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Google has the closest thing we have to the Bell Labs of the past that invented the transistor. If the DOJ breaks them up, we will lose another valuable industr

by novia 2y ago

Google has the closest thing we have to the Bell Labs of the past that invented the transistor. If the DOJ breaks them up, we will lose another valuable industry research facility.

lulzron 2y ago
AT&T argued that breaking up its monopoly would harm consumers by reducing service quality, increasing costs, and stifling innovation due to the loss of economies of scale. However, the breakup in 1984 led to increased competition, which drove innovation, improved services, and lowered prices, proving AT&T's claims largely false. The market's diversity and consumer choice expanded significantly post-breakup, contradicting the monopoly's dire predictions.
- not2b 2y ago
  Back in the 1980s, long distance couples sometimes wound up paying more in long distance phone calls than rent, and 30 miles away counted as long distance. No one could attach anything to the precious network, so acoustic coupler modems had to be used, resulting in very low bandwidth. Yes, a lot of good stuff came out of Bell Labs, funded by the huge amount of monopoly money that came into the company, but that needed to end.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I was in that situation. I was thrilled when Sprint long distance became available at $0.10/minute and I also remember when you could stop renting your home phone from AT&T and plug in one that you bought and owned.
    - wormius 2y ago
      Heh - My first online experience was 1995 (obviously, pre-98 telecom deregulation). Not only did the price include the insane per-hour pricing of Compuserve, but the long distance fees pushed my bill up to 300 dollars the first month. I worked at Taco Bell at the time and made like 4 bucks an hour. Thankfully I lived at home rent free at that point.
- linguae 2y ago
  I agree with this view; the breakup of the AT&T monopoly was a boon for consumers. However, I also agree that Bell Labs was a casualty of the breakup. Once AT&T was split, Bell Labs was pressured to demonstrate its value by focusing its research on areas with more immediate ROI. Unfortunately, when a research lab focuses more on the short-term instead of fostering long-term, riskier explorations, the magic of the lab fades away, and often the work becomes evolutionary rather than revolutionary, since it’s hard to do revolutionary research when management, executives, and shareholders demand quarterly progress and a promise for ROI in the near future. Bell Labs wasn’t the same since 1984, and the same situation occurred with Xerox PARC after the 1980s when Xerox no longer enjoyed monopoly-level profits on its photocopiers due to increased competition. I believe that fostering long-term, unfettered research is an important element for revolutionary work, though I don’t believe it’s the only way for revolutionary work to happen. However, it’s difficult for most companies to consistently fund this work for an extended period of time. Bell Labs and Xerox PARC in their heydays were special, and I struggle to think of any modern-day equivalents in industry.
- ayakang31415 2y ago
  This analysis might be selective and hindsight biased. Are there any cases where government intervention to slow or stop monopolies actually impeded innovation?
  - lulzron 2y ago
    Government antitrust actions aim to promote competition but can sometimes slow innovation by disrupting large companies' ability to invest in R&D. Cases like IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, and Qualcomm illustrate how such interventions, while fostering competition, may also delay technological advancements or make companies more risk-averse. While antitrust actions might temporarily disrupt a company's innovation, they ultimately foster a healthier market by encouraging competition, which drives more diverse and widespread innovation across the industry. Breaking monopolies often unleashes creativity and technological advancement by empowering smaller players and preventing market stagnation.
    - Narhem 2y ago
      Total market share, you can’t generate more time to steal from people which is effectively what these companies like Google have done to generate revenue. If the government steps in they would have to break them all up and expect to make entering those sections possible. At the moment it’s nearly impossible.
immibis 2y ago
Which lab at Google is going to invent the next transistor?
- stingraycharles 2y ago
  I guess the parent is talking about Google X, and perhaps the self driving car stuff. Not sure, I don’t think Google is particularly good at innovation, as most of their successes other than search came through acquisitions (YouTube, Google Maps). They’re definitely not at the forefront of AI anymore, which honestly is super surprising given the reputation that had.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    Perhaps user-facing apps/innovations, yes - but what about all of the other things they've contributed to the world? Kubernetes, Golang, V8, Chromium, and so much more. All of which are entirely free, as in beer kind of free. That's amazing. These tools have been used to create amazing things that normal people have come to depend on every day.
    - stingraycharles 2y ago
      But that’s hardly on par with the level of innovation that happened at Bell Labs. Would you see them getting 10 Nobel prizes and 5 Turing awards? I’m not disagreeing that Google is adding value, but it just seems more like incremental improvements rather than innovation. Yes they make free things, but so do Facebook, Netflix, Apple, etc.
      - Alupis 2y ago
        > Would you see them getting 10 Nobel prizes and 5 Turing awards? Meh, we give Nobel prizes to anyone these days - they're more symbolic of certain politics than anything else sadly. Turing Awards? Yes, many things Google has contributed to the world are probably worthy of such an award. Http/2/quic/3 were driven by Google if I'm not mistaken, and there is no other browser core like Chromium today that facilitates so much of the world's internet access (a significant amount of which does not use Chrome itself). Tensorflow and early "AI Revolution" tech came largely out of Google as well. The problem we have today is tech is very complicated and requires many organizations working together to really advance groundbreaking technology. When the day finally comes that FSD Vehicles are possible, would we say the first company to market "invented" the technology or would it be the compound experiences of dozens of companies? Gone are the days 5 people can get into a room and 3 months later turn out world-changing technology...
surgical_fire 2y ago
Google only seems to innovate in how to extract more dollars from advertisement and in how to make their search worse. Maybe we will all be fine without those.
- Narhem 2y ago
  It also knows how to bully people trying to entire the space.
icehawk 2y ago
What would you consider research Google has done that is close to the level of what Bell Labs did?
- 0xB31B1B 2y ago
  Attention in deep learning, Maintenance and development of the Linux kernel, Development of advanced databases, Self driving cars, Image recognition
mapt 2y ago
I mean... they had it. For ten or fifteen years. In CS, at least. That mostly ended when they became a VC financing & monetization endpoint rather than a novel research platform, and renamed themselves 'Alphabet', cut R&D spending to about 1/12th of revenue, hired a bunch of middle managers and marketing execs, and killed 20% time, because the idea of a thousand engineers making white-paper reports about how they chose to spend their time to one CTO was no longer a favored organizational strategy for executing further growth by shareholders. They still do a great deal of research, but it's less blue-sky and more focused. Google's got 182,000 employees now, with official R&D spending at about four times the National Science Foundation, but still in the 10-15% of revenue band. This is more a condemnation of the NSF and Congress than praise of Google.
thfuran 2y ago
If you want applied science, advocate for increased public funding of research. Supporting abusive monopolies in the hopes that they'll do some good with part of their ill-gotten gains is the wrong play.
bearjaws 2y ago
Google doesn't even keep the projects they launch alive, what chance does their lab have long term?

