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Loving the discourse in the comments here. Speaking as someone who grew up alongside Google in a sense, I fall on the side of the "break it up" camp. It was n

Loving the discourse in the comments here. Speaking as someone who grew up alongside Google in a sense, I fall on the side of the "break it up" camp. It was novel at the time to have a single company so nicely provide us with everything digitally that we could need - G Suite, YouTube, Search, Maps, Advertising, Books, Reader, etc - but in hindsight, we gave too much power to too unaccountable an entity, who in turn used it to choke off any avenues to challenge its dominance. As for the rebuttal of "bUt ThE gDp", there's a counter-argument to be made that the GDP would have grown just as much with a higher diversity and stringent M&A regulations by spurring on new businesses and concepts, as opposed to mainstreaming fad after fad that seemingly solely benefits the established players. There's another argument to be made equating GDP values to desirable targets creates a Goodhart's Law problem, thereby making GDP as a measure of growth or success a bad metric; the rise of income and wealth inequality these past few decades, when there was increased focus on GDP as a target of growth or success, could be viewed as evidence supporting said argument. It's worth noting that this case against Google is likely to be the bellwether for future divestments and breakups. Whatever comes next will be an invaluable learning experience for both sides, just like AT&T and Microsoft's own anti-trust woes were learning experiences for the current crop of companies.

