24 ms·

Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

718 points by pg_bot 5y ago

alangibson 5y ago
Let's never forget that we techies need to help protect the integrity of the internet even if there is no immediate, obvious harm to consumers. We're all at least suspected that Google was playing dirty with AMP, but it was frequently defended based on some pretty trivial consumer benefits. I see some minds being changed in this thread, especially when it comes to AMP, so that's a step in the right direction.
mathnmusic 5y ago
Google should be broken up into 5 parts: Search/Adwords/Mail/Drive, Android, Chrome, Maps & GCP.
- lettergram 5y ago
  No ads should be separate from everything imo. Drive and mail can each make money on their own. Search and AdWords are too tied however.
  - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
    You mean Google Ads - and no they don't have to be too tied together. What is so special about Google Search that Google Ads has to be owned by the same entity? I have websites with ads on them and I don't own the ad network either like 99.99999% of every other publisher out there
    - easrng 5y ago
      Because they sell specially-formatted ad spots that are supposed to look like results, not generic display ads.
      - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
        They can continue to do that and it doesn't need to be part of the broader Google Ads entity that places ads on other websites and operates an even broader ad exchange Think about Pinterest, Quora, or FB, for example, they have "native ads" but they don't operate Internet-wide ad exchanges
        easrng 5y ago
        Wasn't that what lettergram was saying? They specifically were talking about AdWords (regardless of whether that's the current name), which is Google's search ads system, not all of Google Ads.
        weird-eye-issue 5y ago
        Google Ads is a single entity that does both and AdWords is now known as Google Ads. So what he was actually referring to is ambiguous...
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  That would mean 5 monopolies. I would split them in 5 parts, each owning 20% of all current businesses.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    How would this help?
  - accountofme 5y ago
    So you are saying that no one entity could own more than 20% of alphabet? And it would retain all of its monopoly power?
  - seanhunter 5y ago
    There's a very clear conflict of interest between ads and everything else google does, and the documents alledge some abuses of the monopoly position around that conflict. So any kind of antitrust breakup is very likely to start there. Personally, I think it would be quite interesting to split ads from everything else and then split ads itself into a few competing entities. I'm not sure you get a benefit to the consumer from having multiple entities who can all still do search and manipulate ads, keyword sales and search rankings for example.
    - willis936 5y ago
      But the ads are how google exists. They keep the lights on and the campus hedges trimmed. If you spin off a google without ads then would it even succeed or would the google with ads just take its old monopolistic position as soon as society allowed (forgot) it?
  - gonzo41 5y ago
    You'd need to control the flow of people between those companies for this to work well. It'd be a challenge with us Labor law
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    A monopoly is fine if it doesn’t hamper competition and doesn’t use its position to impact unrelated markets. Shimano has a near monopoly on bike parts, and it’s mostly fine. DJI dominates the pro drone market, and it’s fine. All monopolies aren’t evil.
- vgel 5y ago
  Ads would need to be split up further, as well. It's ridiculous that Google controls the marketplace, buying of ads on that marketplace, and selling ad placements.
  - solidangle 5y ago
    Agreed! GCP should be broken up as well. It is incredibly unfair to third party services that Google is both supplying the platform and the competing services. This is probably a bigger problem on AWS though.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Problem is only one of those things make money.
  - djrockstar1 5y ago
    I'd say 3 of those make money. The first one, Android with the Play Store, and GCP with Firebase gaining popularity, should all be bringing in enough money to be self-sustaining.
  - mathnmusic 5y ago
    Android's Play stores makes a lot of money. So much so that it's quite comfortable reducing its fees from 30% to 15% for some developers. Maps already charges fees for all location-based apps (cabs, deliveries, fleet tracking etc) like Uber. It may have to tweak its pricing, that's all. GCP has a revenue model as strong as AWS. There's a reason why Google is pumping money into it. Chrome is the only one that could be called a loss leader but given its dominance, it can figure out a model. If Adobe photoshop can survive as a paid software, so can Chrome and its Developer Tools.
  - stonogo 5y ago
    Google has a TON of retired properties that were profit-makers, but not unicorns. Smaller Baby Googles would likely find solid revenue bringing some of them back.
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    That's not a problem, that's an opportunity. Don't we all love "disrupting" things?
- onion2k 5y ago
  Only the ads part needs to be broken up. It funds all the other parts, so they'd break up or shut down on their own.
- libertine 5y ago
  Youtube man! Youtube must be split from Google ASAP!
- oscargrouch 5y ago
  Sovereign states are anemic by now and i'm skeptical that they would want to fight where the money and (real) power is, and if they grow some balls, or stop being so corrupt, even than, i'm skeptical that they will manage to win this fight. We are entering into a new era where big techs are so massive they can fight sovereign states and win, heading us into a new era of neo-feudalism were "civil rights" are only granted if they are not in the middle of our new digital lords lust for profit and power. So people might think this is unlikely and conspiratory, but its just natural human nature, social dynamics and following the political vectors by the aggregation of the past events. If they are willing, they know the secrets of everyone, and its just a matter of pressing the right people to bow to their will and that's it, we become the fools of Weimar republic that were not aware of the dangers ahead of us, because there were no historical precedent to make us vigilant and aware, and all the signs were well aligned to a hostile takeover.
jfoster 5y ago
