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I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyo

I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyone would still be paying for email. The enormous amount of free education on YouTube would not have been accessible to the world. The economy that we know today would be vastly different and in my opinion far worse off. So much of the economic growth came off the back of the free and ad-subsidized services Google provided for us. The reason Google is the size it is today is because it provided better services at better prices than all the competitors. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, the consumer would have paid the price.

handoflixue 1y ago
> Everyone would still be paying for email. Free email existed before Google - Hotmail and Yahoo come to mind immediately, but there were plenty of others. You also got a free email address from your ISP - even AOL users had email.
- animal_spirits 1y ago
  Fair point. Maybe I'm too young and have bought into the narrative that Google was the first widely available and free email. Still I think though, the plethora of their other services widely available for free (maps, drive, sites, youtube) were extraordinary for the price, at least for me.
  - fergbrain 1y ago
    > “their other services widely available for free” None of their services are free. You just pay for them in other ways, even if you don’t realize it.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
      I think this is sort of missing the point: I’m happy to trade a bit of attention here and there for services because I’m just going to go without a lot of things if I have to pay real money for them. If we go to a model where every site charges for usage, I will start using fewer services regularly and will use each service for more things which seems a bit counterproductive in terms of monopolies.
      - tinodb 1y ago
        If you “are going to go without then”, there’s apparently no value in it. So should also not matter if it goes away.
      - WesBrownSQL 1y ago
        That's what you don't get. You aren't just watching ads. You are giving them data about you, a lot of data. That data is used to heavily manipulate you. This isn't like the old days of broadcast TV where ads air and you aren't directly tracked. If you ever find a product that is free, it isn't. You are the product that is being sold.
        fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
        I do get that, and I’m fine with it.
        hilbert42 1y ago
        Trouble is, many of us aren't.
        hgomersall 1y ago
        The data is not just used to manipulate you, but everyone like you. Also you are giving away data from everyone that contacts you. You are non consensually making that decision for everyone in your inbox (and, I suspect, many others too).
        agolsme 1y ago
        if you think a bit harder, you shouldn't be. the data on you isn't just used to manipulate your choices on the market, it also ends up being used to manipulate your choices as a citizen -- politically, socially. You might think you're above such psychological tactics (and perhaps you are, but many many people are not, and whether you believe the democrats accusations of electoral fraud in 2016 or the many accusations on both sides since, there is absolutely no doubt that the corporatization of the internet has played a giant part in the most repugnant aspects of american and world politics since 2016)
  - dcow 1y ago
    Firefox was also extraordinary for the price. point being that Google has never been the only option, just the most popular because why not your gmail is already plugged in.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      Firefox is 90% funded by Google ads.
      - timschmidt 1y ago
        No, Mozilla is 90% funded by Google ads. Mozilla does a ridiculous number of non-browser things. Konqueror and Navigator existed long before Google ad funding.
        scarface_74 1y ago
        So only 10% of Mozilla’s revenue goes toward Firefox
      - asadotzler 1y ago
        Firefox existed before Mozilla's contracts with Google. Firefox was actually funded by AOL (to the tune of a couple million in sending off money when they shuttered Netscape) and Mitch Kapor (hundreds of thousands because he's a great guy who saw the potential) with some other donations from IBM, Oracle, and a few more big tech players.
        scarface_74 1y ago
        And you think that would happen today? A couple of million wouldn’t go far.
    - HDThoreaun 1y ago
      firefox does not exist without google paying for it
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    mapquest was free maps going back to the early days of the internet dropbox was free synced storage several years before google drive youtoube was an independent free ad supported video site before google bought it there are a million and one free website hosting services
- RajBhai 1y ago
