4 ms·

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know if this is an angle the DOJ would take, but Android, Chrome, Youtube etc all give Google an unfair advantage in advertising f

by yucky 4y ago

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know if this is an angle the DOJ would take, but Android, Chrome, Youtube etc all give Google an unfair advantage in advertising for search.

LatteLazy 4y ago
Probably. But my question is a bit broader: how does making advertising more competitive actually help the average user/citizen? If we introduce competition, and it works like it is meant to, then: * Ads will be cheaper * There will be more Ads * Both the free cash for AND willingness to spend on a load of things Google gives away for free (gmail, maps, drive etc) goes down so they vanish How does this help anyone other than people who make ads? 99% of us will be worse off if this succeeds right? Another poster has made a decent point about privacy (since 5 mini-googles would all only have 20ish percent of the data one big one has). But that's the only prospective upside I see so far.
- yucky 4y ago
  > 99% of us will be worse off if this succeeds right? No, I'm pretty sure monopolies have proven time and time again to be anti-consumer.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    That's not actually true I'm afraid. I mean specifically in this case, how would cheaper and more advertising, and fewer free products like Gmail actually help anyone? I think people have gotten the idea that competition is good for its own sake. But it's not, it's just a means to an end of getting more quality, lower prices etc... If an industry is obviously making excessive profit, that's a good case for competition being in the public interest. With complex industries like advertising (when the "product" is actually of no interest to the main "consumer") it's much more complex than just "lower prices means success"...
    - yucky 4y ago
      Your assumption that ads would increase is not supported by any data. What we do know is that Google in their anticompetitive position over the last several years has continually increased ad space on search to the point that many searches return all ads above the fold. So we've established we can't trust Google. Now we try something else.
      - LatteLazy 4y ago
        My assumption is based on the idea that when we reduce the price of ads (the whole point of competition apparently) ad buyers will buy more. If you think in-efficient monopoly google has a lot of ads, wait until you see an efficient ad-having set of competitive google shards...
        yucky 4y ago
        We don't need to make assumptions though. I use Brave search and barely see any ads. Google has the market dominant position and it's so many ads that it impairs the quality of results. Which is why I stopped using it. So no, your assumption has proven to be incorrect.

by yucky 4y ago

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know if this is an angle the DOJ would take, but Android, Chrome, Youtube etc all give Google an unfair advantage in advertising for search.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Probably. But my question is a bit broader: how does making advertising more competitive actually help the average user/citizen? If we introduce competition, and it works like it is meant to, then: * Ads will be cheaper * There will be more Ads * Both the free cash for AND willingness to spend on a load of things Google gives away for free (gmail, maps, drive etc) goes down so they vanish How does this help anyone other than people who make ads? 99% of us will be worse off if this succeeds right? Another poster has made a decent point about privacy (since 5 mini-googles would all only have 20ish percent of the data one big one has). But that's the only prospective upside I see so far.

yucky 4y ago
> 99% of us will be worse off if this succeeds right? No, I'm pretty sure monopolies have proven time and time again to be anti-consumer.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  That's not actually true I'm afraid. I mean specifically in this case, how would cheaper and more advertising, and fewer free products like Gmail actually help anyone? I think people have gotten the idea that competition is good for its own sake. But it's not, it's just a means to an end of getting more quality, lower prices etc... If an industry is obviously making excessive profit, that's a good case for competition being in the public interest. With complex industries like advertising (when the "product" is actually of no interest to the main "consumer") it's much more complex than just "lower prices means success"...
  - yucky 4y ago
    Your assumption that ads would increase is not supported by any data. What we do know is that Google in their anticompetitive position over the last several years has continually increased ad space on search to the point that many searches return all ads above the fold. So we've established we can't trust Google. Now we try something else.
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      My assumption is based on the idea that when we reduce the price of ads (the whole point of competition apparently) ad buyers will buy more. If you think in-efficient monopoly google has a lot of ads, wait until you see an efficient ad-having set of competitive google shards...
      - yucky 4y ago
        We don't need to make assumptions though. I use Brave search and barely see any ads. Google has the market dominant position and it's so many ads that it impairs the quality of results. Which is why I stopped using it. So no, your assumption has proven to be incorrect.