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This may seem like a good idea but so much of Google's power comes from the Search + Search Ads monopoly. That is where they are anticompetitive to the max, tha

This may seem like a good idea but so much of Google's power comes from the Search + Search Ads monopoly. That is where they are anticompetitive to the max, that is where a change needs to happen. Splitting everything else off doesn't solve the core problem. Within Search + Search Ads you have a platform where Google are/have: - the sole vendor of a digital asset - ads - the sole marketplace for that asset - a closed algorithmic trading system with no public auditing - no public ledger or auditing showing who bid what - currently one of the main customers for those ads (advertising their own products) Along with that you as an advertiser have to install tracking on your site allowing Google to see every transaction, all revenue, every customer, of your business. The level of spying on the advertisers is insane, when seen in combination with the closed source algorithm and market for the ads the potential for manipulation is enormous. The whole ads platform is built for extracting every last cent of margin from advertisers businesses. It's anticompetitive, monopolistic, and to some extent even a protection racket. The most important "breakup" needs to be the ads business from everything else, including search. That's going to hurt, and I don't have the answers to how to make it work, but changes are needed. I suspect a "breakup" isn't on the cards, maybe some strong regulation of online ad marketplaces, ring fencing them from the rest of the business and auditing of the platform?

EMIRELADERO 3y ago
> The most important "breakup" needs to be the ads business from everything else, including search. That's going to hurt, and I don't have the answers to how to make it work, but changes are needed. You can be happy then. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl... The press release doesn't mention it, but the actual court document asks the court to: "Order the divestiture of, at minimum, the Google Ad Manager suite, including both Google’s publisher ad server, DFP, and Google’s ad exchange, AdX, along with any additional structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm"
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Note, too, that this is the DoJ. They, unlike the FTC, actually know what they are doing.
  - ThunderSizzle 3y ago
    Sarcasm alert?
bombolo 3y ago
Let's not forget maps, where they arbitrarily decide to show you a shop/hotel/restaurant 5km away when there is one 200m away.
- dizhn 3y ago
  I am kind of surprised none of the navigation apps divert your course slightly to pass in front of a large store or something yet. It could even announce the place. "On your right is such and such store where using the code Maps will give you a 10 percent discount."
  - iamflimflam1 3y ago
    You could actually package this up in a way that people would find palatable. What if maps only took you to places where you have a loyalty card - or the places that currently have discounts on things in your shopping list. Give it the right marketing spin and people would love it.
    - arlcode 3y ago
      I can imagine Margrethe Vestager will start flexing her regulation muscles the minute Google even thinks about it.
      - swores 3y ago
        Google Maps (and even more so Waze which they own) already had partnerships with various brands - for example, type McDonalds into Google Maps (at least in the UK) and it has the M logo next to "see locations" as soon as you've typed Mc - so it's not such a huge stretch as you think it would be.
        i_am_jl 3y ago
        This isn't a "partnership", it's an option for anyone who has purchased a Local Campaign product on Google Ads.
pydry 3y ago
The ideal breakup would be between search engine and index. The index should be treated as a utility like water or electric that search engines purchase access to for a regulated fee. You can then have a thousand competing search engines started in garages with their own ranking algorithms and ads but realistically there are only ever going to be a few indexes. Thats the part that requires enormous data centers and dedicated power stations to run.
- chx 3y ago
  I doubt this is feasible, there's a lot that goes into the index which determines which kinds of queries you can even run.
  - pydry 3y ago
    Why? As a supplier of an API to search engine "customers" their entire job would just be to service that demand and provide new query options. The intra-engine competition, meanwhile, would drive up results quality. Search engines would rise and fall on their own merits rather than on the basis that theyve got access to the biggest index.
    - chx 3y ago
      But part of the competition is the index quality. For example, it's a lot easier to provide a keyword index than a phrase index. There's code search which is almost orthogonal to what ordinary search wants separators wise etc
      - pydry 3y ago
        I dont doubt that. The point of regulating it as a utility isnt that theres nothing to compete over but that the barrier to entry is so high that you can't simply rely on the market to provide competition.
rocho 3y ago
Even if you split the search and ads divisions into two companies, what prevents them from entering into a partnership and keep doing whatever they do now?
- tiborsaas 3y ago
  That's what I fail to understand in these breakup threads. They would be free to business with whoever they want. It feels like if a breakup happens it's mostly paperwork and accounting changes in practice.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    No, they would certainly not be free to do business with whomever they want. There's a reason the Baby Bells didn't all just enter into a partnership with each other the day after the breakup... they were not permitted to do so. If/when business was unavoidable between two offspring companies, at minimum, I would expect them to have to inform the FTC, justify how it was unavoidable, and make the details of the transaction public. If someone complained that it wasn't unavoidable, quite possibly there would be additional penalties leveled on each of the participants. It's not like some Monty Python character waves a wand and declares "you're not n different companies", only to wander off and never exercise oversight. Mind you, I don't think there's enough political capital in the world to manage to break Google up, but if it did happen then the judgement will have the teeth to make sure they're actually broken.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > They would be free to business with whoever they want. The separate pieces would not be able to engage in business together that constituted a combination in restraint of trade, because that’s illegal whether or not they are breakuo siblings. Breakups turn what used to be sole company actions into combinations, which, in and of itself, adds legal complications. (Also, as soon as the ownership diverges at all, which will happen almost immediately, between the siblings, a lot of things that are problematic for market effects would also be breaches of fiduciary duty on one side or the other.) And all of this leaves out the explicit targeted constraints that would inevitably be part and parcel of any breakup order.
troyvit 3y ago
I feel like if you broke up the browser from search then the elimination of third party cookies will magically fall off the table because you break the browser's integration with the engine and the ad platform which made that elimination profitable for Alphabet (and a knife in the lungs for "open web" advertisers). I hate web advertising but it's the model we've got so bear with me. Once third party cookies are back on the table it helps level the playing field. Programmatic advertising becomes profitable again and all those small players can get back to competing. Only this time they're just competing with each other and doubleclick. Maybe momentum carries forward and third party cookies are eliminated anyway (such faith in humanity). If that's the case then once again the playing field levels a bit more and everybody is working with the same blinders on. Search will still be awful because of google.com's market share and its enablement of click bait and echo chambers, but search will always be awful and five years from now everybody will have their own LLM instead of search anyway (and five years after that LLMs will suck because there's no new data to train against but that's another rant). Analytics will change a lot. Google not legally being able to integrate the data it scrapes from GA into its own products means that there's a lot less of a reason to stick just with their ecosystem. They'll still lag behind as far as privacy goes, so third party analytics providers will actually be able to get their toes in the door. Anyway like you I agree that a breakup probably isn't going to happen. Most of the people who would legislate a break-up don't even understand the internet or what alphabet is, or what google does.

