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Comment by rmsaksida | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I don't see how breaking up them up would fix this. Let's say there's a dedicated company called "Google Search". Why wouldn't Google Search, the search engine company, spam search results with ads? Breaking up a company is one thing, dictating how a company should operate is another. I think what DHH has in mind is a search company that operates more like an utility, but that's not necessarily what we would get if Google were broken up.

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I don't object that much to a search engine spamming results with ads if they really wish to. What I do object to is them using search to gain market knowledge to discover high margin opportunities and build them into the search engine, promoting them ahead of the 3rd parties.

.. but they haven't. Gmail and docs any fed from search, Android isn't related, and their other stuff hasn't really taken off.

Edited for qualification.

But they have. They were fined $2.7bn for abusing their position to drive people to their own shopping service.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/27/534524024...

GP is talking about the Google onebox features, like maps, local reviews, weather, sports updates, movie tickets, etc. which show up on the SRP before competitors like MapQuest/ESPN/AccuWeather/Fandango

Breaking them up would see them selling this data to themselves.

> Why wouldn't Google Search, the search engine company, spam search results with ads?

Nothing is stopping them. But they wouldn't have the monopoly on ads to cover them if their results are of bad quality.

Almost no one of note thinks Google search result are bad quality in a market sense. That's why almost everyone chooses to use Google search. People who think Google search is bad are upset that other people like Google search results.

No, in certain use cases the search engine can fall behind. It's not going to be the best at everything. And when thinking about certain other issues (privacy, not showing the full URL, etc) it is perfectly valid to not use Google.

> But they wouldn't have the monopoly on ads

I'm not seeing how anything would change. Google search and whatever other google branches will continue working together so it'll essentially be the same thing but with a different legal structure to appease everyone.

Do a google search for "computer". The entire first page is ads save for the one Wikipedia link.

I have a college..

Honestly, I don't think the Google results are currently of bad quality. A search for "computer" is mostly meaningless, and they could reasonably fill it with anything. It is also not as absurdelly far ahead of anybody else as it used to be.

I mostly avoid it, but that's because I mostly avoid any Google service. All of them are bundled and I don't want some AI misstep to lock me out of the few of their services I care about. At this point some forced unbundling would bring a huge trust benefit to Google.

But anyway, it is very clear that the bundling of Google's monopolies on ads and search are a huge barrier to innovation and competition on both of those.

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