  I remember hotmail before gmail. Attachments had a 2 MB limit. I couldn't even share HQ photos using hotmail. And the whole inbox had a 25 MB capacity. I do believe there were paid alternatives with more storage. Gmail came in with 1 GB storage and grouping emails as conversations. To me, both of these aspects were revolutionary, and other email providers shortly followed suit.
  - HappMacDonald 1y ago
    * "other email providers shortly followed suit" means that it was never out of their reach to begin with, they just needed more competition to convince them to try: which didn't have to be Google and didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported. * 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later suggests that something vital has stalled. Every other storage metric (price of RAM per MB, price of hard drives per MB, price of cloud storage per MB) has improved 100 fold over the same time period[1,2]. 1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-computer-memory-and-storage https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput... 2: https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm
    - kdmtctl 1y ago
      It could also mean that you can't invest indefinite amount of storage to ever growing user base, if storage metrics would not improve indefinitely. There is a break down and 15GB cap is nothing comparing with Google Photos cut, which is a strong sign that storage is the problem even for behemoths.
    - deanishe 1y ago
      > didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported Which freemail service isn't ad- or surveillance-supported? > suggests that something vital has stalled Why does it have to be a technology-driven limit? I dare say Google thinks that anyone with more than 15GB of email is a serious enough user to pay for it.
    - grues-dinner 1y ago
      > 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later The original marketing was the the storage would grow forever, and you could believe it. Google was riding the an incredible high from smashing out what felt like constant Amazing New Things throughout the noughties. In fact, when they originally made the claim, back when Don't Be Evil was still the motto and they hadn't bought DoubleClick, I'm sure they believed it. By the time the final upgrade (or rather joining, of 5GB photos/Drive to 10GB mail) to 15GB came round in 2013, there was definitely a hint of the horns in the hairline.
lolinder 1y ago
The consumer did pay the price. Google built on empire on making consumers believe they were getting things for free while selling other businesses a direct line to its customers' wallets. It's been a very effective sleight of hand operation, to the point where even relatively savvy people on HN seem to forget that advertising pays the bills by getting its targets to spend money they would not have otherwise spent. A world without Google would not be a world with less disposable income for regular people, but it might be a world with less disposable junk. Even if you discount the effectiveness of ads (which seems foolish given how many people have so much staked on them working), the eye-watering prices Google charges for them get directly passed to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Monopolies are rarely if ever good for consumers, but some monopolies are better than others at offloading the responsibility for their harm onto other businesses.
- animal_spirits 1y ago
  > A world without Google would not be a world with less disposable income for regular people, but it might be a world with less disposable junk. If the argument is "more ads = more junk" then the argument is essentially "my values are more important than other peoples values". I'm also anti-consumerism, but if someone sees an ad and finds a product intriguing enough to purchase, they believe that thing might have value in their life. We might not agree, but we should not have the ability to control what other people find value in. I think this is equivalent to an argument of coercing people to conform to our values instead of convincing them to have our values.
  - lolinder 1y ago
    I'm not sure where you got that I'm trying to impose anything on anyone—sounds like you latched onto a side note and decided to reply to what you thought the side note was implying instead of the substance of my comment? The argument has nothing to do with values or imposing them on others, it's simply this: These things are not and never were free. Google wants you to think they're free, but either the ads are effective at driving revenue and consumers are paying for Google's products in the form of increased consumption or Google is a parasite that lies to businesses about the efficacy of their ads and consumers are paying for Google's products in the form of the parasitic Google tax. Most likely it's a bit of both. Either way, Google offering these products for "free" did not have a positive effect on consumer wallets and paid solutions emerging to replace Google if it actually does dissolve will not have a negative effect.