jajko 2y ago
If I am worried about anybody holding my private data (apart from US' 3-letter agencies and thats a hill I am not going to die upon since I don't have same basic human rights as US citizens), its Meta. Sure Google is everywhere, but Meta holds much more data on our inner personal sides, which are the easiest things to actually abuse to no end. That and pornhub.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Are you sure? Google has a search and location data, Google email is on one side if not both of most email chains, receipts, etc. I don't use meta for much. Google on the otherhand takes some pretty dedicated behavior to avoid.
  - baby_souffle 2y ago
    > Are you sure? Google has a search and location data, Google email is on one side if not both of most email chains, receipts, etc. Absolutely not discounting all of that; there are some pretty strong parallels between the data you can infer on a person based on their gmail graph versus their fb messenger graph, for example. Meta has a lot more "self-revealed-preference" data, though. Which of $thesePosts did you engage with? Does this pattern continue if we mix in $someOtherVariable? How long did you dwell on that one post before like/dis-like? Are you more likely to come back and spend time here if we tell you that $thisPerson has commented on your post instead of $thisOtherPerson? ... etc. I think only YouTube serves as a plausible source of dwell time in the "at what part of $thisVideo did you click the like button" sense. If you don't use YouTube or use it signed out then it's (slightly) harder for google to attribute your actions to you. Facebook doesn't really have _anything_ that can be accessed without logging in.
    - duskwuff 2y ago
      Between Google Search, AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and various other APIs, Google has all the pieces in place to get a pretty good overview of what users are doing online. (And that's not even considering that the user's likely to be logged into a Google browser that's uploading their browsing history wholesale.) Legally speaking, Google's not supposed to be correlating most of this data. But, as we know well, that doesn't mean they aren't doing it.
    - edg5000 2y ago
      WhatsApp is huge in the EU, we don't really text much here; I'm guessing you are from the US. Meta has full access to that.
      - d3VwsX 2y ago
        Depends on what part of EU you are in. From older HN threads I learned that in some countries people still pay for sending text messages, so I guess that makes it more likely that some app can become popular there.
      - 2y ago
- wonderwonder 2y ago
  Google actually tracks associates everywhere you visit in incognito mode in chrome and associates it with your main user id. So whatever pornhub knows, so does google.
  - mupuff1234 2y ago
    I believe they stopped doing that https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1242019127/google-incognito-mode-settlement-search-history https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1242019127/google-incognito-m...
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    I do not believe that was ever the case. They track searches, sure, but it is not associated with your user id. The way they treat incognito browsers is just like a freshly installed firefox browser that's never been logged into a google account. They're logged as anonymous searches.
  - jajko 2y ago
    What about firefox incognito with ublock origin? I wouldn't trust Chrome at all (unless 100% open source independent build) due to extremely strong incentives for tracking
hightrix 2y ago
> nicely provide us with everything digitally that we could need... Advertising Sorry for the snark, but no one anywhere needs advertising. Advertising in it's current form is a plague on humanity.
- loumaciel 2y ago
  Tons of small businesses rely on advertising. Tons of legit businesses only exist because online advertising became easy and widespread.
  - hightrix 2y ago
    I fully understand that advertising enables many businesses. But there have been businesses based on lead pipes for drinking water plumbing, asbestos for residential insulation, and so on. You could make an argument that these technologies enabled many businesses as well. That doesn’t mean we should allow lead pipes for drinking water or to use asbestos in residential homes.
    - loumaciel 2y ago
      Online advertising has leveled the playing field, allowing smaller brands to compete with big names. Platforms like Google make it easy to capture attention, which is why even giants like Nike are losing market share to newer players. This shift spans all non-regulated industries. Without online ads, launching a nationwide brand would require enormous budgets, leaving us stuck with the same old monopolies.
      - nomat 2y ago
        > allowing smaller brands to compete to name a few: LISEN, Qifutan, Loncaster, YKYI, Holikme and SXhyf. And who could forget VWMYQ?
        account42 2y ago
        This is doubly funny because the one really profiting here is Amazon, aka a big corp.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
The GDP argument is weird. If Google being huge is good for GDP why don't we just let them own the whole country? One US company for everything, maximum GDP afterall!
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  "President Walt Disney Pepsi Comcast has done wonders for the economy! Being that it now is...the economy."
  - pighive 2y ago
    "Brought to you by Carl's Jr." /s https://youtu.be/1BYFbXJKJ8U?si=MkBwxpJe54NvOGtd https://youtu.be/1BYFbXJKJ8U?si=MkBwxpJe54NvOGtd
- adventured 2y ago
  Big tech is very good for the US. They're far more difficult to compete with in terms of scale and the resources they can deploy, than small companies. It more easily enables the US to suffocate the tech efforts of other competing nations. Giving this advantage up is extraordinarily moronic by the US. There is no benefit to the US by making it easier for the rest of the world to compete with the US golden geese. The DOJ isn't thinking that far ahead, they're playing a game of agenda.
  - arrosenberg 2y ago
