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As expected, the comments here seem generally in support of such a move. But, it is really unclear to me how such a move would improve my life or the lives of m

As expected, the comments here seem generally in support of such a move. But, it is really unclear to me how such a move would improve my life or the lives of most typical users. Genuinely open to having it explained to me.

ceejayoz 3y ago
> The EU has previously found Google guilty of “systematically favoring” its own shopping comparison service, abusing its Android market dominance by bundling its search engine and Chrome apps, and preventing AdSense customers from accepting advertising from rival search engines. The sites you frequent are more likely to stick around if they have more revenue options, and we all benefit from competition in the search and browser markets lest we wind up with IE6 all over again.
- nisegami 3y ago
  >and preventing AdSense customers from accepting advertising from rival search engines This one makes sense to me and is pretty tangible.
olau 3y ago
Online store sells great products. But nobody knows about them. Online store buys ads on Google to tell people about their products. People click the ads, and buy the products so the store can scale up and lower their per unit cost. Everyone are happy. Now fast forward a decade. Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Online store now pays 10 times as much for their ads and have to raise prices to cover the costs. Google shareholders are happy, everyone else loses - it doesn't matter if they click ads or not, the prices are higher for everyone.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  >Now fast forward a decade. Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Online store now pays 10 times as much for their ads and have to raise prices to cover the costs. This is just not true and not how Google's ads work. Google has a bidding system. You don't have to pay their prices if your ads aren't profitable. You can pull out. You can go somewhere else. You can try other forms of marketing. You can make a better product, better landing page, better messaging so you can convert more users per click. Your company is essentially competing with other companies for the click. If the price 10x, it's because other companies are willing to pay 10x more. If other companies are willing to pay more for the ads, then your product/business/marketing isn't as good as theirs.
  - jfk13 3y ago
    > If other companies are willing to pay more for the ads, then your product/business/marketing isn't as good as theirs Or maybe you just don't have as much venture capital to burn. Do we really want to live in a world that overwhelmingly rewards whoever is prepared to spend the most on publicity? (How's Citizens United been working out?)
    - api 3y ago
      Don’t worry. There’s a hack to get around paying for publicity and that’s to be an obnoxious troll. You can get rich on social media by being deliberately offensive.
    - aurareturn 3y ago
      >Or maybe you just don't have as much venture capital to burn. What does this have to do with the post you're replying to? I would suggest starting a new HN post if you want to talk about VC cash.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > You can go somewhere else. Yeah, right.
    - aurareturn 3y ago
      Email marketing, content marketing, FB, Apstore, Bing, DuckDuckGo, print marketing, TV marketing, magazine marketing, viral marketing, etc.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Come on Facebook is right there. Google is a $200bn ad company, Facebook is a $130bn ad company. You don't even have to change your marketing strategy at all, both companies will happily swallow all your dollars to make ads. You can make a case that replacing Google with a bunch of bespoke ad vectors isn't a real alternative because they don't have Google's reach but Facebook does.
- jefftk 3y ago
  The EU regulators are addressing Google's display advertising and exchange business, but your comment is about their search ads.
- nova22033 3y ago
  Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Raising prices is evil? Does this hypothetical online store never raise prices?
csomar 3y ago
In the same way the EU GDPR cookie banners made your life worse and barely changed any practices. These are highly complex companies and trying to simplify them into a couple laws is why communism failed. Breaking a big company will create a hundreds of companies with more shady practices, tax evasion, etc... that will be harder to control. And am not saying don't do it... because this liberate the potential from one big hand to multiple ones. I am just answering your question whether this is a positive or not.
itairal 3y ago
This is the problem. How is your life better with having Standard Oil broke up in 1911? We didn't get to see the counterfactual of Rockefeller strangling the oil industry by 1920. Big tech though has gone beyond the definition of a monopoly. We didn't breakup Standard Oil because we were worried about them taking over the garment industry too. I imagine we already pay for big tech dearly as a society but we can't run reality a 1000 times over to see the alternatives. We basically run the Windows 11 version of society and since we can't actually have a different experience we conclude "hey this Windows 11 society isn't that bad, how would any of this improve my Windows 11 life?". If we could actually see the alternate paths this would be the biggest political issue in democracies by a mile. Instead we have big tech controlling what people see and read almost entirely so of course this is no big deal. Big tech told me so!

