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Dismantling Google is a terrible idea
- helph67 2y agoRemember how Mickey attempted to destroy the broom in `Fantasia' by chopping it into many pieces? Hint; his problems multiplied!
- verdverm 2y agoIt would also take a lot of money. The sticker price I've seen for the ad business is around $100B, but then you need to pay for data centers and engineers capable of delivering the code extracted from Google. I imagine the overlap in code base at the operational level is non-negligible, as is the data about people
- ok_dad 2y agoGood thing we’re not a society of wizard anthropomorphic mice chopping up magical brooms!
- FactKnower69 2y ago[flagged]
- dyauspitr 2y agoPeople is the US are in denial. They think it’s the 70s and 80s where if they dismantle their large industries then smaller competitors will take their place. Now, what actually ends up happening is Asia steps in and eats everyone’s lunch instead.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoA slap on the wrist before Google turned into a power hungry monster, that would've been the proper way to go. But in the US everything is about money money money. This is the result, a fucking behemoth, that can't even wipe its own arse anymore. Chrome, as a browser is a failure, an anti-innovation cesspool. They load all the shiny new features, that nobody uses into chrome, just to fuck up the competition. Here, soon to be competitor, implement these 55 different color schemes, and here is 55 totally unnecessary subsystems for you to fiddle with. Asia is on a separate, parallel railway and they are getting awaaaaaaaaaaay.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoWe could come up with policies, regulations, incentives to address that.
- krapp 2y agoIsn't "Asia stepping in and eating everyone's lunch" what Americans were afraid of in the 1980s?
- dyauspitr 2y agoExcept now it’s actually happening and not with low population Japan but high population China.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoWhat a shit laden article from an otherwise great outlet...
- avmich 2y agoAre they really so great? It seems one can find endless stream of questionable materials there, so reading The Economist should be done with sizable grains of salt.
- trod123 2y agoLately not so much, they have been catering progressively more to the extreme leftist point of view as the Agnelli's (Exor NV) invested progressively more in China. The websites claim they have an independent editor chosen by committee, but corruption occurs in any centralized/hierarchical organization and corruption by dependency is one of the oldest forms of coercion that won't leave much in terms of obvious breadcrumbs. The objective quality and subject matter of the writing has degraded considerably. About two decades ago they were pretty well respected, but not anymore. As you say, a sizable puck of salt is needed.
- sapphicsnail 2y agoWhat extreme leftist views does the Economist have?
- EasyMark 2y agoSometimes I wonder if people haven’t mixed it up with Business Insider or something.
- dragonwriter 2y agoApparently, neoliberal corporate capitalism is now “extreme leftism” for some people.
- trod123 2y ago
- trod123 2y agoThe most terrible idea is doing nothing and letting Google continue business as usual. The company's primary purpose was search results and ads, and these have all but become useless compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Today, you can't find what you are looking for beyond surface level topics. Google collates data on you in into dossiers on everything you do and then sell it to the highest bidder without full disclosure to the end user, in cooperation with other tech companies (Facebook et al; "signals"). They have been caught red-handed wiretapping millions of people while only getting a slap on the wrist (i.e. that Google Maps case with WiFi AP mapping from their streetview cars, and roving sensor networks). Each count there is a felony, they paid a measly fine of a few million while raking in billions from the sale of derived data. They manipulate elections, leak AI secrets to China, and adopt algorithms that align closely with CCP rhetoric and practice (shadowbanning posts for or against certain topics). We are getting close to entering a war footing with China, and Google is a strategic company with national security implications. Any country in similar situations can't allow traitors of strategic importance to remain in privileged positions. Its a national security issue, and doing nothing is the worst possible outcome.
- rogerrogerr 2y agoWait, why is driving around making a list of WiFi APs (that people marked public during setup) a felony?
- trod123 2y agoPublic SSIDs, MAC addresses, and locations are in an evolving grey area (to my knowledge, not an attorney) but they didn't do that. They captured raw OTA radio traffic from all of their streetview cars, extracted information from the management frames (trilateration). Management frames were not protected at the time, and they made this collected information freely accessible through their map API publicly (for a time). The gist being it met the legal requirements for wiretapping, they were fined and told to destroy the data. They may have done something similar with cell signals as well (though its unclear). You can read more about it in the public records of the case.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoCan’t read it due to the paywall. But dismantling Google would be great for everyone that isn’t Google. They are, like many other large companies, basically immune to competition. They have strong network effects all over the place, lots of capital, and large patent portfolios that let them just copy anyone else shamelessly. The existence of these big companies distorts the idea of a competitive economy. Think about how many Google’s products have been launched and rebranded repeatedly and shut down. Could any other company, that is competing fairly, make this many mistakes? No. But Google is also bad for the world in many other ways. They control our information. Through the curation of search results, censorship or demonetization policies on YouTube, policies on their ad network, and even seemingly harmless things like fact check labels on content, they control and shape our ideas. If you take their huge reach, control over the information we consume, and recognize the massive bias present in their employee population, it’s obvious that their existence is also a risk to our political process. I haven’t even touched on the privacy issues, but they’re there. But let’s set all of this aside, because I feel like we can waste a lot of time debating details and avoid taking action. Their size is a problem in many number of ways, and the specifics don’t matter. Companies that are too big corrupt our economy, our politics, and more. Let’s fight for better laws that make it very simple to break up companies that are too big.
- c420 2y agohttps://archive.is/AsohO https://archive.is/AsohO
- EasyMark 2y agoNot dismantling it, just chopping it up into bite size chunks easier for the market to control
- aryonoco 2y agoIt should be noted that Eric Schmidt sat on the board of the Economist Group for a very long time. He has recently given his seat to Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of DeepMind, also of Google. https://www.economistgroup.com/esg/board https://www.economistgroup.com/esg/board I'm writing this as a subscriber of The Economist for over 15 years, someone who mostly admire their writing and reporting, even if I don't always agree with them. The Economist ran a comprehensive review of their own coverage of climate change and renewable energy and last year, and admitted that they were completely wrong on the subject in the 70s and 80s. I wonder if a future Economist editor in 2060s would reach a similar conclusion about their current coverage of Big Tech.
- stonethrowaway 2y agoIs their coverage of climate change in 2024 any better?
- znpy 2y agoA terribly good idea. We should split other similar mega-corporations as well, like amazon, Microsoft and apple.