    Big Tech is stagnant and mostly good at milking the US consumer for cash. The tech industry would be better serve the average American if the market was more dynamic, and that requires breaking up the big players who are (often illegally) stifling competition.
    - gerash 2y ago
      What industry is not stagnant then? Auto? Medicine? Food?
sirspacey 2y ago
What MSFT learned from that was to open offices in Washington DC, lobby and sell to the federal gov. Hard to find the sense in this action.
- duped 2y ago
  Maybe if google sold more products to the feds they wouldn't be so brazen as to kill them off
  - ta1243 2y ago
    Google doesn't really sell products though, not to businesses. It sells individual data to businesses, it sells advertising to businesses. The only thing the government will be interested in is the spying which they aren't allowed to do, but unaccountable corporations are allowed to do. As people become more aware of this it means google becomes less and less useful.
    - spankalee 2y ago
      Google does not sell individual's data to businesses. Where do you even get that notion?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - pembrook 2y ago
        Defacto, yes they do, that’s the entire value proposition of their advertising model — that they can target customers better than any other platform due to buying intent signals from search queries. When companies buy ads with Google they’re quite literally bidding for microtargeted user intent data.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        That is not “de facto” selling data about an individual to other businesses. No one can go to Google and buy information about a specific person.
adam_arthur 2y ago
Competition usually leads to higher wealth creation and GDP, not less. If you use real life examples and history as a benchmark
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  There's been a lot of comparisons between the gilded age and modern us economic structure with respect to individual wealth. I contend the even more disturbing mirror is the trust/monopoly/cartel structure of virtually all industries and markets in the United States. The ultra rich are a symptom, not necessarily the cause: we need a massive breakup of practically every sector in the United States, and it's not just for what the parent of this comment says about wealth creation: increased employment, more job mobility, more innovation, overall competitive advantage in the world, more resilience to global supply chain disruption, and innumerable other national security and economic concerns. Monopolies are really bad for freedom. As we see with the closed no-appeal ban systems of internet companies and utter lack of customer service, your very day to day freedom can sharply be curtailed at a whim by the centralized power of monopolies.
internet101010 2y ago
I have always thought the reason they became alphabet was because of the expectation that they would eventually get broken up and wanted a company for each letter.
- mucle6 2y ago
  I think they already had a company for each letter when they became alphabet
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  They were also betting on Alpha!
  - inopinatus 2y ago
    come back 2003, all is forgiven
- johannes1234321 2y ago
  Wasn't that for the founders being able to focus on the moonshots and pay there while making Pichain CEO of Google, so they don't have to deal with that day to day? (Which then was ridiculed relatively short after when they made Pichai CEO of all Alphabet ... or was that just him passing the probation period?
- utopcell 2y ago
  Off-Topic: I always thought they missed out on a great opportunity to name the umbrella company AlephBet instead of AlphaBet ([1]), perhaps with a tag-line that reads: "stop thinking in constants" (to contrast Googol being equal to 10^100). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number
  - jacinabox 2y ago
    frigging ...what?
    - 2y ago
whiplash451 2y ago
With you up to the last sentence. What were the learnings for the current crop of companies?
- mathgeek 2y ago
  Both suits, since they went before several courts, established specific actions that companies should avoid (and ones that they could get away with).
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Breaking up AT&T lead to innovation. GDP? Have people forgotten that a vibrant 'Free Market' requires breaking up monopolies? When did supporting a 'Free Market' turn into, "don't touch our giant corps".
- kelnos 2y ago
  I won't argue that AT&T's breakup wasn't a good thing and the right move, but unfortunately a lot of that breakup has been undone: today telephony is controlled by a small oligopoly in the US. Better than a single monopoly, I suppose, but still not great. The Baby Bells started their re-merge back in the 90s. In 2000, when Verizon was formed, it was a combination of Bell Atlantic (New Jersey Bell + Bell Company of PA + Diamond State + C&P), NYNEX, and GTE. (I watched this all in real-time, as my father worked for Ma Bell -> New Jersey Bell -> Verizon for more or less his entire adult life.) I'm sure similar things happened in the rest of the country with other Baby Bells, though I don't know the history very well.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    totally. The break up occurred in the 80's. and since then through mergers/acquisitions, they have re-joined. So we have monopolies again. Somehow we have lost the will-power in government to impose the needed actions to ensure a free market. Like also denying mergers that would create monopolies. Like how was Ticketmaster even allowed to happen. We let it buy its competitors and now it is a monopoly.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Besides the fact that optimizing for GDP growth only vs other metrics is not necessarily economically healthy for a country and its citizens.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hzia 2y ago
I think most people do not understand that Google funnels a lot of their profits to make Chrome and Android into OSS. Youtube may be the only viable company that can come out of Google. Rest will either have to charge a lot of money or die. And we will be left with an even more profitable ad giant, that sends back all profits to it's share holders.
- ineedasername 2y ago
