Once you start making concrete proposals it becomes increasingly obvious just how hard it is to come up with something that won't make everything worse.
Watch as companies like Google rapidly stop any innovation spending and become high dividend stocks built only to pump out cash.
So what's the comparable unfair practice? You believe Google is paying Level3 under the table to make sure all its competitors pay more for network transit?
The breakup of Bell sent a message, but so did the reconsolidation of Bell.
That's a confused deduction. "long term investment is a bad bet" (or whatever you were trying to say by "doesn't work") is not a sensible deduction. Long term investment has already worked and continues to work across the world.
The takeaway would be assess a risk factor to the US companies under discussion of regulation, at worst.
Or the same way that standard oil's railroads were forced to provide the same prices to everybody.
Then, google the index could be forced to not provide preferential pricing to google the search engine. This would not stop innovation it would enable innovation as google the search engine wouldn't have an unfair advantage through vertical integration. A cottage industry of search engines that piggyback off the google index could sprout up.
This is just something I thought up right now, and sure, there might be problems with the approach. But to pretend like there is absolutely nothing that can be done betrays a willful lack of imagination.
Also I'm sorry to inform you that the way the index shards are produced, arranged in memory/on disk, and the manner in which they are queried and ranked are inextricably linked. You can't make a search-neutral index format that can be queried economically.
The same approach that works for Google can also work for a public body supported by public funds. It can also use much of the same systems and maybe even personnel that Google currently employs for this purpose. I'm essentially asking for the search division of Google to be appropriated by the government.
> Also I'm sorry to inform you that the way the index shards are produced, arranged in memory/on disk, and the manner in which they are queried and ranked are inextricably linked. You can't make a search-neutral index format that can be queried economically.
I'm not asking for a search neutral index - public Google just needs to be (largely) open, transparent and accountable about its ranking algorithm. That's why the stipulation that other entities be allowed to mirror the index - they can optimize the index for their own purposes and rankings on their own hardware.
> I'm especially fond of the idea that other parties will just wantonly copy it, like for research purposes or something.
Not for research purposes - other entities will be free to copy it for purposes like sovereignty (governments), less/more censorship or to build their own systems on top of it for profit, or any other purpose.
Regardless of that, the datacenter can be appropriated by the government too.
NSA Utah: 65 MW Google Pryor, Oklahoma: 340 MW
Every Google data center does...everything.
I can assure you that it's not mapping each query down to a single-sector disk read off an inverted index.
I think the query pipeline for NSA (relative to the scales of Google's query pipeline) looks like absense-of-query-pipeline. Hence NSA using less compute and thus (the reasoning goes) less power consumption.
> designed to store data estimated to be on the order of exabytes or larger
While google says:
> The Google Search index contains hundreds of billions of webpages and is well over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size
https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/crawling-indexi...
Seems like the government already has the expertise and equipment required to handle data at Google scale :)
One of your suggestions was
> That's why the stipulation that other entities be allowed to mirror the index - they can optimize the index for their own purposes and rankings on their own hardware.
And the point is that there's nobody who can do this outside of Google, Microsoft (who also does), Facebook, and Amazon.
Not to mention the problems of actually getting the data. You're at the scale of data where trucks of disks are faster data transfer than cables unless you have direct fiber backbone connections.
You're just comparing two storage numbers without taking anything else that running Google at a global scale requires.
And that the very idea that this could be made possible through law makes you chuckle?
The closest comparison to what this person wants is Common Crawl, which is minuscule compared to the big players, and is a 100TB gzipped download that gets updated monthly.
You can't make a neutral service that returns ranked results, because that's contradictory.
If the solution was purely to force Google to sell access to their index then yes it seems possible on the surface.
But as mentioned index and ranking are inextricably tied together.
Even if they weren't, no other organization is going to be able to produce search results comparable to Google using their index. You're underestimating what goes on under the hood.
So then the answer (often in these conversations) becomes to open up the ranking algos too.
