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I am also alarmed. Google has to split off its development of both Chrome and Android now, this crazy vertical integration is akin to a private company building

I am also alarmed. Google has to split off its development of both Chrome and Android now, this crazy vertical integration is akin to a private company building and owning both the roads AND the cars. Sure, you can build other cars, but we just need to verify that your tires are safe before you can drive on OUR roads. It's fine as long as you build your car on our complete frame, you can still choose whatever color you like! Also, the car has ads.

nurettin 1y ago
Ok but The Road is the internet, how much of that does google/alphabet actually own?
- ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
  All of YouTube. The vast majority of email. All sources of revenue for ad-funded sites, basically, except for those ads pushed by Meta in their respective walled gardens. They are also the gatekeepers deciding what parts of the internet the users actually see, and they continuously work towards preventing people from actually visiting other sites by siphoning off information and keeping users on Google (AMP, AI summaries). The whole Play Store ecosystem is a walled garden which pretends to be open by building on an ostensibly open source OS but adding strict integrity checks on top which gives Google the ultimate power to decide what is allowed to run on peoples phones. They don't have to own the servers and the pipes if they own all the clients, sources of revenue, distribution platforms and financial transaction systems.
  - nolok 1y ago
    The rest of your list is irrealistic but I had to react at least to this one : > The vast majority of email. Not even close, less than a third in reality I agree that google should be cut down, but if done then other tech giant should be too, otherwise we're just trading one master for another
    - CrossVR 1y ago
      Even less than a third is absolutely massive on the scale of a protocol like E-mail.
      - nolok 1y ago
        Oh I am not saying they're not a gigantic provider, I'm saying less than a third is very far from "the vast majority" and exageration and misinformation help no one's case, be they on purpose or due to lack of knowledge.
        JimDabell 1y ago
        I would shy away from calling them a majority myself, but it’s a fair point. Remember that email involves at least two parties. It doesn’t matter if I use a non-Google provider, I still have to follow all of Google’s email rules, or email will be useless to me because I wouldn’t be able to send mail to Gmail or Google Workspace users. In a practical sense, Google have very direct control over almost all email.
        rpdillon 1y ago
        They're probably the biggest provider in existence.
        nolok 1y ago
        I myself would bet on microsoft
        rpdillon 1y ago
        I was being a bit generous. I did the research. Google has 1.8 billion active users. They're the biggest.
    - forty 1y ago
      How much is "the vast majority"? I would say that one third of something global with potentially infinite number of providers, when the second player is probably a fraction of that, is already a pretty big majority.
  - nurettin 1y ago
    > They don't have to own the servers and the pipes if they own all the clients, sources of revenue, distribution platforms and financial transaction systems. They don't own all sources of revenue. Even on their major media platform they get siphoned off by companies like patreon. It is all a charade and not everyone is enamoured by that.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > how much of that does google/alphabet actually own? A ton. They got shares in a bunch of submarine cables, their properties (YouTube, Maps, Google Search) make up a wide share of Internet traffic, they are via Google Search the chief traffic source for most if not all websites, they own a large CDN as well as one of the three dominant hyperscalers...

nurettin 1y ago

Ok but The Road is the internet, how much of that does google/alphabet actually own?

ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
All of YouTube. The vast majority of email. All sources of revenue for ad-funded sites, basically, except for those ads pushed by Meta in their respective walled gardens. They are also the gatekeepers deciding what parts of the internet the users actually see, and they continuously work towards preventing people from actually visiting other sites by siphoning off information and keeping users on Google (AMP, AI summaries). The whole Play Store ecosystem is a walled garden which pretends to be open by building on an ostensibly open source OS but adding strict integrity checks on top which gives Google the ultimate power to decide what is allowed to run on peoples phones. They don't have to own the servers and the pipes if they own all the clients, sources of revenue, distribution platforms and financial transaction systems.
- nolok 1y ago
  The rest of your list is irrealistic but I had to react at least to this one : > The vast majority of email. Not even close, less than a third in reality I agree that google should be cut down, but if done then other tech giant should be too, otherwise we're just trading one master for another
  - CrossVR 1y ago
    Even less than a third is absolutely massive on the scale of a protocol like E-mail.
    - nolok 1y ago
      Oh I am not saying they're not a gigantic provider, I'm saying less than a third is very far from "the vast majority" and exageration and misinformation help no one's case, be they on purpose or due to lack of knowledge.
      - JimDabell 1y ago
        I would shy away from calling them a majority myself, but it’s a fair point. Remember that email involves at least two parties. It doesn’t matter if I use a non-Google provider, I still have to follow all of Google’s email rules, or email will be useless to me because I wouldn’t be able to send mail to Gmail or Google Workspace users. In a practical sense, Google have very direct control over almost all email.
      - rpdillon 1y ago
        They're probably the biggest provider in existence.
        nolok 1y ago
        I myself would bet on microsoft
        rpdillon 1y ago
        I was being a bit generous. I did the research. Google has 1.8 billion active users. They're the biggest.
  - forty 1y ago
    How much is "the vast majority"? I would say that one third of something global with potentially infinite number of providers, when the second player is probably a fraction of that, is already a pretty big majority.
- nurettin 1y ago
  > They don't have to own the servers and the pipes if they own all the clients, sources of revenue, distribution platforms and financial transaction systems. They don't own all sources of revenue. Even on their major media platform they get siphoned off by companies like patreon. It is all a charade and not everyone is enamoured by that.
mschuster91 1y ago
> how much of that does google/alphabet actually own? A ton. They got shares in a bunch of submarine cables, their properties (YouTube, Maps, Google Search) make up a wide share of Internet traffic, they are via Google Search the chief traffic source for most if not all websites, they own a large CDN as well as one of the three dominant hyperscalers...