  The Android Play Store alone generates about $100B/year for Google. I saw $40B as what Google has spent over the years on Android. That seems like a viable business.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    At least according to this, Google generated ~$47B/year. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/google-play-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/google-play-statistics/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/444476/google-play-annual-revenue https://www.statista.com/statistics/444476/google-play-annua...
    - hzia 2y ago
      That’s revenue not profits. Majority goes to app devs. Profits are all that matter
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I disagree, the government should absolutely consider how much app devs would lose out on before they decide on how to carve up google.
        meiraleal 2y ago
        We would gain a lot from an independent Chrome and app store that needs and respect devs.
gerash 2y ago
No, Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google ruling shows how inconsistent the ruling are on such a common sense situation. So I don't want Google to be broken up and lose business only for MS, Apple, Amazon and Facebook to gobble up its business
- ineedasername 2y ago
  A lot of people think it's common sense, but plenty of them disagree on what that common sense approach actually is.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    I think it should be common sense that both Google and Apple should be treated equally on this issue, regardless of what you think about the actual issue. Instead, we have two virtually identical cases, and they were decided in completely opposite fashions.
    - sbuk 2y ago
      Google chose a jury trial, rather than a bench trial. The judge maid their ruling based on evidence presented, and largely ruled in Apple’s favour based on evidence provided by both Epic and Apple. No two cases are ever the same, there are always nuances. Throw a jury in to that mix, it’s even more of a crap-shoot.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        The fact that the justice system can come up with obviously contradictory conclusions in nearly-identical cases is a bug, not a feature.
        sbuk 2y ago
        No. That is indication that it is working as designed. The key word that you used is nearly. So, not the same. They were heard differently too. The truth is that you’re upset because it’s Google and not Apple.
filloutform 2y ago
Monopoly law is based on whether or not consumers are harmed. Consumers want free and cheap and quality, Google gives that thanks to economy of scale. Break up Google and consumers will pay more for the same services. until another company steps up and does the same thing Google does. this could be Baidu or Yandex. Yandex has their own version of drive, maps, Gmail, search etc etc.
- forgotoldacc 2y ago
  But who's the customer? Google is an ad business. It sells human eyes and ears to businesses. They own a massive chunk of the ad business and everything they make benefits ads. People who are buying ads (businesses) might benefit with more competition, because as it stands, we have dumb stuff like lawyers in Missouri buying ads and people in Bangladesh clicking them. Google gains money even though that ad was completely ineffective to the customer. Plus google's goal is to funnel everything into ads. Search sucks ass. It's all astroturfed or straight up fake content these days. Users are getting scammed clicking on these links. Small businesses are getting strangled out because they can't pay protection fees that the megacorps that aren't flooded out by AI generated and SEO-optimized slop can. We all suffer because of that. Google has a stranglehold on email. Try sending a non-gmail message to a gmail account as a normie and you're probably going straight to the spam bucket. How much has it costed people who had their messages lost because they won't hand all their data over to Google? Technically, competition "exists", but it's strangled out to the point of basically not existing. Other companies can offer all these services if they grow big. The problem is there's no other company that can compete with google in the US. And whenever a new company comes along that can shake up the game, Google/Apple/Microsoft buy them out and shut them down, unless they're part of the club already (e.g. OpenAI)
  - sbuk 2y ago
    You end up in spam with Gmail if you haven’t got your email hygiene in order. I’ve sent messages from cold Hetzner IPs and a cold domain name and managed to deliver to Gmail inboxes by having SPF, DKIM and DMARC correctly configured. It really is that simple. Same goes for Microsoft. Follow the standards, avoid spammy looking words, avoid sending empty messages and you’ll be fine.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
to be blunt: screw the GDP. things get worse for the middle class even when the country does well. Why should I be concerned that money not going to benefit me is dwindling because a company that exploited me can't exploit me anymore? Reap what you sow. More on topic: It was a neat idea, but given how consistently every single walled garden has ended up hindering progress and exploiting users in the long term, I'd rather go back to that 90's geocities era where users had to be mindful of their content instead of letting an algorithm scroll for them showing what maximizes engagement. The experiment has failed with aplomb. Break up Google, break up Microsoft (again, kind of), open up Apple, shake down Steam. Make this new money show why old money was historically regulated into being a proper public service instead of a winner take all conglomerate.
- thomastjeffery 2y ago
  The only people here who are going to materially benefit from a larger GDP are the temporarily embarrassed billionaires. And that's the entire point here: Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, etc. are hoarding the wealth. For the rest of us to actually benefit from the monetary value of the increased productivity of tech, that money has to be taken back. In a country where 50 people own more wealth than 50%, the only beneficiaries to GDP growth are those 50 individuals. The rest of us are just getting fucked.