EMIRELADERO 3y ago

> The most important "breakup" needs to be the ads business from everything else, including search. That's going to hurt, and I don't have the answers to how to make it work, but changes are needed. You can be happy then. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl... The press release doesn't mention it, but the actual court document asks the court to: "Order the divestiture of, at minimum, the Google Ad Manager suite, including both Google’s publisher ad server, DFP, and Google’s ad exchange, AdX, along with any additional structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm"

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Note, too, that this is the DoJ. They, unlike the FTC, actually know what they are doing.
- ThunderSizzle 3y ago
  Sarcasm alert?

bombolo 3y ago

Let's not forget maps, where they arbitrarily decide to show you a shop/hotel/restaurant 5km away when there is one 200m away.

dizhn 3y ago
I am kind of surprised none of the navigation apps divert your course slightly to pass in front of a large store or something yet. It could even announce the place. "On your right is such and such store where using the code Maps will give you a 10 percent discount."
- iamflimflam1 3y ago
  You could actually package this up in a way that people would find palatable. What if maps only took you to places where you have a loyalty card - or the places that currently have discounts on things in your shopping list. Give it the right marketing spin and people would love it.
  - arlcode 3y ago
    I can imagine Margrethe Vestager will start flexing her regulation muscles the minute Google even thinks about it.
    - swores 3y ago
      Google Maps (and even more so Waze which they own) already had partnerships with various brands - for example, type McDonalds into Google Maps (at least in the UK) and it has the M logo next to "see locations" as soon as you've typed Mc - so it's not such a huge stretch as you think it would be.
      - i_am_jl 3y ago
        This isn't a "partnership", it's an option for anyone who has purchased a Local Campaign product on Google Ads.

