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Yup. Too big to fail sucks just as hard in banking. Google needs to be broken up as badly as banks do. It's a battle that keeps on coming up and here it is aga

by harry8 4y ago

Yup. Too big to fail sucks just as hard in banking. Google needs to be broken up as badly as banks do. It's a battle that keeps on coming up and here it is again.

whatshisface 4y ago
What would someone break Google up into, ad and vertisements? If you look at their quarterly reports you'll see that they are almost entirely based around one product.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  You could cut out ads from the rest. And make Google buy ad space from Foogle Search.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Of the viable companies, each would still be a monopoly.
rglullis 4y ago
Why stop at Google? Why don't we simply get rid of the idea of the mega corporation?[0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641
- deelowe 4y ago
  Because it’s regressive. We need to fix the issues, not throw the whole thing out.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    These "issues" only exist because of the scale and reach of Corporations. You can not fix "too big to fail" issues unless you stop letting these institutions to grow too big in the first place. I'm yet to hear a single convincing argument of why we need to have organizations of such a large scale nowadays. Could you make a case of what we would be missing if we just "threw the whole thing out"?
    - mcny 4y ago
      I propose another option: unless you can show clear written instructions, the ceo and the board are personally criminally responsible for the acts of their agents, contractors, and employees at the course of their duty. If your branch manager incorrectly adds your teller to an industry wide list of do not hire, the board and CEO are personally criminally responsible for it. No hiding behind the corporate veil. I don’t know how to prove whether someone acted in their own and not on the instructions of the employer though. What I’m afraid of is equifax will simply create many companies and divvy up it into equifax backend web services llc that has fewer than 150 employees.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        > What I’m afraid of is equifax will simply create many companies and divvy up it into equifax backend web services llc that has fewer than 150 employees. I'd argue that if the split child company ends up only working for the parent, it is easier for the governments to prosecute them. So the child company would have to get other customers and act as a real independent unit or would have to shut down altogether and the parent company would have to go back to the market to find a proper "web service" provider. I'd also argue that there is no way that a company like Equifax would be able to exist only with 150 people. The whole national level corporation would simply be broken down into many localized offices. Their databases would no longer be shared. The damage that each unit could make would be reduced, and their customers would be much closer to the managers responsible in ensuring that their data is managed properly. In other words, my argument is that Capitalism and market forces do work. We just need to have these systems deployed in the correct scale.
      - 9dev 4y ago
        Wouldn’t that result in the CEO and board being literal scapegoats, employed by the people actually in charge, to be beheaded if something goes wrong? They would even sell it as „giving control to the employees“ or something. I don’t believe in measures to radically change the world. That’s both a direct example of the Chesterton fence, and applied game theory - CEOs, board members, or investors, they are all gamers. Give them any set of rules, they will analyse and subsequently game them.
- sumedh 4y ago
  That post sounds like war on drugs, on paper it makes sense but does not work in real life. Do you really think an industry like oil refinery can be managed with a limit of 150 people?
  - rglullis 4y ago
    The point is not to limit the size of the industry. It is to limit the size of a company. Think of a oil refinery as a monolith, and that such a mandate would enforce that you'd have to build the whole system a set of independent microservices. The industry as a whole would still employ a large number of people, but now they would be forced to coordinate through specific interfaces (the smaller business units) instead of centralizing under a larger corporation.
    - teddyh 4y ago
      Like the Amazon’s “API” mandate, as famously described by Steve Yegge: So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses. His Big Mandate went something along these lines: 1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. 2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces. 3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network. 4) It doesn't matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter. Bezos doesn't care. 5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions. 6) Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired. — https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 Maybe the government could do something similar? Huh, here’s an idea: Maybe Jeff Bezos did what he did because he was fearing just such a goverment-mandated breakup, and wanted Amazon to be prepared for it?

by harry8 4y ago

Yup. Too big to fail sucks just as hard in banking. Google needs to be broken up as badly as banks do. It's a battle that keeps on coming up and here it is again.

whatshisface 4y ago

What would someone break Google up into, ad and vertisements? If you look at their quarterly reports you'll see that they are almost entirely based around one product.

rightbyte 4y ago
You could cut out ads from the rest. And make Google buy ad space from Foogle Search.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Of the viable companies, each would still be a monopoly.

rglullis 4y ago

Why stop at Google? Why don't we simply get rid of the idea of the mega corporation?[0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641

deelowe 4y ago
Because it’s regressive. We need to fix the issues, not throw the whole thing out.
- rglullis 4y ago
  These "issues" only exist because of the scale and reach of Corporations. You can not fix "too big to fail" issues unless you stop letting these institutions to grow too big in the first place. I'm yet to hear a single convincing argument of why we need to have organizations of such a large scale nowadays. Could you make a case of what we would be missing if we just "threw the whole thing out"?
  - mcny 4y ago
    I propose another option: unless you can show clear written instructions, the ceo and the board are personally criminally responsible for the acts of their agents, contractors, and employees at the course of their duty. If your branch manager incorrectly adds your teller to an industry wide list of do not hire, the board and CEO are personally criminally responsible for it. No hiding behind the corporate veil. I don’t know how to prove whether someone acted in their own and not on the instructions of the employer though. What I’m afraid of is equifax will simply create many companies and divvy up it into equifax backend web services llc that has fewer than 150 employees.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      > What I’m afraid of is equifax will simply create many companies and divvy up it into equifax backend web services llc that has fewer than 150 employees. I'd argue that if the split child company ends up only working for the parent, it is easier for the governments to prosecute them. So the child company would have to get other customers and act as a real independent unit or would have to shut down altogether and the parent company would have to go back to the market to find a proper "web service" provider. I'd also argue that there is no way that a company like Equifax would be able to exist only with 150 people. The whole national level corporation would simply be broken down into many localized offices. Their databases would no longer be shared. The damage that each unit could make would be reduced, and their customers would be much closer to the managers responsible in ensuring that their data is managed properly. In other words, my argument is that Capitalism and market forces do work. We just need to have these systems deployed in the correct scale.
    - 9dev 4y ago
      Wouldn’t that result in the CEO and board being literal scapegoats, employed by the people actually in charge, to be beheaded if something goes wrong? They would even sell it as „giving control to the employees“ or something. I don’t believe in measures to radically change the world. That’s both a direct example of the Chesterton fence, and applied game theory - CEOs, board members, or investors, they are all gamers. Give them any set of rules, they will analyse and subsequently game them.
sumedh 4y ago
That post sounds like war on drugs, on paper it makes sense but does not work in real life. Do you really think an industry like oil refinery can be managed with a limit of 150 people?
- rglullis 4y ago
  The point is not to limit the size of the industry. It is to limit the size of a company. Think of a oil refinery as a monolith, and that such a mandate would enforce that you'd have to build the whole system a set of independent microservices. The industry as a whole would still employ a large number of people, but now they would be forced to coordinate through specific interfaces (the smaller business units) instead of centralizing under a larger corporation.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Like the Amazon’s “API” mandate, as famously described by Steve Yegge: So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses. His Big Mandate went something along these lines: 1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. 2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces. 3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network. 4) It doesn't matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter. Bezos doesn't care. 5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions. 6) Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired. — https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 Maybe the government could do something similar? Huh, here’s an idea: Maybe Jeff Bezos did what he did because he was fearing just such a goverment-mandated breakup, and wanted Amazon to be prepared for it?