jajko 2y ago

If I am worried about anybody holding my private data (apart from US' 3-letter agencies and thats a hill I am not going to die upon since I don't have same basic human rights as US citizens), its Meta. Sure Google is everywhere, but Meta holds much more data on our inner personal sides, which are the easiest things to actually abuse to no end. That and pornhub.

sitkack 2y ago
Are you sure? Google has a search and location data, Google email is on one side if not both of most email chains, receipts, etc. I don't use meta for much. Google on the otherhand takes some pretty dedicated behavior to avoid.
- baby_souffle 2y ago
  > Are you sure? Google has a search and location data, Google email is on one side if not both of most email chains, receipts, etc. Absolutely not discounting all of that; there are some pretty strong parallels between the data you can infer on a person based on their gmail graph versus their fb messenger graph, for example. Meta has a lot more "self-revealed-preference" data, though. Which of $thesePosts did you engage with? Does this pattern continue if we mix in $someOtherVariable? How long did you dwell on that one post before like/dis-like? Are you more likely to come back and spend time here if we tell you that $thisPerson has commented on your post instead of $thisOtherPerson? ... etc. I think only YouTube serves as a plausible source of dwell time in the "at what part of $thisVideo did you click the like button" sense. If you don't use YouTube or use it signed out then it's (slightly) harder for google to attribute your actions to you. Facebook doesn't really have _anything_ that can be accessed without logging in.
  - duskwuff 2y ago
    Between Google Search, AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and various other APIs, Google has all the pieces in place to get a pretty good overview of what users are doing online. (And that's not even considering that the user's likely to be logged into a Google browser that's uploading their browsing history wholesale.) Legally speaking, Google's not supposed to be correlating most of this data. But, as we know well, that doesn't mean they aren't doing it.
  - edg5000 2y ago
    WhatsApp is huge in the EU, we don't really text much here; I'm guessing you are from the US. Meta has full access to that.
    - d3VwsX 2y ago
      Depends on what part of EU you are in. From older HN threads I learned that in some countries people still pay for sending text messages, so I guess that makes it more likely that some app can become popular there.
    - 2y ago
wonderwonder 2y ago
Google actually tracks associates everywhere you visit in incognito mode in chrome and associates it with your main user id. So whatever pornhub knows, so does google.
- mupuff1234 2y ago
  I believe they stopped doing that https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1242019127/google-incognito-mode-settlement-search-history https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1242019127/google-incognito-m...
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  I do not believe that was ever the case. They track searches, sure, but it is not associated with your user id. The way they treat incognito browsers is just like a freshly installed firefox browser that's never been logged into a google account. They're logged as anonymous searches.
- jajko 2y ago
  What about firefox incognito with ublock origin? I wouldn't trust Chrome at all (unless 100% open source independent build) due to extremely strong incentives for tracking

hightrix 2y ago

> nicely provide us with everything digitally that we could need... Advertising Sorry for the snark, but no one anywhere needs advertising. Advertising in it's current form is a plague on humanity.

loumaciel 2y ago
Tons of small businesses rely on advertising. Tons of legit businesses only exist because online advertising became easy and widespread.
- hightrix 2y ago
  I fully understand that advertising enables many businesses. But there have been businesses based on lead pipes for drinking water plumbing, asbestos for residential insulation, and so on. You could make an argument that these technologies enabled many businesses as well. That doesn’t mean we should allow lead pipes for drinking water or to use asbestos in residential homes.
  - loumaciel 2y ago
    Online advertising has leveled the playing field, allowing smaller brands to compete with big names. Platforms like Google make it easy to capture attention, which is why even giants like Nike are losing market share to newer players. This shift spans all non-regulated industries. Without online ads, launching a nationwide brand would require enormous budgets, leaving us stuck with the same old monopolies.
    - nomat 2y ago
      > allowing smaller brands to compete to name a few: LISEN, Qifutan, Loncaster, YKYI, Holikme and SXhyf. And who could forget VWMYQ?
      - account42 2y ago
        This is doubly funny because the one really profiting here is Amazon, aka a big corp.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

The GDP argument is weird. If Google being huge is good for GDP why don't we just let them own the whole country? One US company for everything, maximum GDP afterall!

Night_Thastus 2y ago
"President Walt Disney Pepsi Comcast has done wonders for the economy! Being that it now is...the economy."
- pighive 2y ago
  "Brought to you by Carl's Jr." /s https://youtu.be/1BYFbXJKJ8U?si=MkBwxpJe54NvOGtd https://youtu.be/1BYFbXJKJ8U?si=MkBwxpJe54NvOGtd
adventured 2y ago
Big tech is very good for the US. They're far more difficult to compete with in terms of scale and the resources they can deploy, than small companies. It more easily enables the US to suffocate the tech efforts of other competing nations. Giving this advantage up is extraordinarily moronic by the US. There is no benefit to the US by making it easier for the rest of the world to compete with the US golden geese. The DOJ isn't thinking that far ahead, they're playing a game of agenda.
- arrosenberg 2y ago
  Big Tech is stagnant and mostly good at milking the US consumer for cash. The tech industry would be better serve the average American if the market was more dynamic, and that requires breaking up the big players who are (often illegally) stifling competition.
  - gerash 2y ago
    What industry is not stagnant then? Auto? Medicine? Food?

sirspacey 2y ago

What MSFT learned from that was to open offices in Washington DC, lobby and sell to the federal gov. Hard to find the sense in this action.

duped 2y ago
Maybe if google sold more products to the feds they wouldn't be so brazen as to kill them off
- ta1243 2y ago
  Google doesn't really sell products though, not to businesses. It sells individual data to businesses, it sells advertising to businesses. The only thing the government will be interested in is the spying which they aren't allowed to do, but unaccountable corporations are allowed to do. As people become more aware of this it means google becomes less and less useful.
  - spankalee 2y ago
    Google does not sell individual's data to businesses. Where do you even get that notion?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - pembrook 2y ago
      Defacto, yes they do, that’s the entire value proposition of their advertising model — that they can target customers better than any other platform due to buying intent signals from search queries. When companies buy ads with Google they’re quite literally bidding for microtargeted user intent data.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        That is not “de facto” selling data about an individual to other businesses. No one can go to Google and buy information about a specific person.

