked down. E.g. pre-IPO founder of a unicorn. They can have astronomical paper net worth, but little real power in comparison to Bezos.

pwned1 6y ago

This is what antitrust had always been about.

andrewjl 6y ago

Who is "the establishment" in this case? And who is "we"? I suspect the answer to the first question consists of direct or indirect Google shareholders. Some opponent. Most small business would benefit from more competition for ad-placement and consumer eye-balls. Their savings would be passed on in the form of lower prices or greater investment in new products. Hard to see that as a loss for anyone.