by novia 2y ago

Google has the closest thing we have to the Bell Labs of the past that invented the transistor. If the DOJ breaks them up, we will lose another valuable industry research facility.

lulzron 2y ago

AT&T argued that breaking up its monopoly would harm consumers by reducing service quality, increasing costs, and stifling innovation due to the loss of economies of scale. However, the breakup in 1984 led to increased competition, which drove innovation, improved services, and lowered prices, proving AT&T's claims largely false. The market's diversity and consumer choice expanded significantly post-breakup, contradicting the monopoly's dire predictions.

not2b 2y ago
Back in the 1980s, long distance couples sometimes wound up paying more in long distance phone calls than rent, and 30 miles away counted as long distance. No one could attach anything to the precious network, so acoustic coupler modems had to be used, resulting in very low bandwidth. Yes, a lot of good stuff came out of Bell Labs, funded by the huge amount of monopoly money that came into the company, but that needed to end.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  I was in that situation. I was thrilled when Sprint long distance became available at $0.10/minute and I also remember when you could stop renting your home phone from AT&T and plug in one that you bought and owned.
  - wormius 2y ago
    Heh - My first online experience was 1995 (obviously, pre-98 telecom deregulation). Not only did the price include the insane per-hour pricing of Compuserve, but the long distance fees pushed my bill up to 300 dollars the first month. I worked at Taco Bell at the time and made like 4 bucks an hour. Thankfully I lived at home rent free at that point.
linguae 2y ago
I agree with this view; the breakup of the AT&T monopoly was a boon for consumers. However, I also agree that Bell Labs was a casualty of the breakup. Once AT&T was split, Bell Labs was pressured to demonstrate its value by focusing its research on areas with more immediate ROI. Unfortunately, when a research lab focuses more on the short-term instead of fostering long-term, riskier explorations, the magic of the lab fades away, and often the work becomes evolutionary rather than revolutionary, since it’s hard to do revolutionary research when management, executives, and shareholders demand quarterly progress and a promise for ROI in the near future. Bell Labs wasn’t the same since 1984, and the same situation occurred with Xerox PARC after the 1980s when Xerox no longer enjoyed monopoly-level profits on its photocopiers due to increased competition. I believe that fostering long-term, unfettered research is an important element for revolutionary work, though I don’t believe it’s the only way for revolutionary work to happen. However, it’s difficult for most companies to consistently fund this work for an extended period of time. Bell Labs and Xerox PARC in their heydays were special, and I struggle to think of any modern-day equivalents in industry.
ayakang31415 2y ago
This analysis might be selective and hindsight biased. Are there any cases where government intervention to slow or stop monopolies actually impeded innovation?
- lulzron 2y ago
  Government antitrust actions aim to promote competition but can sometimes slow innovation by disrupting large companies' ability to invest in R&D. Cases like IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, and Qualcomm illustrate how such interventions, while fostering competition, may also delay technological advancements or make companies more risk-averse. While antitrust actions might temporarily disrupt a company's innovation, they ultimately foster a healthier market by encouraging competition, which drives more diverse and widespread innovation across the industry. Breaking monopolies often unleashes creativity and technological advancement by empowering smaller players and preventing market stagnation.
  - Narhem 2y ago
    Total market share, you can’t generate more time to steal from people which is effectively what these companies like Google have done to generate revenue. If the government steps in they would have to break them all up and expect to make entering those sections possible. At the moment it’s nearly impossible.