adam_arthur 2y ago

Competition usually leads to higher wealth creation and GDP, not less. If you use real life examples and history as a benchmark

AtlasBarfed 2y ago
There's been a lot of comparisons between the gilded age and modern us economic structure with respect to individual wealth. I contend the even more disturbing mirror is the trust/monopoly/cartel structure of virtually all industries and markets in the United States. The ultra rich are a symptom, not necessarily the cause: we need a massive breakup of practically every sector in the United States, and it's not just for what the parent of this comment says about wealth creation: increased employment, more job mobility, more innovation, overall competitive advantage in the world, more resilience to global supply chain disruption, and innumerable other national security and economic concerns. Monopolies are really bad for freedom. As we see with the closed no-appeal ban systems of internet companies and utter lack of customer service, your very day to day freedom can sharply be curtailed at a whim by the centralized power of monopolies.

internet101010 2y ago

I have always thought the reason they became alphabet was because of the expectation that they would eventually get broken up and wanted a company for each letter.

mucle6 2y ago
I think they already had a company for each letter when they became alphabet
BurningFrog 2y ago
They were also betting on Alpha!
- inopinatus 2y ago
  come back 2003, all is forgiven
johannes1234321 2y ago
Wasn't that for the founders being able to focus on the moonshots and pay there while making Pichain CEO of Google, so they don't have to deal with that day to day? (Which then was ridiculed relatively short after when they made Pichai CEO of all Alphabet ... or was that just him passing the probation period?
utopcell 2y ago
Off-Topic: I always thought they missed out on a great opportunity to name the umbrella company AlephBet instead of AlphaBet ([1]), perhaps with a tag-line that reads: "stop thinking in constants" (to contrast Googol being equal to 10^100). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number
- jacinabox 2y ago
  frigging ...what?
  - 2y ago

whiplash451 2y ago

With you up to the last sentence. What were the learnings for the current crop of companies?

mathgeek 2y ago
Both suits, since they went before several courts, established specific actions that companies should avoid (and ones that they could get away with).

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Breaking up AT&T lead to innovation. GDP? Have people forgotten that a vibrant 'Free Market' requires breaking up monopolies? When did supporting a 'Free Market' turn into, "don't touch our giant corps".

kelnos 2y ago
I won't argue that AT&T's breakup wasn't a good thing and the right move, but unfortunately a lot of that breakup has been undone: today telephony is controlled by a small oligopoly in the US. Better than a single monopoly, I suppose, but still not great. The Baby Bells started their re-merge back in the 90s. In 2000, when Verizon was formed, it was a combination of Bell Atlantic (New Jersey Bell + Bell Company of PA + Diamond State + C&P), NYNEX, and GTE. (I watched this all in real-time, as my father worked for Ma Bell -> New Jersey Bell -> Verizon for more or less his entire adult life.) I'm sure similar things happened in the rest of the country with other Baby Bells, though I don't know the history very well.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  totally. The break up occurred in the 80's. and since then through mergers/acquisitions, they have re-joined. So we have monopolies again. Somehow we have lost the will-power in government to impose the needed actions to ensure a free market. Like also denying mergers that would create monopolies. Like how was Ticketmaster even allowed to happen. We let it buy its competitors and now it is a monopoly.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Besides the fact that optimizing for GDP growth only vs other metrics is not necessarily economically healthy for a country and its citizens.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hzia 2y ago

I think most people do not understand that Google funnels a lot of their profits to make Chrome and Android into OSS. Youtube may be the only viable company that can come out of Google. Rest will either have to charge a lot of money or die. And we will be left with an even more profitable ad giant, that sends back all profits to it's share holders.

ineedasername 2y ago
The Android Play Store alone generates about $100B/year for Google. I saw $40B as what Google has spent over the years on Android. That seems like a viable business.
- threeseed 2y ago
  At least according to this, Google generated ~$47B/year. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/google-play-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/google-play-statistics/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/444476/google-play-annual-revenue https://www.statista.com/statistics/444476/google-play-annua...
  - hzia 2y ago
    That’s revenue not profits. Majority goes to app devs. Profits are all that matter
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      I disagree, the government should absolutely consider how much app devs would lose out on before they decide on how to carve up google.
      - meiraleal 2y ago
        We would gain a lot from an independent Chrome and app store that needs and respect devs.

