Google is losing allies across the political spectrum | Hacker News Reader

Google is losing allies across the political spectrum

arstechnica.com

91 pointsDeinos36 comments

They are just getting too big and have too much information. I wonder if a tax system could be created that discouraged companies to grow beyond a certain size and instead favored smaller ones. The potential for abuse by giant companies like Facebook and Google is just too much.

How about capping CEO pay as a multiplier like 160 * average employee salary..anything above that is 100% taxed--- THEN encourage them to move more employees up the change to CEO's etc by splitting off sections of companies into at least smaller subsidiaries... or at any rate this would combat income inequality some... Not sure how much it'll affect giant corps and what not though... I'm not a corporate finance / business hierarchy expert by any means...

I am pretty sure a trend towards smaller companies would reduce income inequality.

The change you want is political campaign finance reform. Everything else is secondary.

Without financing reform, the accumulation of wealth leads to political influence that furthers the accumulation of money and political power... creating laws that constrain the market to favor the big players over free innovation and competition.

Google/FB are not alone... broadcasting, fossil fuel, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, cell network, retail chains, financial corporations, individual citizens are by far the least significant voice in our elections.

Just to add to this, by 2008, having Google's clout meant significant access to the president, which is really impressive for a company that was less than a decade old.

https://www.googletransparencyproject.org/articles/eric-schm...

Finance reform is a step in the right direction, but it is no magic bullet. The wealthy will just find other, less direct, ways of buying influence.

I would argue that Google and Facebook are more dangerous than other industries. With the information they have I think you could run a very efficient dictatorship.

Campaign finance changes can't do what you think they can. Political influence just flows naturally from immense wealth.

Canada has a complete ban on corporate donations. So whenever Bombardier wants something they just add on "or else we'll have to cut thousands of jobs" and they get it.

You can even argue it's a better deal for large corporations. They get to keep their influence but never get shaken down for donations.

I've wondered such things myself, but it sorta depends on the industry as to where the limit should or could be.

It's one thing to have multiple search or email providers, but how many companies can afford the investment for a new silicon fabrication plant? Or to construct a new airliner that meets our reliability and safety needs? Some industries seem to require immense sizes for the entities to be viable at all.

And when it comes to Facebook, I mean, we can't split this up like we did with Standard Oil. People want to be connected. Not unless we mandated some kind of social networking standard that could federate...

In what way is Facebook more complicated to split up than Ma Bell was?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the impression I get from Standard Oil and Bell is that each big company essentially just had to duplicate its administrative tier and give each one its own branding, and then things (mostly) continued on as normal at the subsequently carved-up logistical and physical levels.

It seems to me that if we were to change Facebook from its own platform to an XMPP- or email-style federated network, then such a network would have to be constructed in the first place.

Not saying it can't (or shouldn't) be done, but I do believe it is a more complex example than Standard Oil or Bell. We've also got international borders and regulations in the mix.

API?

> And when it comes to Facebook, I mean, we can't split this up like we did with Standard Oil. People want to be connected.

Hence, email? It can be done.

Why reach for a government solution immediately?

> grow beyond a certain size

> potential for abuse

Company with good lawyers sets up a subsidiary and funnels profits. Company "size" remains the same, yet company continues to grow.

Those funnelled profits should be taxed at a rate to discourage that sort of arrangement then.

"Why reach for a government solution immediately?"

Because government's role number one is to create a framework that all members of a society live in. Some time ago there was a problem with people stealing from each other. So people came up with a government solution.

If companies from a certain size on are viewed as negative for a society it's a society's right to change that. Obviously it has to be done in a thoughtful way but laws are needed. Otherwise let's go full anarchy. That would probably solve the big company problem too.

> Why reach for a government solution immediately?

I'm not a fan of running to big govs, but I fail to see any other usable solution. Do you have any to offer?

I keep hearing this sort of stuff more and more lately. I guess it is time to refile "Atlas Shrugged" as nonfiction.

People who can't afford to lose their jobs generally aren't able to start businesses and produce revolutionary innovation. Want more innovation? Kill monopolies, increase income equality.

http://the1a.org/audio/#/shows/2017-08-30/zillionaire-to-oth...

Turns out the most libertarian is the left libertarian :p.

You proved my point (Sadly)

Also I do not want more (or less) innovation. I want freedom for people to engage in business as they see fit.

Until you own Google, your opinion on breaking it up is meaningless. Want to break something up? Build your own company and then break it up. (Or enjoy others telling you that what you built with your own effort needs to be taken away from you and broken into pieces).

Many founders are pushed out of their companies pretty early on if they're successful. The shareholders are the owners and their focus is on improving ROI, not coddling your baby. Being too attached as a founder will stunt the business's revenue growth. That's fine if you are a lifestyle business or haven't raised significant capital, but those aren't the kinds of businesses you're talking about.

I've been building a business for the last two years and I know how hard it is. I reject your assertion that I cannot have an opinion on breaking up major corporations. You're missing the part where American businesses are built under the protection of the US government, leveraging public infrastructure to aid their growth. They have no right to existence beyond that which is given to them by law.

Monopolies hold back our economy. We're losing ground internationally because mature businesses do not contribute as much to society as startups, and we have far too many mature businesses running things. Aging firms become hard and crusty, change slows, organizations begin failing, and eventually they die from atrophy. That's not an opinion, it's fact. Geoffrey West's book "Scale" explains why.