immibis 2y ago

Which lab at Google is going to invent the next transistor?

stingraycharles 2y ago
I guess the parent is talking about Google X, and perhaps the self driving car stuff. Not sure, I don’t think Google is particularly good at innovation, as most of their successes other than search came through acquisitions (YouTube, Google Maps). They’re definitely not at the forefront of AI anymore, which honestly is super surprising given the reputation that had.
- Alupis 2y ago
  Perhaps user-facing apps/innovations, yes - but what about all of the other things they've contributed to the world? Kubernetes, Golang, V8, Chromium, and so much more. All of which are entirely free, as in beer kind of free. That's amazing. These tools have been used to create amazing things that normal people have come to depend on every day.
  - stingraycharles 2y ago
    But that’s hardly on par with the level of innovation that happened at Bell Labs. Would you see them getting 10 Nobel prizes and 5 Turing awards? I’m not disagreeing that Google is adding value, but it just seems more like incremental improvements rather than innovation. Yes they make free things, but so do Facebook, Netflix, Apple, etc.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      > Would you see them getting 10 Nobel prizes and 5 Turing awards? Meh, we give Nobel prizes to anyone these days - they're more symbolic of certain politics than anything else sadly. Turing Awards? Yes, many things Google has contributed to the world are probably worthy of such an award. Http/2/quic/3 were driven by Google if I'm not mistaken, and there is no other browser core like Chromium today that facilitates so much of the world's internet access (a significant amount of which does not use Chrome itself). Tensorflow and early "AI Revolution" tech came largely out of Google as well. The problem we have today is tech is very complicated and requires many organizations working together to really advance groundbreaking technology. When the day finally comes that FSD Vehicles are possible, would we say the first company to market "invented" the technology or would it be the compound experiences of dozens of companies? Gone are the days 5 people can get into a room and 3 months later turn out world-changing technology...

surgical_fire 2y ago

Google only seems to innovate in how to extract more dollars from advertisement and in how to make their search worse. Maybe we will all be fine without those.

Narhem 2y ago
It also knows how to bully people trying to entire the space.

icehawk 2y ago

What would you consider research Google has done that is close to the level of what Bell Labs did?

0xB31B1B 2y ago
Attention in deep learning, Maintenance and development of the Linux kernel, Development of advanced databases, Self driving cars, Image recognition

mapt 2y ago

I mean... they had it. For ten or fifteen years. In CS, at least. That mostly ended when they became a VC financing & monetization endpoint rather than a novel research platform, and renamed themselves 'Alphabet', cut R&D spending to about 1/12th of revenue, hired a bunch of middle managers and marketing execs, and killed 20% time, because the idea of a thousand engineers making white-paper reports about how they chose to spend their time to one CTO was no longer a favored organizational strategy for executing further growth by shareholders. They still do a great deal of research, but it's less blue-sky and more focused. Google's got 182,000 employees now, with official R&D spending at about four times the National Science Foundation, but still in the 10-15% of revenue band. This is more a condemnation of the NSF and Congress than praise of Google.

thfuran 2y ago

If you want applied science, advocate for increased public funding of research. Supporting abusive monopolies in the hopes that they'll do some good with part of their ill-gotten gains is the wrong play.

bearjaws 2y ago

Google doesn't even keep the projects they launch alive, what chance does their lab have long term?