I've seen lots of comments recently in response to the Google & Facebook advertising issues suggesting that Google should be split into X, Y, and Z. Most of the proposed splits seem like they would do absolutely nothing to address the issue at hand, though. The problem in digital advertising seems to be that Google controls the marketplace, as well as both the buy & sell sides. Even a "breaking apart" that proposes splitting "search" from "advertising" would do nothing to address the issues that are getting raised at present. I'm not an advertising expert, but these issues seem pertain to the buy-side, sell-side, and marketplace associated with digital advertising. Any company that still controls all 3 of those will retain the existing problem.
- Xelbair 5y ago
  I have slightly simpler proposition - ban digital advertising. Or at least ban the 'dynamic' one - the one which tries to match the user's preferences. Just static, random ads akin to TV or billboards next to the roads.
  - jfoster 5y ago
    How would that address the issue of Google rigging the bidding by owning the bidding mechanism, marketplace, and managing publisher inventory? There would still be a real time auction taking place for each impression.
    - singron 5y ago
      A huge part of this document is about how Google has exclusive access to user ids. If nobody can use user ids, then they don't have those advantages anymore.
      - Xelbair 5y ago
        exactly. and it also puts the lid on profitability of walled gardens - as you cannot sell those cohorts to advertisers. It would be a net gain for society as a whole
- 5y ago
robin_reala 5y ago
249. The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling. Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a “nice comparative boost.” Throttling non-AMP ads slows down header bidding, which Google then uses to denigrate header bidding for being too slow. “Header Bidding can often increase latency of web pages and create security flaws when executed incorrectly,” Google falsely claimed. Internally, Google employees grappled with “how to [publicly] justify [Google] making something slower.” I’d be seriously ashamed at this point if I was a Google employee assigned to AMP.
- onion2k 5y ago
  You do have to wonder what impact this will have on the employment prospects of Google engineers in the unlikely event that it all blows up for Google. Having a toxic company on your resume is never a good thing.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    It’s gonna be a long time before having Google on your resume is seen as anything but good
  - tjpnz 5y ago
    Not nearly as bad as Facebook.
    - zrail 5y ago
      Is FB on an engineering resume actually bad?
      - VRay 5y ago
        No, any household name megacorp on your resume is a good thing and a golden ticket to any job you want, evil or not
- FractalHQ 5y ago
underwater 5y ago
This tweet highlights Project NERA, which seems consistent with their actions to date. > Google had a plan called "Project NERA" to turn the web into a walled garden they called "Not Owned But Operated". A core component of this was the forced logins to the chrome browser you've probably experienced (surprise!) [1] This is classic 90s Microsoft playbook. Detangling the web from Google is getting harder and harder over time. 1: https://mobile.twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/1452053941504684036 https://mobile.twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/14520539415...
- greenyoda 5y ago
  A big discussion of that tweet can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974798
- xg15 5y ago
  > Google wanted to be able to control and close off independent websites like The Dallas Morning News just as Google can control and close off its own sites like YouTube. Worth noting that they have this ability today through HTTPS certificate management. The web increasingly moves to HTTPS (pushed by Google among others) and Google is also operating one of a small number of cert transparency logs - in addition to the Chrome browser. If they don't like a site, they can blacklist the certificate in Chrome - to cut it off from Chrome users immediately - and block acceptance of new certificates from the CT log, which will cut off the site from other browsers once the current certificate expires.
  - my123 5y ago
    No need for that, Google Safe Browsing exists if they want to. However, I don’t think that Google is _that_ evil/willing to do so at this point.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Given that Google is critical for US intelligence supremacy and technological dominance, I am curious what the US chooses to do with it. Surely from a free market perspective and for long term growth, it needs to be broken into pieces in such a manner that would destroy its monopoly power.
- paulluuk 5y ago
  But would it still be a "free market" if governments just go around splitting up companies once they get (too) big? Not defending the idea of a free market here, I'm leaning pretty far past socialist myself, but I know that the US in general cares deeply about free market philosophy.
  - worrycue 5y ago
    I don’t know if it “free” but I do know that monopolies that abuse their market position makes for a less efficient market.
  - conception 5y ago
    For a market to be free it must be well regulated. If a market is controlled inordinately by a few, it ceases to be free.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      Then it's not a truly free market, because central planning (regulation) is sometimes overpowering the price mechanism.
      - ddingus 5y ago
        The idea of a robust, enduring free market itself needs to be questioned. Complete economic freedom leads to monopolies, who then act to preserve and benefit from their position. They do this because they know everyone else both wants that position and would do the same thing to maintain it. All this happens because growth is seen as necessary. Always necessary. Markets with rules can check those behaviors, but come with other complications, a big one being bought and paid for rule making by bigger players doing what? Maintaining position and growth. In the end, why do we even allow markets? To benefit people. Factored down, rules aimed at insuring markets actually do serve the people means the people have to have a say in the rules created with authority granted by the people for the purpose of improving things for the people.
triska 5y ago
