7 ms·
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.
by 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 agoMaybe if google sold more products to the feds they wouldn't be so brazen as to kill them off
- ta1243 2y agoGoogle 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 agoGoogle does not sell individual's data to businesses. Where do you even get that notion?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pembrook 2y agoDefacto, 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 agoThat 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.
- pembrook 2y agoI think we’re just arguing semantics. No, you can’t buy user data on 1 specific person (then again, there’s many examples of people buying ads on a persons name to catch them googling themselves), but you can buy user data on small groups of people.
- nox101 2y agoNo you can't. It's not semantics. It's reality. You can't buy data on people or groups of people from google any more than you can buy data on people from NBC, ABC, CBS. From TV stations you can buy ads during specific programs. That's it. From Google you can buy ads. You can not buy data. Data is something you can do something with on your own, analyse it, etc. Google does not give you data.
- pembrook 2y agoI don’t think you understand how Google ads work. Here’s a super common example: - I sell red bowling shoes - I pay Google for access to anyone searching for ‘red bowling shoes’ - Once they land on my site I know who came via the Google ad (via the URL params) - A certain percentage converts, and I get their personal info and payment info I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with that chain of events! It’s a win-win for both buyer and seller. However, to argue that no data was sold is disingenuous at best. Google is the monopoly broker of the intent data on every buyer in the world. Why should I let Google profit off of my thoughts/interests? Why shouldn’t I be making the money that the bowling shoe manufacturer paid to access my thoughts/interests?
- Kbelicius 2y ago> - I pay Google for access to anyone searching for ‘red bowling shoes’ You pay to show your website to people searching for red bowling shoes. > However, to argue that no data was sold is disingenuous at best. No user data has been sold.
- duped 2y agoGCP isn't a B2B product?
- 0xB31B1B 2y agoGCP doesn't make money
- stackskipton 2y agoYes but it's tiny compared to Google Revenue and when I messed with it, it wasn't 100% certified for Government use. Meaning if you used it for Government, you could only use select products vs Microsoft and Amazon which certified almost all their products.
- surajrmal 2y agoIt was 10B out of 84B in the latest quarter and growing a lot faster than other revenues. It's not really what I would call tiny.
- surajrmal 2y agoWhat data does Google sell exactly? As far as I know they sell impressions.
- guappa 2y agoIt sells them all of our data.
- WalterBright 2y agoBefore the anti-trust action against Microsoft, Microsoft did not lobby nor donate to politicians. After Bill Gates rode on a golf cart with Bill Clinton, he realized the need to pay the expected tribute to the politicians.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoWhile the DoJ is an executive department, it is notoriously independent. Google is one of the biggest lobbyists in D.C. Trying to predict anti-trust actions by lobbying activity is naïve to the point of being counter-productive: it can be better, in many cases, to fly under the radar. (Exhibit A: Andreessen Horowitz.)
- WalterBright 2y agoCisco reputedly avoided an anti-trust action by wining and dining DoJ lawyers. Microsoft, in comparison, said rude things about the DoJ. Of course, I wish things did not work this way. But isn't it a bit naive to think it doesn't?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Cisco reputedly avoided an anti-trust action by wining and dining DoJ lawyers Source? (They settled with Multiven.) > isn't it a bit naive to think it doesn't No, it's naïve to think that level of influence can be bought. Not an uncommon mistake. Bankman-Fried made it, and it's increasingly looking like Bytedance did too. But D.C. is a town obsessed with power over money. People regularly toss aside lobbyists and their clients if it's politically expedient. In part because it's not like the lobbyists (or their clients) ditch them after being spurned.
- elzbardico 2y agoWell, you don't simply walk into a Patek Phillipe store and ask to see the watches. Enzo Ferrari refused to sell ferraris for people he didn't think were deserving of having a ferrari. Corruption on the highest levels is very similar. Not everyone is on the buyers club.
- inopinatus 2y agoone may as well complain that outlawing bribery caused everyone to attempt regulatory capture instead
- tightbookkeeper 2y agoExcept that ones made up.
- inopinatus 2y agoI merely restated the outcome everyone else is discussing. The entire topic is dancing around the question of what corruption looks like in jurisdictions where you can’t just buy the government, and the answer is, mostly, regulatory capture.