4 ms·

Hey, you want a monopoly on information while at the same time operating the largest ad network in the world? Then don't complain if people block your stupid a

Hey, you want a monopoly on information while at the same time operating the largest ad network in the world? Then don't complain if people block your stupid ads and count yourself lucky that the government didn't split your megacorp into several tiny companies The only morally wrong thing here is NOT blocking Google's ads

stavros 2y ago
Why doesn't the government split the megacorp into several tiny companies? All this collusion between these otherwise unrelated companies is only good for Google.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  People always say this but what is the practical way this would come into effect? Unless the intention is to simply kill either YouTube or Google, or both, how do you separate out YouTube in a way that is meaningfully "breaking up" with Google but that the separate entity could afford?
  - miah_ 2y ago
    There already was a time when Youtube was its own company. Google bought it. Maybe they didn't do great on their own but it was also ~2005 and things are very different now.
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      Yes but before Google bought it, it was a money incinerator.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Because breaking companies up seems to be more theatre and less useful outcomes. People call for it freely and usually don't have a theory of how it will actually help. And nobody seems to bring up evidence from past corporate breakups beyond "we did it ergo it was good" (which is suspicious logic). On paper it looks something like a choice between one company with one shareholder or two companies with ... the same shareholder. It isn't clear what has really changed; the company was only ever a legal fiction anyway. If there were incentives to collude then they haven't gone away.