3 ms·

I read through some of the documents of the original complaint. This is mainly not about Google being the dominant search engine for consumers. It's more to do

by jemmyw 2y ago

I read through some of the documents of the original complaint. This is mainly not about Google being the dominant search engine for consumers. It's more to do with their anti competitive behavior in the ad tech market. As a consumer, switching is easy. As a company that wants to advertise, switching is not easy if Google holds all the users. But also they've bought up all sides of the market, so what used to be competitive is now entirely controlled by one company. And, once they had that control, they started squeezing both sides, advertisers and sites that run advertising. From a consumer perspective it's not about being able to switch search engine. Google is potentially putting a drag on entire economies, both money wise, and innovation wise. If every service you use has to spend extra because Google has an advertising monopoly then every service is passing a cost to you. If every service needs to do it the one way then there's no advancement, no new models, just "give Google money" forever.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago
Google doesn't have an advertising monopoly. Facebook all by itself does about half of Google's revenue in ads. Then you have twitter, amazon, snap, all kinds of stuff. Google would be lucky to have 40% of online ads, and then once you include all advertising they are way down, maybe 15-20% or something.
- chairmansteve 2y ago
  They have a search monopoly, therefore are the gateway to internet
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    That's at least close to the truth. It's not strictly a monopoly though. And there is a very real chance it's all about to blow up given LLMs.
    - alsetmusic 2y ago
      The judge found them to be a monopoly. They are strictly a monopoly. Unless the case gets overturned, they are exactly a monopoly. LLMs are not going to meaningfully upset the balance any time soon. They are a service / product in search of a problem for most people. And if they do something useful for you, that’s great but HN users are not most people so the statement stands.
parineum 2y ago
I agree with you on the premise of the complaint but I think the parent's point still holds, the reason why you don't want to switch to another ad company is because all the people are with Google but they're with Google because they like it. The judgment makes a lot of hay over google paying to be the default search engine and how google has all this data on how valuable default is and how much people don't tend to switch from them. That's all true but I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Make it illegal to pay to be the default? There has to be a default and I think the outcome there is that Google is still the default because people prefer it. Google only pays to be the default because, if they don't, someone else will. Google would love to not have to pay Apple to be the default. I also notice the lack of acknowledgement that people actively do switch away from default browsers regularly, from their OS defaults, to Chrome, which defaults to Google Search. Bing's market share is basically entirely because Edge is the default browser in windows with Bing as the default search engine. "Solving" this default problem will probably crater Bing if it involves forcing a user to make a choice on install (or something similar). The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company, not a browser company, not a mobile phone company, not a search company, not an email company, etc. All of those other products exist to serve the ad company, they are loss leaders. Splitting up google is bad for consumers who use gmail, chrome, android and search. The only real split that I think is possible is Google Ads from Google Cloud. As far as the idea of Google's position being a drag on the economy, I'd like to see a competitor with a better model that Google used their market advantage to intentionally kill.
- nubinetwork 2y ago
  > The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company Just barely, 95% of their ads are scams.
- jemmyw 2y ago
  > problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company This is a little unimaginative. Google's ad business could be split horizontally or vertically to make space for competition. It's simplistic to say they are an ad business, they are performing several functions in the online ad business space. > I'd like to see a competitor Me too!

by jemmyw 2y ago

danielmarkbruce 2y ago

Google doesn't have an advertising monopoly. Facebook all by itself does about half of Google's revenue in ads. Then you have twitter, amazon, snap, all kinds of stuff. Google would be lucky to have 40% of online ads, and then once you include all advertising they are way down, maybe 15-20% or something.

chairmansteve 2y ago
They have a search monopoly, therefore are the gateway to internet
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  That's at least close to the truth. It's not strictly a monopoly though. And there is a very real chance it's all about to blow up given LLMs.
  - alsetmusic 2y ago
    The judge found them to be a monopoly. They are strictly a monopoly. Unless the case gets overturned, they are exactly a monopoly. LLMs are not going to meaningfully upset the balance any time soon. They are a service / product in search of a problem for most people. And if they do something useful for you, that’s great but HN users are not most people so the statement stands.

parineum 2y ago

I agree with you on the premise of the complaint but I think the parent's point still holds, the reason why you don't want to switch to another ad company is because all the people are with Google but they're with Google because they like it. The judgment makes a lot of hay over google paying to be the default search engine and how google has all this data on how valuable default is and how much people don't tend to switch from them. That's all true but I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Make it illegal to pay to be the default? There has to be a default and I think the outcome there is that Google is still the default because people prefer it. Google only pays to be the default because, if they don't, someone else will. Google would love to not have to pay Apple to be the default. I also notice the lack of acknowledgement that people actively do switch away from default browsers regularly, from their OS defaults, to Chrome, which defaults to Google Search. Bing's market share is basically entirely because Edge is the default browser in windows with Bing as the default search engine. "Solving" this default problem will probably crater Bing if it involves forcing a user to make a choice on install (or something similar). The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company, not a browser company, not a mobile phone company, not a search company, not an email company, etc. All of those other products exist to serve the ad company, they are loss leaders. Splitting up google is bad for consumers who use gmail, chrome, android and search. The only real split that I think is possible is Google Ads from Google Cloud. As far as the idea of Google's position being a drag on the economy, I'd like to see a competitor with a better model that Google used their market advantage to intentionally kill.

nubinetwork 2y ago
> The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company Just barely, 95% of their ads are scams.
jemmyw 2y ago
> problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company This is a little unimaginative. Google's ad business could be split horizontally or vertically to make space for competition. It's simplistic to say they are an ad business, they are performing several functions in the online ad business space. > I'd like to see a competitor Me too!