ceejayoz 3y ago

> The EU has previously found Google guilty of “systematically favoring” its own shopping comparison service, abusing its Android market dominance by bundling its search engine and Chrome apps, and preventing AdSense customers from accepting advertising from rival search engines. The sites you frequent are more likely to stick around if they have more revenue options, and we all benefit from competition in the search and browser markets lest we wind up with IE6 all over again.

nisegami 3y ago
>and preventing AdSense customers from accepting advertising from rival search engines This one makes sense to me and is pretty tangible.

olau 3y ago

Online store sells great products. But nobody knows about them. Online store buys ads on Google to tell people about their products. People click the ads, and buy the products so the store can scale up and lower their per unit cost. Everyone are happy. Now fast forward a decade. Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Online store now pays 10 times as much for their ads and have to raise prices to cover the costs. Google shareholders are happy, everyone else loses - it doesn't matter if they click ads or not, the prices are higher for everyone.

aurareturn 3y ago
>Now fast forward a decade. Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Online store now pays 10 times as much for their ads and have to raise prices to cover the costs. This is just not true and not how Google's ads work. Google has a bidding system. You don't have to pay their prices if your ads aren't profitable. You can pull out. You can go somewhere else. You can try other forms of marketing. You can make a better product, better landing page, better messaging so you can convert more users per click. Your company is essentially competing with other companies for the click. If the price 10x, it's because other companies are willing to pay 10x more. If other companies are willing to pay more for the ads, then your product/business/marketing isn't as good as theirs.
- jfk13 3y ago
  > If other companies are willing to pay more for the ads, then your product/business/marketing isn't as good as theirs Or maybe you just don't have as much venture capital to burn. Do we really want to live in a world that overwhelmingly rewards whoever is prepared to spend the most on publicity? (How's Citizens United been working out?)
  - api 3y ago
    Don’t worry. There’s a hack to get around paying for publicity and that’s to be an obnoxious troll. You can get rich on social media by being deliberately offensive.
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    >Or maybe you just don't have as much venture capital to burn. What does this have to do with the post you're replying to? I would suggest starting a new HN post if you want to talk about VC cash.
- nottorp 3y ago
  > You can go somewhere else. Yeah, right.
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    Email marketing, content marketing, FB, Apstore, Bing, DuckDuckGo, print marketing, TV marketing, magazine marketing, viral marketing, etc.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Come on Facebook is right there. Google is a $200bn ad company, Facebook is a $130bn ad company. You don't even have to change your marketing strategy at all, both companies will happily swallow all your dollars to make ads. You can make a case that replacing Google with a bunch of bespoke ad vectors isn't a real alternative because they don't have Google's reach but Facebook does.
jefftk 3y ago
The EU regulators are addressing Google's display advertising and exchange business, but your comment is about their search ads.
nova22033 3y ago
Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Raising prices is evil? Does this hypothetical online store never raise prices?

csomar 3y ago

In the same way the EU GDPR cookie banners made your life worse and barely changed any practices. These are highly complex companies and trying to simplify them into a couple laws is why communism failed. Breaking a big company will create a hundreds of companies with more shady practices, tax evasion, etc... that will be harder to control. And am not saying don't do it... because this liberate the potential from one big hand to multiple ones. I am just answering your question whether this is a positive or not.

itairal 3y ago

This is the problem. How is your life better with having Standard Oil broke up in 1911? We didn't get to see the counterfactual of Rockefeller strangling the oil industry by 1920. Big tech though has gone beyond the definition of a monopoly. We didn't breakup Standard Oil because we were worried about them taking over the garment industry too. I imagine we already pay for big tech dearly as a society but we can't run reality a 1000 times over to see the alternatives. We basically run the Windows 11 version of society and since we can't actually have a different experience we conclude "hey this Windows 11 society isn't that bad, how would any of this improve my Windows 11 life?". If we could actually see the alternate paths this would be the biggest political issue in democracies by a mile. Instead we have big tech controlling what people see and read almost entirely so of course this is no big deal. Big tech told me so!