What a read. Almost every single paragraph in the document leaves me speechless. For example, quoting from the document: "Google likes to claim that it will “never sell your personal information to anyone,” with Google CEO Sundar Pichai deceptively claiming that such a policy is “unequivocal.” But Google leverages intimate user data and personal information to broker billions of daily online ad impressions between publishers and advertisers that target individual users based almost entirely on their personal information. Internal documents confirm that Google knows its users are deceived by its misrepresentations, even as it reaps billions from ads that use personal data to target those users. In Orwellian terms, it’s a beautiful thing for Google, the destruction of words like “sell” and “personal.”" Or: "Google presents a public image of caring about privacy, but behind the scenes Google coordinates closely with the Big Tech companies to lobby the government to delay or destroy measures that would actually protect users’ privacy. Of course, effective competition is concerned with both price and quality, and the fact that Google coordinates with its competitors on the quality metric of privacy—one might call it privacy fixing—underscores Google’s selective promotion of privacy concerns only when doing so facilitates its efforts to exclude competition."
- arlcode 5y ago
  I always tell people that it would be against Googles interest to sell your data. Their deception is working exceptionally well and it's not even a lie. After all there is much more money made in selling your attention repeatedly then there is in selling you data once.
- bawolff 5y ago
  I don't think the first one is a bombshell. It was always clear google was using personal data to target ads.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The first one helps to discredit the litigation. The paragraph’s first sentence is supposed to insinuate that Google is lying about not selling people’s data, and the rest of the paragraph says that Google is not selling data. And then the last sentence makes a completely false claim using popular buzzwords. What was the point of the paragraph, other than to invoke unnecessary emotions for no reason?
djrockstar1 5y ago
159-169, about Google being able to decrypt end-to-end encrypted WA (WhatsApp) communications is terrifying. The fact that Google has known this for over 5 years and made no effort to notify the public is what really got me. What's fucked up is that Google Drive backups are the only ones WA offers, and naturally everyone wants their messages backed up so they turn it on, not knowing the implications.
- ikiris 5y ago
  WA?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - djrockstar1 5y ago
    WhatsApp. My bad on that one - edited it.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I think WhatsApp addressed this recently. It was an issue with both iOS and Android, where chat backups were not end to end encrypted. I think this was an absolutely absurd gap that betrayed customer trust, but it isn’t clear to me if Facebook is more at fault than Google and Apple or if it is the other way. WhatsApp blog post on encrypted backups: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/end-to-end-encrypted-backups-on-whatsapp/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/end-to-end-encrypted-backu...
- zahllos 5y ago
  Slight nitpick I know but decrypt here is the not quite the right word. The communications are still encrypted in flight but they are necessarily decrypted (by WhatsApp) on the end (your device). This unencrypted file is then provided to drive if you select back up with Google drive in WhatsApp. I'm in two minds about this one. I'm not really a fan of Google but realistically we're talking about backing up messages from a Facebook app. It is also possible to opt out and I know non technical people who have done so on the basis they don't want "more Google".
option_greek 5y ago
Surprising that Volkswagen and Boeing can be under scrutiny and pay massive fines but this EvilCorp gets a pass at everything.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  The surprising (or not so surprising) thing about VW was that anyone who works in ECU tuning can tell you that a)the emissions cheating has been going on for decades and b)everyone has been doing it. They can pop open the assembly language for the ECU and said "and here's where it detects a signal from the ABS controller that only two wheels are being driven, and here's the data table of mixture and timing values it switches to." It was also pretty absurd given that the US used to exempt "trucks" (including SUVs and even "crossovers") from passenger car emissions standards. This was (decades ago) to make things easier for farmers, supposedly, by sparing them the cost of emissions control equipment on their farm trucks. But the auto industry sold the government on the concept that what amounted to a jacked up station wagon car on bigger tires somehow didn't need to meet the same emissions standards as a passenger car, so they got to make more powerful engines with less emissions controls, and this is part of the reason we have SUVs everywhere. I've been told by multiple Ford superduty owners that they rip out the urea injection and diesel particulate filter systems because "they're unreliable" and "it's such a pain keeping the DPF fluid topped off" and "it hurts performance." You can buy DPF in damn near any gas station that sells diesel, any auto parts store, any big-box retailer, any truck stop...and you get a warning well before the tank runs dry.
lordofgibbons 5y ago
I hope we can keep politics out of this thread, but I couldn't help but notice all of the plaintiff states are dominantly Republican states. Any ideas why that would be and why the "blue" states aren't present?
- ls15 5y ago
  > Any ideas why that would be and why the "blue" states aren't present? Most of Google's political donations go to democrats. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/90-percent-of-political-donations-from-google-related-companies-go-to-democrats-study https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/90-perc...
  - jallbrit 5y ago
    For anyone else wondering, the article seems to suggest that it's not Google donating, but the employees: > From 2004 to 2017, $15 million donated by employees of Google and its related companies went to Democrats, and just $1.6 million went to Republicans. Alphabet was created in 2015 as an umbrella company for these companies. The article's source [1] verifies that the data is about the companies' employees, not the companies themselves. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20191212055101/https://www.govpredict.com/blog/alphabets-political-contributions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20191212055101/https://www.govpr...
- jclulow 5y ago
  I assume it's because Republicans are, on average, more butthurt about technology companies of late because of the bare minimum level of fact checking some of the social platforms have engaged in during the most recent election cycle. Regardless, Google should be nailed against the wall, and though there is little doubt in my mind they will in absolutely no way be appropriately punished for their poor behaviour, it's difficult to complain about people taking shots at them.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Could you expound on "bare minimum level of fact checking "? It seems to me that one tribe was proportionately de-platformed for their violations of ToS and is unhappy with not having the power to do something about it. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then maybe the road to heaven is paved with bad intentions?