pydry 3y ago

The ideal breakup would be between search engine and index. The index should be treated as a utility like water or electric that search engines purchase access to for a regulated fee. You can then have a thousand competing search engines started in garages with their own ranking algorithms and ads but realistically there are only ever going to be a few indexes. Thats the part that requires enormous data centers and dedicated power stations to run.

chx 3y ago
I doubt this is feasible, there's a lot that goes into the index which determines which kinds of queries you can even run.
- pydry 3y ago
  Why? As a supplier of an API to search engine "customers" their entire job would just be to service that demand and provide new query options. The intra-engine competition, meanwhile, would drive up results quality. Search engines would rise and fall on their own merits rather than on the basis that theyve got access to the biggest index.
  - chx 3y ago
    But part of the competition is the index quality. For example, it's a lot easier to provide a keyword index than a phrase index. There's code search which is almost orthogonal to what ordinary search wants separators wise etc
    - pydry 3y ago
      I dont doubt that. The point of regulating it as a utility isnt that theres nothing to compete over but that the barrier to entry is so high that you can't simply rely on the market to provide competition.

rocho 3y ago

Even if you split the search and ads divisions into two companies, what prevents them from entering into a partnership and keep doing whatever they do now?

tiborsaas 3y ago
That's what I fail to understand in these breakup threads. They would be free to business with whoever they want. It feels like if a breakup happens it's mostly paperwork and accounting changes in practice.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  No, they would certainly not be free to do business with whomever they want. There's a reason the Baby Bells didn't all just enter into a partnership with each other the day after the breakup... they were not permitted to do so. If/when business was unavoidable between two offspring companies, at minimum, I would expect them to have to inform the FTC, justify how it was unavoidable, and make the details of the transaction public. If someone complained that it wasn't unavoidable, quite possibly there would be additional penalties leveled on each of the participants. It's not like some Monty Python character waves a wand and declares "you're not n different companies", only to wander off and never exercise oversight. Mind you, I don't think there's enough political capital in the world to manage to break Google up, but if it did happen then the judgement will have the teeth to make sure they're actually broken.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > They would be free to business with whoever they want. The separate pieces would not be able to engage in business together that constituted a combination in restraint of trade, because that’s illegal whether or not they are breakuo siblings. Breakups turn what used to be sole company actions into combinations, which, in and of itself, adds legal complications. (Also, as soon as the ownership diverges at all, which will happen almost immediately, between the siblings, a lot of things that are problematic for market effects would also be breaches of fiduciary duty on one side or the other.) And all of this leaves out the explicit targeted constraints that would inevitably be part and parcel of any breakup order.

troyvit 3y ago

I feel like if you broke up the browser from search then the elimination of third party cookies will magically fall off the table because you break the browser's integration with the engine and the ad platform which made that elimination profitable for Alphabet (and a knife in the lungs for "open web" advertisers). I hate web advertising but it's the model we've got so bear with me. Once third party cookies are back on the table it helps level the playing field. Programmatic advertising becomes profitable again and all those small players can get back to competing. Only this time they're just competing with each other and doubleclick. Maybe momentum carries forward and third party cookies are eliminated anyway (such faith in humanity). If that's the case then once again the playing field levels a bit more and everybody is working with the same blinders on. Search will still be awful because of google.com's market share and its enablement of click bait and echo chambers, but search will always be awful and five years from now everybody will have their own LLM instead of search anyway (and five years after that LLMs will suck because there's no new data to train against but that's another rant). Analytics will change a lot. Google not legally being able to integrate the data it scrapes from GA into its own products means that there's a lot less of a reason to stick just with their ecosystem. They'll still lag behind as far as privacy goes, so third party analytics providers will actually be able to get their toes in the door. Anyway like you I agree that a breakup probably isn't going to happen. Most of the people who would legislate a break-up don't even understand the internet or what alphabet is, or what google does.