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Comment by haolez | Hacker News Reader

I'd prefer to let the market fix this when something better appears and gets traction. Giving more power to the government is the go-to solution in third world countries. The US is supposed to be better and much more mature as a nation.

Disclaimer: I live in a third world country.

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Absolutely. It bothers me that most people think the solution to fixing bad practices in companies is to have the government regulate it. It just gives the government more power and strangles the market. It prevents innovation IMO. We as the consumer have the power to fix it, and given time I believe we will.

I find it pretty disturbing (and hilarious) how much the hive mind sentiment has shifted on HN. I remember back in 2013 when Snowden blew the whistle on government surveillance the overwhelming majority of HN users expressed the opinion that giving the government too much power would inevitably lead to tyranny. Likewise with Bitcoin, the consensus here seems to be that decentralized money would be a good thing because it would remove the government’s ability to devalue its own currency.

Now the pendulum has flung in the other direction and people are clamoring to not just break up FAANG, but to nationalize them and put all of their data under government control! It’s absolutely bizarre.

That is actually how anti-trust regulation is supposed to work. Competitive markets for goods and services tend to produce better results, or at least, that is the line we hear in Econ 101. But capitalist growth tends to concentration of wealth and power—success grows toward monopoly. So government must wield the hammer of anti-trust to free markets.

Because giving the government more power couldn’t possibly go wrong. What do you think are the chances that the Trump administration would go after Fox or a Democratic administration would go after a company full of “the liberal elite”?

More power? It’s a power they’ve had for 100 years.

Sometimes it's government policies themselves that unbalance the market and allow the proliferation of monopolies. I'm not sure it's the case with Google, though. Would appreciate a comment from someone more informed.

I would be interested in more information about this too. Maybe we can start with intellectual property, for example maybe Google patents that are enforced by governments laws and justice are a huge barrier of entry for potential competitors

The answer is no. There aren't any significant policies (related to internet search, crawling or intellectual property) which create a barrier for little guys but which Google has the resources to handle (which is usually how regulation stifles disruption, sometimes by design).

Don't underestimate the EU though, given some of the ignorant tech regulation they've already passed, it could happen at some point.

As Bing has demonstrated, Google's dominance in search is a result of superior technology and a huge lead. Even a company with the resources of MS hasn't been able to do anything but follow behind and create almost good enough copies at each step.

Although to be fair that's what MS has always done so maybe a more nimble company might have a shot some day.

In the near future AI and machine learning coupled with computing advances could be a way into search for competitors if G doesn't get there first.

There's nothing wrong with an almost monopoly if no ones is forcing people to use the company services. No one is forcing users to use Google

Sure, no one is ‘forcing’; there’s just very limited choice.

There are more alternatives for social change than "authoritarian government" and "oligopolic corporations".

Also:

1. Web browsing is not a "market".

2. (Physical) markets are not intended to "fix things".

3. Google's main strength at this point is its size and amount of computer power. And it is almost impossible (and actually very wasteful environmentally) to build something parallel to that which does mostly the same thing.

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