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyone would still be paying for email. People weren't paying for email before gmail. It was predated by hotmail, Yahoo mail, and innumerable free online email offerings by small players. Being free wasn't even a selling point for gmail; the selling point was that they gave you a lot of storage. Speaking of things that happened before Google, Yahoo Maps and Firefox are older than Google Maps and Chrome. And... Google Flights is a Google acquisition, not a product that they developed. And then... > Can you imagine how the world will be affected when these go away? > Google Fi > Google Fiber > Google Pay Yes, no one will notice. > Google Groups It already has gone away. Also, Usenet is something else older than Google. > Google OAuth Eliminating "sign in with [popular site]" would be a hugely positive change.
- diffuse_l 1y ago
  Nitpick - Maps and Chrome were also acquisition. Also Android, for that matter
  - tsunamifury 1y ago
    Highly “regarded” take and you know it. Android was made in house by an acquired team. Same with the rest. Jesus this intentionally stupids
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    I didn't know that about Maps and Chrome. I did know Android was an acquisition, and that YouTube was, but in both cases I think Google's put in enough work not to dismiss them as Google projects.
- riffraff 1y ago
  >> Google Groups > It already has gone away. Also, Usenet is something else older than Google. and google literally acquired and then killed deja news. If anything this is yet another argument for the antitrust.
causality0 1y ago
Buddy, Google didn't create YouTube. They bought it and ruined it.
colechristensen 1y ago
almost no one ever paid for email, there were many free providers and people got accounts from their isp google bought youtube 19 years ago because their own attempt was doing poorly and youtube was booming right after its founding, they didn't win in the space because they were good at it, they bought success in a way that probably shouldn't have been allowed you're acting like google invented ad supported online services the problem is now that google doesn't have to be the best any more, they can be third best at nearly everything but still own the market share because they can afford to give things away for free which ruins competition
BrenBarn 1y ago
> If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. And that would be fine. To me this is like saying "if we had jailed those meth makers and dealers 20 years ago, all these meth labs today would never have existed". If these services cannot exist without a business model built around transparent, bounded transactions (e.g., no hidden data harvesting), then they should not exist. The problem is precisely that Google and others of its ilk have essentially gotten millions of people addicted to "free" services whose true costs are hidden. > The reason Google is the size it is today is because it provided better services at better prices than all the competitors. No, they've just been better at hiding the costs, exploiting legal loopholes, and exploiting their privileged position to raise barriers to entry for other participants.
rolisz 1y ago
Gmail, YouTube and others are not free: you don't pay with money, but with your data and your attention. So yeah, I think the world would be a better place if they had not been developed by Google.
linkregister 1y ago
Nearly all the services mentioned here were acquisitions or had strong competitors at the time of their launches. It is undeniable that Google has made these into quality products and led to their dominant position in their fields. However, Google's existence was necessary for none of these classes of products.
Brian_K_White 1y ago
The services are not free. Argument invalid.
bradley13 1y ago
Those service are certainly not free. Google doesn't offer them just to be nice: they make money from them. The costs to the consumer are hidden and indirect, but they are costs nonetheless.
ArinaS 1y ago
> "If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened." People didn't need them 20 years ago, so why do they need them now? > "They are all FREE too, mind you." No proprietary software is free. You either pay with your money (you do this with games, for example), or you pay with your data (and this is what you do with Google). Sometimes with both (you do this with Microsoft).
bondarchuk 1y ago
You can't state with such certainty that all these things wouldn't have happened without google. For all we know there would be 20 free or cheap alternatives to each service if google hadn't outcompeted them all with subsidies from ad revenue.
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
YouTube is profitable though. If their Google ties were severed they could still be ad supported, but they'd be able to pen deals with different ad networks and platforms.

