7 ms·

Hate to say it but this is where we get the state to step in and simply dismember the company.

yard2010 3y ago
There's always a bigger fish :)
epolanski 3y ago
I do think that Google is indeed too big to the point it's a threat for the future of the internet and fair competition indeed. But I also don't like the idea of legislators having to sort it out, they may do more damage than good for all the parties, from companies to users to Google.
izacus 3y ago
Dismember into what? Except for a lot of ranting and stamping of feet on HN, I don't see a lot of HNers jumping in and providing free alternative services for Google services? There is a lot of DEMAND for free services for sure, but doesn't seem a lot of people are putting their money where their mouth is? Kagi hasn't grown all that much, neither have services like Nebula?
- fidotron 3y ago
  Android, cloud, email, youtube, maps, search and advertising could all be entirely separate businesses in an actual sense.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bongobingo1 3y ago
    Is it possible to do that without there just being implicit back channels between the businesses, and they continue to operate as before? I guess you could enforce some kind of open-tender requirements on their projects or something but that seems extremely difficult.
    - Scarblac 3y ago
      There is anti-cartel legislation that should prevent that, I think. And why would it be in the interest of shareholders of the parts to only do business with the other old Google parts?
  - avidiax 3y ago
    Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare Email -- nobody pays for email. Get ready for a much smaller mailbox and ads targeted by email contents. Get "sponsored" emails in your feed. YouTube -- was a separate company before Maps -- will become a free tourist map, may have to pay to unlock any zone except your home. Search -- if it can sell ads independently, could be a viable business. Advertising -- all the other units need advertising to survive. This could be a clearinghouse In short, not clear that the pieces make sense as independent businesses with some exceptions.
    - fdw 3y ago
      But isn't that the very problem? The market for these loss-leading services is skewed because Google subsidizes their free offerings so that they improve their ads branch. Because it is hard to compete with a free (actually money-losing) service, it is very hard for competitors to spring up. And thus the whole thing is anti-competitive. If they were separate companies and had to compete on their own merit, not subsidized by the ads division, they'd have to ask for money too. Then, competitors actually have a chance to offer something better. And through that, the reach of the ads business is limited unless they start to work with the competing services. This opens up the market for other ad markets, too. And then we are a step closer to the free market that is efficient and good for consumers.
      - izacus 3y ago
        > And then we are a step closer to the free market that is efficient and good for consumers. With Apple, Amazon and Microsoft doing the same in same markets... are we? Because it doesn't seem like "whap the random company that didn't pay enough for marketing" strategy isn't really working into establishing proper competition that benefits society. Maybe... a different approach needs to be taken? How about starting to talk about legislation which would force large companies to allow competition into their vertical integrations - ALL of them, not just the single pet megacorp we hate this week. Level playing field and all that.
      - danaris 3y ago
- BitPolice 3y ago
  I don't have the answers here any more than anyone; but I notice that most approaches tend to cut along the existing verticals (e.g. the product areas). The break-up of AT&T provides another perhaps more viable arena for thought... There the breakup resulted in multiple, independent competing companies cleaved from AT&T. Three organically produced combinations now remain of the original 7: 1. Verizon is what was the north eastern region (Bell Atlantic + NYNEX). 2. The now reunited trademark AT&T started as the western ones (Pacific Telesis and Ameritech) then added the southwest (Southwestern Bell/SBC) in 2005 and the southern states' one (BellSouth) in 2006. 3. The midwestern region was Qwest which is still around in some form as CenturyLink/Lumen. From one massive company which did everything you got a bunch of companies that actually competed with each other in the main and market dominant sector. The market continued to evolve and real market forces forced combinations among them; IMO this is a good and natural thing. Remember MCI and Sprint? Did you know they were already around pre-breakup as starving competitors of the monopoly? Suddenly they became national brands and introduced their own leaderships' priorities into the consumer marketplace (MCI in particular was early in seeing the importance of several early Internet packet-based technologies and in consumer email). Prior to the breakup did you know that the domestic television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, there wasn't Fox yet) had long-term contracts to send their signals over AT&T's terrestrial network? Almost immediately after the breakup (this is not a causal thing, but there is a lot of correlation) they all switched almost immediately thereafter to sattelite distribution (which had been available for nearly a decade). -- The point I'm making is that you don't have to just draw inside the preexisting lines. The goal isn't the punish Alphabet, but to maximize competition in the market to the benefit of the nation (externalities positive and negative) and its consumers (first-order real good). Promoting competition may result in 2 search companies that can't reunite or something equally unthinkable...
kubb 3y ago
Why do you hate saying it? Thought crime guilt?
- krapp 3y ago
  Thoughtcrime on HN would be assuming Google actually does good and provides value. Wanting FAANG companies to be broken up, by violence if necessary, is such a common opinion here it's banal.
  - izacus 3y ago
    But only the FAANG that have failed to properly market this month - Meta is currently in favor (or at least out of weekly rant cycle), Apple and Microsoft have managed to spend enough on marketing lately to be spared the bile floodgates of HN with Google being its usual incompetent self. But the pendulum will shift again. (The core of my annoyance here isn't ranting over FAANGs, but the fact that any kind of suggestion of systemic fixes immediately brings out libertarians accusing us of trying to undermine poor economy.)
  - throwaway4good 3y ago
    Google provides value but its monopoly provides less value than what would have been created by a multiple of companies freely competing in an open market.
throwaway4good 3y ago
Google is a US company but the "welfare loss" its monopoly create is on the whole (western) world and not just the US economy. That is why it won't be regulated out of existance. That and national security.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Care to explain how is it better for "national security" that some of Google's division have to be sold/spun off into different companies? What is exactly the threat of YouTube becoming an independent company again, e.g.? The only thing I see is a loss for Google in revenue and in YouTube in the "quality" of their ads. None of this has any implication on national security.
  - throwaway4good 3y ago
    It is better for (US) national security that Google keeps its (global) monopoly. (Non-US) competitors to Google would hamper the US's ability to surveil and gather data globally.