mrobot 5y ago
They lobbied on some antitrust bills: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/bills?cycle=2021&id=D000067823 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/bills?c... An interesting one is the "1 Agency Act", which was "To transfer antitrust enforcement functions from the Federal Trade Commission to the Department of Justice, and for other purposes." -- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2926/text?r=47&s=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2926...
cletus 5y ago
I've had a few people call me a shill for Google on these threads since I'm a Xoogler/Ex-Facebooker (it's literally in my profile) so I'm going to quote myself here [1] from 7 months ago: > Giving advantageous ranking (including, but not limited to, showing AMP content in Top Stories) is the very definition of using your market power in one area (search) to force publishers to adopt something else you created. > For a company that is (or should be) very careful about attracting antitrust attention from the US/EU, this seems completely reckless. I've always hated AMP. Publishers are forced into it by the ranking advantages. Users have no opt out. It breaks the mobile UI (eg pinch to zoom). It's horrible. There was a time when the idea wasn't terrible because a lot of websites were terrible and slow on mobile, somewhat ironically in no small part due to all the ad libraries they loaded. But it was clear who benefitted the most here was actually Google. Now I always suspected that this was the result of some org trying to increase their impact. If it turns out as the suit alleges: > To respond to the threat of header bidding, Google created Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a framework for developing mobile web pages, and made AMP essentially incompatible with JavaScript and header bidding. Google then used its power in the search market to effectively force publishers into using AMP. Boy oh boy is that a problem. And again I'm going to say I called it. The other damning part: > The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling. Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a “nice comparative boost.” Wow. Just... wow. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561769
- Aaargh20318 5y ago
  > There was a time when the idea wasn't terrible because a lot of websites were terrible and slow on mobile Yes, and that time was the early 2000's, and the solution was not AMP but WAP[1]. Google effectively re-invented WAP about 15 years after it was no longer necessary. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol
  - phatfish 5y ago
    I had completely forgotten about WAP, but i remember using a WAP browser of some sort on an old Sybmian Nokia now i think about it. Before add-ons worked with Firefox mobile (and I could install ublock), browsing the web on a phone was awful. If i remember it was around the time that AMP launched in 2015 that Firefox mobile got add-on support. So there was certainly a problem more recently that 15 years ago. The adverts on news sites were so bad that AMP was able to make mobile pages clearly better from a UX point of view. But that was largely a problem of Googles own making, and their "generous" fix was obviously stacked in their favour. All users needed was the ability to install an ad-blocker on their mobile browser, but of course Google was never going to allow that for Chrome.
Jensson 5y ago
If this becomes too big of a deal then Google will just shut down Google Ads to other sites, or spin it out as a separate entity. It doesn't make them that much money compared to just running ads on their own site, and nobody can claim they are anti-competitive in a marketplace that only serves ads for their own sites.
dschuetz 5y ago
Welp, it's time to de-google my networks then. Facebook traffic is already blocked, now I wonder how much Web content I will lose when I block all google traffic.
- therealmarv 5y ago
  That's a complicated topic. Because man things stop working if you block whole Google from your network. Just imagine webfonts or embedded Google maps like in apps Uber or Yelp.
  - dschuetz 5y ago
    Yes, exactly. Many websites already don't work if they use any of google-based frameworks or services, while my ad blocker blocks non-1st party domains by default. If a website or app doesn't work then, well then c'est la vie.
kilroy123 5y ago
This is exactly why I've moved to de-Google my life as much as possible. The writing has been on the walls for years about Google. I know it's not enough, but I choose to opt-out as much as possible.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Seems like a big nothingburger. Doubt anything will come of this.
balozi 5y ago
A very curious collection of plaintiffs. Is this another partisan issue? Does this abuse not harm Californians or New Yorkers? For that matter, why wouldn't the Federal gov not lead this?
rob_c 5y ago
About time. Don't think there's anything more to add on this. Let the truth whatever it may be win out.
gerash 5y ago
There are a lot of allegations here and I'd like to know which ones turn out to be true. That said, I'd also like to understand the motivation behind the fact that only red states AGs are in the plaintiffs. I rarely associate red state AGs with any form of integrity and in fact red state governments generally represent the frontiers of kleptocracy. So color me skeptical
- reilly3000 5y ago
  I've worked in advertising/media buying, at a header-bidding at network that (obligitorily) used DFP/Ad Manager, and an enterprise publisher. Its all true. Their hegemony of ad serving (which isn't free), their bid preference, their rigging of AMP ads, and also search promotion of AMP properties are all extremely real and monopolistic dynamics. I wish this action came sooner.
eoo 5y ago
I think this will potentially be the lawsuit of the year. Really interesting read. A lot of the monopoly advantages seem to focus on AdX. I wonder if demanding that Google shall not participate in the ad exchange business could slowly open up competition in all the other markets... For example, they were concerned that header bidding would make AdX fees go down to 5% instead of 22%, thus they used their advantage in the ad server market to stifle this (plus the FB deal). They are able to do this because they control both markets and can modify the data protocols between these two pieces. Same applies to scrambling IDs (ad servers and display markets)
antonzabirko 5y ago
This is good, now if only we could tax the damn company lol.