handoflixue 1y ago

> Everyone would still be paying for email. Free email existed before Google - Hotmail and Yahoo come to mind immediately, but there were plenty of others. You also got a free email address from your ISP - even AOL users had email.

animal_spirits 1y ago
Fair point. Maybe I'm too young and have bought into the narrative that Google was the first widely available and free email. Still I think though, the plethora of their other services widely available for free (maps, drive, sites, youtube) were extraordinary for the price, at least for me.
- fergbrain 1y ago
  > “their other services widely available for free” None of their services are free. You just pay for them in other ways, even if you don’t realize it.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
    I think this is sort of missing the point: I’m happy to trade a bit of attention here and there for services because I’m just going to go without a lot of things if I have to pay real money for them. If we go to a model where every site charges for usage, I will start using fewer services regularly and will use each service for more things which seems a bit counterproductive in terms of monopolies.
    - tinodb 1y ago
      If you “are going to go without then”, there’s apparently no value in it. So should also not matter if it goes away.
    - WesBrownSQL 1y ago
      That's what you don't get. You aren't just watching ads. You are giving them data about you, a lot of data. That data is used to heavily manipulate you. This isn't like the old days of broadcast TV where ads air and you aren't directly tracked. If you ever find a product that is free, it isn't. You are the product that is being sold.
      - fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
        I do get that, and I’m fine with it.
        hilbert42 1y ago
        Trouble is, many of us aren't.
        hgomersall 1y ago
        The data is not just used to manipulate you, but everyone like you. Also you are giving away data from everyone that contacts you. You are non consensually making that decision for everyone in your inbox (and, I suspect, many others too).
        agolsme 1y ago
        if you think a bit harder, you shouldn't be. the data on you isn't just used to manipulate your choices on the market, it also ends up being used to manipulate your choices as a citizen -- politically, socially. You might think you're above such psychological tactics (and perhaps you are, but many many people are not, and whether you believe the democrats accusations of electoral fraud in 2016 or the many accusations on both sides since, there is absolutely no doubt that the corporatization of the internet has played a giant part in the most repugnant aspects of american and world politics since 2016)
- dcow 1y ago
  Firefox was also extraordinary for the price. point being that Google has never been the only option, just the most popular because why not your gmail is already plugged in.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    Firefox is 90% funded by Google ads.
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      No, Mozilla is 90% funded by Google ads. Mozilla does a ridiculous number of non-browser things. Konqueror and Navigator existed long before Google ad funding.
      - scarface_74 1y ago
        So only 10% of Mozilla’s revenue goes toward Firefox
    - asadotzler 1y ago
      Firefox existed before Mozilla's contracts with Google. Firefox was actually funded by AOL (to the tune of a couple million in sending off money when they shuttered Netscape) and Mitch Kapor (hundreds of thousands because he's a great guy who saw the potential) with some other donations from IBM, Oracle, and a few more big tech players.
      - scarface_74 1y ago
        And you think that would happen today? A couple of million wouldn’t go far.
  - HDThoreaun 1y ago
    firefox does not exist without google paying for it
- colechristensen 1y ago
  mapquest was free maps going back to the early days of the internet dropbox was free synced storage several years before google drive youtoube was an independent free ad supported video site before google bought it there are a million and one free website hosting services
RajBhai 1y ago
I remember hotmail before gmail. Attachments had a 2 MB limit. I couldn't even share HQ photos using hotmail. And the whole inbox had a 25 MB capacity. I do believe there were paid alternatives with more storage. Gmail came in with 1 GB storage and grouping emails as conversations. To me, both of these aspects were revolutionary, and other email providers shortly followed suit.
- HappMacDonald 1y ago
  * "other email providers shortly followed suit" means that it was never out of their reach to begin with, they just needed more competition to convince them to try: which didn't have to be Google and didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported. * 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later suggests that something vital has stalled. Every other storage metric (price of RAM per MB, price of hard drives per MB, price of cloud storage per MB) has improved 100 fold over the same time period[1,2]. 1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-computer-memory-and-storage https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput... 2: https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm
  - kdmtctl 1y ago
    It could also mean that you can't invest indefinite amount of storage to ever growing user base, if storage metrics would not improve indefinitely. There is a break down and 15GB cap is nothing comparing with Google Photos cut, which is a strong sign that storage is the problem even for behemoths.
  - deanishe 1y ago
    > didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported Which freemail service isn't ad- or surveillance-supported? > suggests that something vital has stalled Why does it have to be a technology-driven limit? I dare say Google thinks that anyone with more than 15GB of email is a serious enough user to pay for it.
  - grues-dinner 1y ago
    > 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later The original marketing was the the storage would grow forever, and you could believe it. Google was riding the an incredible high from smashing out what felt like constant Amazing New Things throughout the noughties. In fact, when they originally made the claim, back when Don't Be Evil was still the motto and they hadn't bought DoubleClick, I'm sure they believed it. By the time the final upgrade (or rather joining, of 5GB photos/Drive to 10GB mail) to 15GB came round in 2013, there was definitely a hint of the horns in the hairline.

lolinder 1y ago

The consumer did pay the price. Google built on empire on making consumers believe they were getting things for free while selling other businesses a direct line to its customers' wallets. It's been a very effective sleight of hand operation, to the point where even relatively savvy people on HN seem to forget that advertising pays the bills by getting its targets to spend money they would not have otherwise spent. A world without Google would not be a world with less disposable income for regular people, but it might be a world with less disposable junk. Even if you discount the effectiveness of ads (which seems foolish given how many people have so much staked on them working), the eye-watering prices Google charges for them get directly passed to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Monopolies are rarely if ever good for consumers, but some monopolies are better than others at offloading the responsibility for their harm onto other businesses.