yard2010 3y ago

There's always a bigger fish :)

I do think that Google is indeed too big to the point it's a threat for the future of the internet and fair competition indeed. But I also don't like the idea of legislators having to sort it out, they may do more damage than good for all the parties, from companies to users to Google.

izacus 3y ago

Dismember into what? Except for a lot of ranting and stamping of feet on HN, I don't see a lot of HNers jumping in and providing free alternative services for Google services? There is a lot of DEMAND for free services for sure, but doesn't seem a lot of people are putting their money where their mouth is? Kagi hasn't grown all that much, neither have services like Nebula?

fidotron 3y ago
Android, cloud, email, youtube, maps, search and advertising could all be entirely separate businesses in an actual sense.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bongobingo1 3y ago
  Is it possible to do that without there just being implicit back channels between the businesses, and they continue to operate as before? I guess you could enforce some kind of open-tender requirements on their projects or something but that seems extremely difficult.
  - Scarblac 3y ago
    There is anti-cartel legislation that should prevent that, I think. And why would it be in the interest of shareholders of the parts to only do business with the other old Google parts?
- avidiax 3y ago
  Android -- a cost center. No viable business model. Maybe Samsung would fork AOSP for their phones. Cloud -- has to run at a loss in the immediate future to capture marketshare Email -- nobody pays for email. Get ready for a much smaller mailbox and ads targeted by email contents. Get "sponsored" emails in your feed. YouTube -- was a separate company before Maps -- will become a free tourist map, may have to pay to unlock any zone except your home. Search -- if it can sell ads independently, could be a viable business. Advertising -- all the other units need advertising to survive. This could be a clearinghouse In short, not clear that the pieces make sense as independent businesses with some exceptions.
  - fdw 3y ago
    But isn't that the very problem? The market for these loss-leading services is skewed because Google subsidizes their free offerings so that they improve their ads branch. Because it is hard to compete with a free (actually money-losing) service, it is very hard for competitors to spring up. And thus the whole thing is anti-competitive. If they were separate companies and had to compete on their own merit, not subsidized by the ads division, they'd have to ask for money too. Then, competitors actually have a chance to offer something better. And through that, the reach of the ads business is limited unless they start to work with the competing services. This opens up the market for other ad markets, too. And then we are a step closer to the free market that is efficient and good for consumers.
    - izacus 3y ago
      > And then we are a step closer to the free market that is efficient and good for consumers. With Apple, Amazon and Microsoft doing the same in same markets... are we? Because it doesn't seem like "whap the random company that didn't pay enough for marketing" strategy isn't really working into establishing proper competition that benefits society. Maybe... a different approach needs to be taken? How about starting to talk about legislation which would force large companies to allow competition into their vertical integrations - ALL of them, not just the single pet megacorp we hate this week. Level playing field and all that.
    - danaris 3y ago
BitPolice 3y ago