718 points by pg_bot 5y ago

Let's never forget that we techies need to help protect the integrity of the internet even if there is no immediate, obvious harm to consumers. We're all at least suspected that Google was playing dirty with AMP, but it was frequently defended based on some pretty trivial consumer benefits. I see some minds being changed in this thread, especially when it comes to AMP, so that's a step in the right direction.

mathnmusic 5y ago

Google should be broken up into 5 parts: Search/Adwords/Mail/Drive, Android, Chrome, Maps & GCP.

lettergram 5y ago
No ads should be separate from everything imo. Drive and mail can each make money on their own. Search and AdWords are too tied however.
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  You mean Google Ads - and no they don't have to be too tied together. What is so special about Google Search that Google Ads has to be owned by the same entity? I have websites with ads on them and I don't own the ad network either like 99.99999% of every other publisher out there
  - easrng 5y ago
    Because they sell specially-formatted ad spots that are supposed to look like results, not generic display ads.
    - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
      They can continue to do that and it doesn't need to be part of the broader Google Ads entity that places ads on other websites and operates an even broader ad exchange Think about Pinterest, Quora, or FB, for example, they have "native ads" but they don't operate Internet-wide ad exchanges
      - easrng 5y ago
        Wasn't that what lettergram was saying? They specifically were talking about AdWords (regardless of whether that's the current name), which is Google's search ads system, not all of Google Ads.
        weird-eye-issue 5y ago
        Google Ads is a single entity that does both and AdWords is now known as Google Ads. So what he was actually referring to is ambiguous...
DeathArrow 5y ago
That would mean 5 monopolies. I would split them in 5 parts, each owning 20% of all current businesses.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  How would this help?
- accountofme 5y ago
  So you are saying that no one entity could own more than 20% of alphabet? And it would retain all of its monopoly power?
- seanhunter 5y ago
  There's a very clear conflict of interest between ads and everything else google does, and the documents alledge some abuses of the monopoly position around that conflict. So any kind of antitrust breakup is very likely to start there. Personally, I think it would be quite interesting to split ads from everything else and then split ads itself into a few competing entities. I'm not sure you get a benefit to the consumer from having multiple entities who can all still do search and manipulate ads, keyword sales and search rankings for example.
  - willis936 5y ago
    But the ads are how google exists. They keep the lights on and the campus hedges trimmed. If you spin off a google without ads then would it even succeed or would the google with ads just take its old monopolistic position as soon as society allowed (forgot) it?
- gonzo41 5y ago
  You'd need to control the flow of people between those companies for this to work well. It'd be a challenge with us Labor law
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  A monopoly is fine if it doesn’t hamper competition and doesn’t use its position to impact unrelated markets. Shimano has a near monopoly on bike parts, and it’s mostly fine. DJI dominates the pro drone market, and it’s fine. All monopolies aren’t evil.
vgel 5y ago
Ads would need to be split up further, as well. It's ridiculous that Google controls the marketplace, buying of ads on that marketplace, and selling ad placements.
- solidangle 5y ago
  Agreed! GCP should be broken up as well. It is incredibly unfair to third party services that Google is both supplying the platform and the competing services. This is probably a bigger problem on AWS though.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Problem is only one of those things make money.
- djrockstar1 5y ago
  I'd say 3 of those make money. The first one, Android with the Play Store, and GCP with Firebase gaining popularity, should all be bringing in enough money to be self-sustaining.
- mathnmusic 5y ago
  Android's Play stores makes a lot of money. So much so that it's quite comfortable reducing its fees from 30% to 15% for some developers. Maps already charges fees for all location-based apps (cabs, deliveries, fleet tracking etc) like Uber. It may have to tweak its pricing, that's all. GCP has a revenue model as strong as AWS. There's a reason why Google is pumping money into it. Chrome is the only one that could be called a loss leader but given its dominance, it can figure out a model. If Adobe photoshop can survive as a paid software, so can Chrome and its Developer Tools.
- stonogo 5y ago
  Google has a TON of retired properties that were profit-makers, but not unicorns. Smaller Baby Googles would likely find solid revenue bringing some of them back.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  That's not a problem, that's an opportunity. Don't we all love "disrupting" things?
onion2k 5y ago
Only the ads part needs to be broken up. It funds all the other parts, so they'd break up or shut down on their own.
libertine 5y ago
Youtube man! Youtube must be split from Google ASAP!
oscargrouch 5y ago
Sovereign states are anemic by now and i'm skeptical that they would want to fight where the money and (real) power is, and if they grow some balls, or stop being so corrupt, even than, i'm skeptical that they will manage to win this fight. We are entering into a new era where big techs are so massive they can fight sovereign states and win, heading us into a new era of neo-feudalism were "civil rights" are only granted if they are not in the middle of our new digital lords lust for profit and power. So people might think this is unlikely and conspiratory, but its just natural human nature, social dynamics and following the political vectors by the aggregation of the past events. If they are willing, they know the secrets of everyone, and its just a matter of pressing the right people to bow to their will and that's it, we become the fools of Weimar republic that were not aware of the dangers ahead of us, because there were no historical precedent to make us vigilant and aware, and all the signs were well aligned to a hostile takeover.

jfoster 5y ago

I've seen lots of comments recently in response to the Google & Facebook advertising issues suggesting that Google should be split into X, Y, and Z. Most of the proposed splits seem like they would do absolutely nothing to address the issue at hand, though. The problem in digital advertising seems to be that Google controls the marketplace, as well as both the buy & sell sides. Even a "breaking apart" that proposes splitting "search" from "advertising" would do nothing to address the issues that are getting raised at present. I'm not an advertising expert, but these issues seem pertain to the buy-side, sell-side, and marketplace associated with digital advertising. Any company that still controls all 3 of those will retain the existing problem.