gerash 2y ago

No, Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google ruling shows how inconsistent the ruling are on such a common sense situation. So I don't want Google to be broken up and lose business only for MS, Apple, Amazon and Facebook to gobble up its business

ineedasername 2y ago
A lot of people think it's common sense, but plenty of them disagree on what that common sense approach actually is.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  I think it should be common sense that both Google and Apple should be treated equally on this issue, regardless of what you think about the actual issue. Instead, we have two virtually identical cases, and they were decided in completely opposite fashions.
  - sbuk 2y ago
    Google chose a jury trial, rather than a bench trial. The judge maid their ruling based on evidence presented, and largely ruled in Apple’s favour based on evidence provided by both Epic and Apple. No two cases are ever the same, there are always nuances. Throw a jury in to that mix, it’s even more of a crap-shoot.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      The fact that the justice system can come up with obviously contradictory conclusions in nearly-identical cases is a bug, not a feature.
      - sbuk 2y ago
        No. That is indication that it is working as designed. The key word that you used is nearly. So, not the same. They were heard differently too. The truth is that you’re upset because it’s Google and not Apple.

filloutform 2y ago

Monopoly law is based on whether or not consumers are harmed. Consumers want free and cheap and quality, Google gives that thanks to economy of scale. Break up Google and consumers will pay more for the same services. until another company steps up and does the same thing Google does. this could be Baidu or Yandex. Yandex has their own version of drive, maps, Gmail, search etc etc.

forgotoldacc 2y ago
But who's the customer? Google is an ad business. It sells human eyes and ears to businesses. They own a massive chunk of the ad business and everything they make benefits ads. People who are buying ads (businesses) might benefit with more competition, because as it stands, we have dumb stuff like lawyers in Missouri buying ads and people in Bangladesh clicking them. Google gains money even though that ad was completely ineffective to the customer. Plus google's goal is to funnel everything into ads. Search sucks ass. It's all astroturfed or straight up fake content these days. Users are getting scammed clicking on these links. Small businesses are getting strangled out because they can't pay protection fees that the megacorps that aren't flooded out by AI generated and SEO-optimized slop can. We all suffer because of that. Google has a stranglehold on email. Try sending a non-gmail message to a gmail account as a normie and you're probably going straight to the spam bucket. How much has it costed people who had their messages lost because they won't hand all their data over to Google? Technically, competition "exists", but it's strangled out to the point of basically not existing. Other companies can offer all these services if they grow big. The problem is there's no other company that can compete with google in the US. And whenever a new company comes along that can shake up the game, Google/Apple/Microsoft buy them out and shut them down, unless they're part of the club already (e.g. OpenAI)
- sbuk 2y ago
  You end up in spam with Gmail if you haven’t got your email hygiene in order. I’ve sent messages from cold Hetzner IPs and a cold domain name and managed to deliver to Gmail inboxes by having SPF, DKIM and DMARC correctly configured. It really is that simple. Same goes for Microsoft. Follow the standards, avoid spammy looking words, avoid sending empty messages and you’ll be fine.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

to be blunt: screw the GDP. things get worse for the middle class even when the country does well. Why should I be concerned that money not going to benefit me is dwindling because a company that exploited me can't exploit me anymore? Reap what you sow. More on topic: It was a neat idea, but given how consistently every single walled garden has ended up hindering progress and exploiting users in the long term, I'd rather go back to that 90's geocities era where users had to be mindful of their content instead of letting an algorithm scroll for them showing what maximizes engagement. The experiment has failed with aplomb. Break up Google, break up Microsoft (again, kind of), open up Apple, shake down Steam. Make this new money show why old money was historically regulated into being a proper public service instead of a winner take all conglomerate.

thomastjeffery 2y ago
The only people here who are going to materially benefit from a larger GDP are the temporarily embarrassed billionaires. And that's the entire point here: Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, etc. are hoarding the wealth. For the rest of us to actually benefit from the monetary value of the increased productivity of tech, that money has to be taken back. In a country where 50 people own more wealth than 50%, the only beneficiaries to GDP growth are those 50 individuals. The rest of us are just getting fucked.