I don't have the answers here any more than anyone; but I notice that most approaches tend to cut along the existing verticals (e.g. the product areas). The break-up of AT&T provides another perhaps more viable arena for thought... There the breakup resulted in multiple, independent competing companies cleaved from AT&T. Three organically produced combinations now remain of the original 7: 1. Verizon is what was the north eastern region (Bell Atlantic + NYNEX). 2. The now reunited trademark AT&T started as the western ones (Pacific Telesis and Ameritech) then added the southwest (Southwestern Bell/SBC) in 2005 and the southern states' one (BellSouth) in 2006. 3. The midwestern region was Qwest which is still around in some form as CenturyLink/Lumen. From one massive company which did everything you got a bunch of companies that actually competed with each other in the main and market dominant sector. The market continued to evolve and real market forces forced combinations among them; IMO this is a good and natural thing. Remember MCI and Sprint? Did you know they were already around pre-breakup as starving competitors of the monopoly? Suddenly they became national brands and introduced their own leaderships' priorities into the consumer marketplace (MCI in particular was early in seeing the importance of several early Internet packet-based technologies and in consumer email). Prior to the breakup did you know that the domestic television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, there wasn't Fox yet) had long-term contracts to send their signals over AT&T's terrestrial network? Almost immediately after the breakup (this is not a causal thing, but there is a lot of correlation) they all switched almost immediately thereafter to sattelite distribution (which had been available for nearly a decade). -- The point I'm making is that you don't have to just draw inside the preexisting lines. The goal isn't the punish Alphabet, but to maximize competition in the market to the benefit of the nation (externalities positive and negative) and its consumers (first-order real good). Promoting competition may result in 2 search companies that can't reunite or something equally unthinkable...

kubb 3y ago

Why do you hate saying it? Thought crime guilt?

krapp 3y ago
Thoughtcrime on HN would be assuming Google actually does good and provides value. Wanting FAANG companies to be broken up, by violence if necessary, is such a common opinion here it's banal.
- izacus 3y ago
  But only the FAANG that have failed to properly market this month - Meta is currently in favor (or at least out of weekly rant cycle), Apple and Microsoft have managed to spend enough on marketing lately to be spared the bile floodgates of HN with Google being its usual incompetent self. But the pendulum will shift again. (The core of my annoyance here isn't ranting over FAANGs, but the fact that any kind of suggestion of systemic fixes immediately brings out libertarians accusing us of trying to undermine poor economy.)
- throwaway4good 3y ago
  Google provides value but its monopoly provides less value than what would have been created by a multiple of companies freely competing in an open market.

throwaway4good 3y ago

Google is a US company but the "welfare loss" its monopoly create is on the whole (western) world and not just the US economy. That is why it won't be regulated out of existance. That and national security.

epolanski 3y ago
Care to explain how is it better for "national security" that some of Google's division have to be sold/spun off into different companies? What is exactly the threat of YouTube becoming an independent company again, e.g.? The only thing I see is a loss for Google in revenue and in YouTube in the "quality" of their ads. None of this has any implication on national security.
- throwaway4good 3y ago
  It is better for (US) national security that Google keeps its (global) monopoly. (Non-US) competitors to Google would hamper the US's ability to surveil and gather data globally.