Xelbair 5y ago
I have slightly simpler proposition - ban digital advertising. Or at least ban the 'dynamic' one - the one which tries to match the user's preferences. Just static, random ads akin to TV or billboards next to the roads.
- jfoster 5y ago
  How would that address the issue of Google rigging the bidding by owning the bidding mechanism, marketplace, and managing publisher inventory? There would still be a real time auction taking place for each impression.
  - singron 5y ago
    A huge part of this document is about how Google has exclusive access to user ids. If nobody can use user ids, then they don't have those advantages anymore.
    - Xelbair 5y ago
      exactly. and it also puts the lid on profitability of walled gardens - as you cannot sell those cohorts to advertisers. It would be a net gain for society as a whole
5y ago

robin_reala 5y ago

249. The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling. Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a “nice comparative boost.” Throttling non-AMP ads slows down header bidding, which Google then uses to denigrate header bidding for being too slow. “Header Bidding can often increase latency of web pages and create security flaws when executed incorrectly,” Google falsely claimed. Internally, Google employees grappled with “how to [publicly] justify [Google] making something slower.” I’d be seriously ashamed at this point if I was a Google employee assigned to AMP.

onion2k 5y ago
You do have to wonder what impact this will have on the employment prospects of Google engineers in the unlikely event that it all blows up for Google. Having a toxic company on your resume is never a good thing.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  It’s gonna be a long time before having Google on your resume is seen as anything but good
- tjpnz 5y ago
  Not nearly as bad as Facebook.
  - zrail 5y ago
    Is FB on an engineering resume actually bad?
    - VRay 5y ago
      No, any household name megacorp on your resume is a good thing and a golden ticket to any job you want, evil or not
FractalHQ 5y ago

underwater 5y ago

This tweet highlights Project NERA, which seems consistent with their actions to date. > Google had a plan called "Project NERA" to turn the web into a walled garden they called "Not Owned But Operated". A core component of this was the forced logins to the chrome browser you've probably experienced (surprise!) [1] This is classic 90s Microsoft playbook. Detangling the web from Google is getting harder and harder over time. 1: https://mobile.twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/1452053941504684036 https://mobile.twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/14520539415...

greenyoda 5y ago
A big discussion of that tweet can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974798
xg15 5y ago
> Google wanted to be able to control and close off independent websites like The Dallas Morning News just as Google can control and close off its own sites like YouTube. Worth noting that they have this ability today through HTTPS certificate management. The web increasingly moves to HTTPS (pushed by Google among others) and Google is also operating one of a small number of cert transparency logs - in addition to the Chrome browser. If they don't like a site, they can blacklist the certificate in Chrome - to cut it off from Chrome users immediately - and block acceptance of new certificates from the CT log, which will cut off the site from other browsers once the current certificate expires.
- my123 5y ago
  No need for that, Google Safe Browsing exists if they want to. However, I don’t think that Google is _that_ evil/willing to do so at this point.

throwaway4good 5y ago

Given that Google is critical for US intelligence supremacy and technological dominance, I am curious what the US chooses to do with it. Surely from a free market perspective and for long term growth, it needs to be broken into pieces in such a manner that would destroy its monopoly power.

paulluuk 5y ago
But would it still be a "free market" if governments just go around splitting up companies once they get (too) big? Not defending the idea of a free market here, I'm leaning pretty far past socialist myself, but I know that the US in general cares deeply about free market philosophy.
- worrycue 5y ago
  I don’t know if it “free” but I do know that monopolies that abuse their market position makes for a less efficient market.
- conception 5y ago
  For a market to be free it must be well regulated. If a market is controlled inordinately by a few, it ceases to be free.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Then it's not a truly free market, because central planning (regulation) is sometimes overpowering the price mechanism.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      The idea of a robust, enduring free market itself needs to be questioned. Complete economic freedom leads to monopolies, who then act to preserve and benefit from their position. They do this because they know everyone else both wants that position and would do the same thing to maintain it. All this happens because growth is seen as necessary. Always necessary. Markets with rules can check those behaviors, but come with other complications, a big one being bought and paid for rule making by bigger players doing what? Maintaining position and growth. In the end, why do we even allow markets? To benefit people. Factored down, rules aimed at insuring markets actually do serve the people means the people have to have a say in the rules created with authority granted by the people for the purpose of improving things for the people.