animal_spirits 1y ago
> A world without Google would not be a world with less disposable income for regular people, but it might be a world with less disposable junk. If the argument is "more ads = more junk" then the argument is essentially "my values are more important than other peoples values". I'm also anti-consumerism, but if someone sees an ad and finds a product intriguing enough to purchase, they believe that thing might have value in their life. We might not agree, but we should not have the ability to control what other people find value in. I think this is equivalent to an argument of coercing people to conform to our values instead of convincing them to have our values.
- lolinder 1y ago
  I'm not sure where you got that I'm trying to impose anything on anyone—sounds like you latched onto a side note and decided to reply to what you thought the side note was implying instead of the substance of my comment? The argument has nothing to do with values or imposing them on others, it's simply this: These things are not and never were free. Google wants you to think they're free, but either the ads are effective at driving revenue and consumers are paying for Google's products in the form of increased consumption or Google is a parasite that lies to businesses about the efficacy of their ads and consumers are paying for Google's products in the form of the parasitic Google tax. Most likely it's a bit of both. Either way, Google offering these products for "free" did not have a positive effect on consumer wallets and paid solutions emerging to replace Google if it actually does dissolve will not have a negative effect.

thaumasiotes 1y ago

> I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyone would still be paying for email. People weren't paying for email before gmail. It was predated by hotmail, Yahoo mail, and innumerable free online email offerings by small players. Being free wasn't even a selling point for gmail; the selling point was that they gave you a lot of storage. Speaking of things that happened before Google, Yahoo Maps and Firefox are older than Google Maps and Chrome. And... Google Flights is a Google acquisition, not a product that they developed. And then... > Can you imagine how the world will be affected when these go away? > Google Fi > Google Fiber > Google Pay Yes, no one will notice. > Google Groups It already has gone away. Also, Usenet is something else older than Google. > Google OAuth Eliminating "sign in with [popular site]" would be a hugely positive change.

diffuse_l 1y ago
Nitpick - Maps and Chrome were also acquisition. Also Android, for that matter
- tsunamifury 1y ago
  Highly “regarded” take and you know it. Android was made in house by an acquired team. Same with the rest. Jesus this intentionally stupids
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  I didn't know that about Maps and Chrome. I did know Android was an acquisition, and that YouTube was, but in both cases I think Google's put in enough work not to dismiss them as Google projects.
riffraff 1y ago
>> Google Groups > It already has gone away. Also, Usenet is something else older than Google. and google literally acquired and then killed deja news. If anything this is yet another argument for the antitrust.

causality0 1y ago

Buddy, Google didn't create YouTube. They bought it and ruined it.

colechristensen 1y ago

almost no one ever paid for email, there were many free providers and people got accounts from their isp google bought youtube 19 years ago because their own attempt was doing poorly and youtube was booming right after its founding, they didn't win in the space because they were good at it, they bought success in a way that probably shouldn't have been allowed you're acting like google invented ad supported online services the problem is now that google doesn't have to be the best any more, they can be third best at nearly everything but still own the market share because they can afford to give things away for free which ruins competition

BrenBarn 1y ago

> If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. And that would be fine. To me this is like saying "if we had jailed those meth makers and dealers 20 years ago, all these meth labs today would never have existed". If these services cannot exist without a business model built around transparent, bounded transactions (e.g., no hidden data harvesting), then they should not exist. The problem is precisely that Google and others of its ilk have essentially gotten millions of people addicted to "free" services whose true costs are hidden. > The reason Google is the size it is today is because it provided better services at better prices than all the competitors. No, they've just been better at hiding the costs, exploiting legal loopholes, and exploiting their privileged position to raise barriers to entry for other participants.

rolisz 1y ago

Gmail, YouTube and others are not free: you don't pay with money, but with your data and your attention. So yeah, I think the world would be a better place if they had not been developed by Google.

linkregister 1y ago

Nearly all the services mentioned here were acquisitions or had strong competitors at the time of their launches. It is undeniable that Google has made these into quality products and led to their dominant position in their fields. However, Google's existence was necessary for none of these classes of products.

Brian_K_White 1y ago

The services are not free. Argument invalid.

bradley13 1y ago

Those service are certainly not free. Google doesn't offer them just to be nice: they make money from them. The costs to the consumer are hidden and indirect, but they are costs nonetheless.

ArinaS 1y ago

> "If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened." People didn't need them 20 years ago, so why do they need them now? > "They are all FREE too, mind you." No proprietary software is free. You either pay with your money (you do this with games, for example), or you pay with your data (and this is what you do with Google). Sometimes with both (you do this with Microsoft).

bondarchuk 1y ago

You can't state with such certainty that all these things wouldn't have happened without google. For all we know there would be 20 free or cheap alternatives to each service if google hadn't outcompeted them all with subsidies from ad revenue.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

YouTube is profitable though. If their Google ties were severed they could still be ad supported, but they'd be able to pen deals with different ad networks and platforms.