With that in mind, there are many reasons founders should be fine with limitations. 1) A business's legacy will carry further if it is broken into smaller, more agile units split across multiple industries, 2) the business will contribute more to the society which houses it, 3) more people will be employed due to overhead required for running a business, 4) there can be reasonable competition over the goods or services provided, creating higher quality products and greater overall GDP, leading to healthier economies where 5) it is easier for an existing business to compete in new markets, and 6) it is easier for anyone to start a business, increasing overall personal freedom.

As a founder I want all of those things. It creates a stronger workforce, stronger markets, weaker competition, and improves my standing relative to the rest of the world. The odds of me becoming a megacorp are very low, but the odds of me failing in a market controlled by megacorps is high. I'll take the higher odds of success if it means not growing beyond a certain point that very few of us will ever reach anyway.

If you want people to have freedom, you should want to cap business growth. By allowing or promoting monopolies you're giving maybe ten or twenty thousand people all the freedom in the world, while letting the rest languish in their corporation-defined cages. For me it's heartbreaking to see good people so tightly constrained that they can't even choose what they wear each day, what time they wake up, what they can say and do for 8-12 hours a day. If you cap growth while promoting competition and small businesses then you're giving everyone else an opportunity to decide how to live their own lives.

Also, allowing one to "engage in business as they see fit" is dangerous. What if they want to dump poisonous sludge in your water source to cut costs? Would you feel the same way?

I think the high profile firing of someone who dared to challenge the company's hard-left-or-die group think was a PR nightmare for them. They've been too big and had too much information for years, but they weren't as obvious about their political bias and agenda.

"They are just getting too big and have too much information."

Don't you find it funny how an article about Google "losing allies across the political spectrum [in America]" would not even even mention the fact that Google is one of the main spies on the online behavior of Americans?

I guess everybody must be ok with that, because it doesn't seem to be important to the criticism that Google is getting.

The message from the critics as portrayed in this article seems to be: "Spy all you want, as long as you don't try to control what we say or compete unfairly."

Is that a fair way to characterize the position of Google's main critics?

"Spy all you want, as long as you don't try to control what we say or compete unfairly."

I would take away the phrase "compete unfairly". Nobody cares about fair competition. They preferably want Google to help them or at least get out of the way.

I definitely see criticism about Google's spying. That might just be the social circles I run in though. Are there numbers available as to who has what criticisms of Google?

While it is true that all of us are naturally more cautious about being in a relationship with a party whose ability cause harm to us is strong and growing stronger, many of us are totally okay with that so long as we believe that party to be of impeccable character. Of late, Google has been failing the character test spectacularly. I still believe Larry and Sergey to be men of good character and can’t quite understand why they are allowing their company to be irreparably damaged.

Good. Corporations are not your friends, and you shouldn’t trust them. Their interests may temporarily align with your own but this is ephemeral.

> Disclosure: My brother works at Google.

His brother is the cofounder of Firebase? He must have some pretty interesting dinner conversations.

Google is scary but I suspect it's actually a decently moral incarnation relative to many alternatives, and is really a victim of the confluence of a few megatrends that are unavoidable, such as the simple technical ability to systematically monitor and profit from monitoring all behavior (to good and bad), and the ability to affect all discourse and information flow. These are megatrends that Google just happened to have a lead on. I have no faith that we will replace them with anything better if we decide to tear them down. I also don't find it a coincidence that Google is at-risk because of the recent spike in our authoritarian PC left which is pathologically obsessed with tearing down all productive institutions.

It's starting to seem like there's an orchestrated anti-Google media campaign under way. I wonder who's behind it?

Google is reminding me of when a very well regarded (also, internally, by its employees) grown-large company went public.

It wasn't all instantaneous, but over the course of a couple of years, it went from highly sought to bureaucratic pressure cooker.

At Google, the engineers aren't running the show any more, I'm guessing. And it shows.

I'm happy with Google having political influence than any other company.

But overall I'm disenchanted with tech companies doing the same things that earlier big corporations did to gain political influence.

Probably naive, but I was thinking they'll change the game wrt lobbying etc.

Is no one 'disrupting' political influence?

I think they are too big, have too much information, have too many near-monopoly positions they abuse, and far too much control over the internet.

Same thing applies to facebook, and to a lesser extent Amazon.

break them up.

None of them are a monopoly. There are alternative search engines, email providers, and phone OSs. There are alternative social media platforms and alternative online and physical marketplaces. There is no natural factor about them that tends toward a monopoly (like limited wireless spectrum or need for public right of way). US Government doesn't have the right to selectively punish people or their companies just because it's politically popular right now.

Beyond that, there is really nothing wrong with monopolies in general, only if they became monopolies via government corruption like, ma bell, wired ISPs, alcohol, and possibly big banks, big defense, and big pharma. Google built search from nothing and remains by far the best offering. Facebook spends exorbitant sums to aquihire its rivals and preserve its market share. Amazon has always reinvested and certainly has made shopping and web hosting less expensive for me.

While I agree they have too much of our personal information and influence with elected officials, the solution isnt more regulation which would crown a loser and make lobbying an even better investment. Should we also break up Bing, Twitter, and EBay?

As somebody who has received immense value from Google, I am sad to see the limit of human ingenuity. You start with good intentions but your genius becomes a burden.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com