triska 5y ago

What a read. Almost every single paragraph in the document leaves me speechless. For example, quoting from the document: "Google likes to claim that it will “never sell your personal information to anyone,” with Google CEO Sundar Pichai deceptively claiming that such a policy is “unequivocal.” But Google leverages intimate user data and personal information to broker billions of daily online ad impressions between publishers and advertisers that target individual users based almost entirely on their personal information. Internal documents confirm that Google knows its users are deceived by its misrepresentations, even as it reaps billions from ads that use personal data to target those users. In Orwellian terms, it’s a beautiful thing for Google, the destruction of words like “sell” and “personal.”" Or: "Google presents a public image of caring about privacy, but behind the scenes Google coordinates closely with the Big Tech companies to lobby the government to delay or destroy measures that would actually protect users’ privacy. Of course, effective competition is concerned with both price and quality, and the fact that Google coordinates with its competitors on the quality metric of privacy—one might call it privacy fixing—underscores Google’s selective promotion of privacy concerns only when doing so facilitates its efforts to exclude competition."

arlcode 5y ago
I always tell people that it would be against Googles interest to sell your data. Their deception is working exceptionally well and it's not even a lie. After all there is much more money made in selling your attention repeatedly then there is in selling you data once.
bawolff 5y ago
I don't think the first one is a bombshell. It was always clear google was using personal data to target ads.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The first one helps to discredit the litigation. The paragraph’s first sentence is supposed to insinuate that Google is lying about not selling people’s data, and the rest of the paragraph says that Google is not selling data. And then the last sentence makes a completely false claim using popular buzzwords. What was the point of the paragraph, other than to invoke unnecessary emotions for no reason?

djrockstar1 5y ago

159-169, about Google being able to decrypt end-to-end encrypted WA (WhatsApp) communications is terrifying. The fact that Google has known this for over 5 years and made no effort to notify the public is what really got me. What's fucked up is that Google Drive backups are the only ones WA offers, and naturally everyone wants their messages backed up so they turn it on, not knowing the implications.

ikiris 5y ago
WA?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- djrockstar1 5y ago
  WhatsApp. My bad on that one - edited it.
throwawaysea 5y ago
I think WhatsApp addressed this recently. It was an issue with both iOS and Android, where chat backups were not end to end encrypted. I think this was an absolutely absurd gap that betrayed customer trust, but it isn’t clear to me if Facebook is more at fault than Google and Apple or if it is the other way. WhatsApp blog post on encrypted backups: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/end-to-end-encrypted-backups-on-whatsapp/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/end-to-end-encrypted-backu...
zahllos 5y ago
Slight nitpick I know but decrypt here is the not quite the right word. The communications are still encrypted in flight but they are necessarily decrypted (by WhatsApp) on the end (your device). This unencrypted file is then provided to drive if you select back up with Google drive in WhatsApp. I'm in two minds about this one. I'm not really a fan of Google but realistically we're talking about backing up messages from a Facebook app. It is also possible to opt out and I know non technical people who have done so on the basis they don't want "more Google".

option_greek 5y ago

Surprising that Volkswagen and Boeing can be under scrutiny and pay massive fines but this EvilCorp gets a pass at everything.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
The surprising (or not so surprising) thing about VW was that anyone who works in ECU tuning can tell you that a)the emissions cheating has been going on for decades and b)everyone has been doing it. They can pop open the assembly language for the ECU and said "and here's where it detects a signal from the ABS controller that only two wheels are being driven, and here's the data table of mixture and timing values it switches to." It was also pretty absurd given that the US used to exempt "trucks" (including SUVs and even "crossovers") from passenger car emissions standards. This was (decades ago) to make things easier for farmers, supposedly, by sparing them the cost of emissions control equipment on their farm trucks. But the auto industry sold the government on the concept that what amounted to a jacked up station wagon car on bigger tires somehow didn't need to meet the same emissions standards as a passenger car, so they got to make more powerful engines with less emissions controls, and this is part of the reason we have SUVs everywhere. I've been told by multiple Ford superduty owners that they rip out the urea injection and diesel particulate filter systems because "they're unreliable" and "it's such a pain keeping the DPF fluid topped off" and "it hurts performance." You can buy DPF in damn near any gas station that sells diesel, any auto parts store, any big-box retailer, any truck stop...and you get a warning well before the tank runs dry.

lordofgibbons 5y ago

I hope we can keep politics out of this thread, but I couldn't help but notice all of the plaintiff states are dominantly Republican states. Any ideas why that would be and why the "blue" states aren't present?

ls15 5y ago
> Any ideas why that would be and why the "blue" states aren't present? Most of Google's political donations go to democrats. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/90-percent-of-political-donations-from-google-related-companies-go-to-democrats-study https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/90-perc...
- jallbrit 5y ago
  For anyone else wondering, the article seems to suggest that it's not Google donating, but the employees: > From 2004 to 2017, $15 million donated by employees of Google and its related companies went to Democrats, and just $1.6 million went to Republicans. Alphabet was created in 2015 as an umbrella company for these companies. The article's source [1] verifies that the data is about the companies' employees, not the companies themselves. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20191212055101/https://www.govpredict.com/blog/alphabets-political-contributions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20191212055101/https://www.govpr...
jclulow 5y ago
I assume it's because Republicans are, on average, more butthurt about technology companies of late because of the bare minimum level of fact checking some of the social platforms have engaged in during the most recent election cycle. Regardless, Google should be nailed against the wall, and though there is little doubt in my mind they will in absolutely no way be appropriately punished for their poor behaviour, it's difficult to complain about people taking shots at them.
- willis936 5y ago
  Could you expound on "bare minimum level of fact checking "? It seems to me that one tribe was proportionately de-platformed for their violations of ToS and is unhappy with not having the power to do something about it. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then maybe the road to heaven is paved with bad intentions?

mrobot 5y ago

They lobbied on some antitrust bills: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/bills?cycle=2021&id=D000067823 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/bills?c... An interesting one is the "1 Agency Act", which was "To transfer antitrust enforcement functions from the Federal Trade Commission to the Department of Justice, and for other purposes." -- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2926/text?r=47&s=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2926...

cletus 5y ago

I've had a few people call me a shill for Google on these threads since I'm a Xoogler/Ex-Facebooker (it's literally in my profile) so I'm going to quote myself here [1] from 7 months ago: > Giving advantageous ranking (including, but not limited to, showing AMP content in Top Stories) is the very definition of using your market power in one area (search) to force publishers to adopt something else you created. > For a company that is (or should be) very careful about attracting antitrust attention from the US/EU, this seems completely reckless. I've always hated AMP. Publishers are forced into it by the ranking advantages. Users have no opt out. It breaks the mobile UI (eg pinch to zoom). It's horrible. There was a time when the idea wasn't terrible because a lot of websites were terrible and slow on mobile, somewhat ironically in no small part due to all the ad libraries they loaded. But it was clear who benefitted the most here was actually Google. Now I always suspected that this was the result of some org trying to increase their impact. If it turns out as the suit alleges: > To respond to the threat of header bidding, Google created Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a framework for developing mobile web pages, and made AMP essentially incompatible with JavaScript and header bidding. Google then used its power in the search market to effectively force publishers into using AMP. Boy oh boy is that a problem. And again I'm going to say I called it. The other damning part: > The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling. Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a “nice comparative boost.” Wow. Just... wow. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561769

Aaargh20318 5y ago
> There was a time when the idea wasn't terrible because a lot of websites were terrible and slow on mobile Yes, and that time was the early 2000's, and the solution was not AMP but WAP[1]. Google effectively re-invented WAP about 15 years after it was no longer necessary. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol
- phatfish 5y ago
  I had completely forgotten about WAP, but i remember using a WAP browser of some sort on an old Sybmian Nokia now i think about it. Before add-ons worked with Firefox mobile (and I could install ublock), browsing the web on a phone was awful. If i remember it was around the time that AMP launched in 2015 that Firefox mobile got add-on support. So there was certainly a problem more recently that 15 years ago. The adverts on news sites were so bad that AMP was able to make mobile pages clearly better from a UX point of view. But that was largely a problem of Googles own making, and their "generous" fix was obviously stacked in their favour. All users needed was the ability to install an ad-blocker on their mobile browser, but of course Google was never going to allow that for Chrome.

Jensson 5y ago

If this becomes too big of a deal then Google will just shut down Google Ads to other sites, or spin it out as a separate entity. It doesn't make them that much money compared to just running ads on their own site, and nobody can claim they are anti-competitive in a marketplace that only serves ads for their own sites.

dschuetz 5y ago

Welp, it's time to de-google my networks then. Facebook traffic is already blocked, now I wonder how much Web content I will lose when I block all google traffic.

therealmarv 5y ago
That's a complicated topic. Because man things stop working if you block whole Google from your network. Just imagine webfonts or embedded Google maps like in apps Uber or Yelp.
- dschuetz 5y ago
  Yes, exactly. Many websites already don't work if they use any of google-based frameworks or services, while my ad blocker blocks non-1st party domains by default. If a website or app doesn't work then, well then c'est la vie.

kilroy123 5y ago

This is exactly why I've moved to de-Google my life as much as possible. The writing has been on the walls for years about Google. I know it's not enough, but I choose to opt-out as much as possible.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Seems like a big nothingburger. Doubt anything will come of this.

balozi 5y ago

A very curious collection of plaintiffs. Is this another partisan issue? Does this abuse not harm Californians or New Yorkers? For that matter, why wouldn't the Federal gov not lead this?

rob_c 5y ago

About time. Don't think there's anything more to add on this. Let the truth whatever it may be win out.

gerash 5y ago

There are a lot of allegations here and I'd like to know which ones turn out to be true. That said, I'd also like to understand the motivation behind the fact that only red states AGs are in the plaintiffs. I rarely associate red state AGs with any form of integrity and in fact red state governments generally represent the frontiers of kleptocracy. So color me skeptical

reilly3000 5y ago
I've worked in advertising/media buying, at a header-bidding at network that (obligitorily) used DFP/Ad Manager, and an enterprise publisher. Its all true. Their hegemony of ad serving (which isn't free), their bid preference, their rigging of AMP ads, and also search promotion of AMP properties are all extremely real and monopolistic dynamics. I wish this action came sooner.

eoo 5y ago

I think this will potentially be the lawsuit of the year. Really interesting read. A lot of the monopoly advantages seem to focus on AdX. I wonder if demanding that Google shall not participate in the ad exchange business could slowly open up competition in all the other markets... For example, they were concerned that header bidding would make AdX fees go down to 5% instead of 22%, thus they used their advantage in the ad server market to stifle this (plus the FB deal). They are able to do this because they control both markets and can modify the data protocols between these two pieces. Same applies to scrambling IDs (ad servers and display markets)

antonzabirko 5y ago

This is good, now if only we could tax the damn company lol.