The problems with that are numerous so I'll just point out some of the bigger ones:
- Arms race: Search is a constant arms race between providers and 3rd parties trying to game the system. The minute you make the algos public, gamers win the race. Search result quality returns to the way it was in the 90's and stays that way until someone else comes up with proprietary algos that work (but is that even legal at this point in our thought experiment?)
- Motivation: If search is open and you therefore can't directly profit from your efforts to improve it (because you automatically give away anything you create to competitors) where is your motivation to keep innovating?
- It's harder than you think: Truly, there's so much more going on in modern search indexing and ranking than you likely realize. The chances that some new organization (especially a gov organization) given access to Google's black box as it exists right now would be able to maintain search result quality for any significant length of time is essentially zero.
But let's imagine that it's as easy as many people think... Wouldn't the solution then be to build a public alternative rather than effectively killing what we have now?
I'm pretty sure they're quite extricably tied together. I'm almost certain google's engine weights the different ranking variables (e.g. page speed) differently depending upon context. Why not expose those variables to other search engines? Well, it would kill google's search engine dominance - if you're concerned with that...
Unbundling isn't technically infeasible and it would create more competition. This would help with the arms race alluded to. What if another search engine used google's index to build a more spam free index? not good for google but great for Joe public.
>Motivation: If search is open and you therefore can't directly profit from your efforts to improve it (because you automatically give away anything you create to competitors) where is your motivation to keep innovating?
Nothing saying that they can't make money from the users of their index just as Bing makes money from DDG. However, is there any reason their search engine shouldn't compete with other similar offerings? Maybe somebody out there does it better.
Well, other than "we've got an unfair advantage and wed like to keep it please"
>It's harder than you think
Actually it's probably a LOT easier. This idea is a direct attack on google's power and the easiest response they can make is "too difficult. not possible". Not "this would fuck us in the bottom line". Simply "we can't do it, who are YOU to tell us it's possible? "
fwiw if you look through history similar reactions were made to attempts to regulate pretty much all utilities. Then it happened. This kind of response is kind of an expected part of the process. Most recently it happened in the UK when utilities and banks were told to open up API access to their data. Same claim you made.
Part two is when they tell you "it's not fair!". It's coming.
> Actually it's probably a LOT easier
Can you support that claim?
Just the scale alone is mind boggling when it comes to search.
Then throw in natural language processing, contextual signals, hubs and authorities, content categorization (which grows ever closer to looking like actual understanding), machine learning, a host of other basic and ever evolving quality signals that exist both in and inter-dependently of one another, the more complex signals that arise from the above and on and on.
Search is hard. Even the most casual of Googling (or maybe Binging would be apt in this case) will provide you with endless info about how hard it is.
This trick you're echoing is, incidentally, used every single time a government comes looking at unbundling opporunities. I remember distinctly how Microsoft claimed it was "too hard" to decouple office from windows. The banks in the UK made the same claim. They were all equally ridiculous and all equally self serving. There is a lot of precedent here.
Google will pretend that it is "impossibly hard" to expose their internal APIs as well, just as every other company did. It would be surprising if they didn't.
Search is hard, yes. A lot harder than exposing APIs, isn't it?
So, I'm curious will you start using Qwant.com from now on?
First I never said I'm not. Either way it is pretty irrelevant to the discussion.
If, in fact, I am not using a government run one right now, maybe it is precisely because the government hasn't yet stolen Google's? If the government already had something as good as Google, clearly there would be no point in them stealing Google's, would there?
Instead, the internet is an open source set of protocols.
The answer lies in converting companies which abuse becoming the standard due to network effect, to an open source set of protocols.
Maybe give them a period of 10-20 years to profit. Then they have to expose a public set of standards and protocols which can be used by everyone else.
For instance microsoft windows after 15 years, would be forced to release a freeware version of code, which contained all functionality they had at that time.
Other companies and users could build on this code and thus microsoft are no longer the standard. Just a version of it.
> and thus microsoft are no longer the standard
15 years ago was 2005. Imagine MS would open source Windows XP SP2.
I don't think anyone would build an OS better than modern Win10 from that code. 15 years is a long time: that WinXP was primarily 32-bit (64 bit build technically existed, but no one used that), it wouldn't support modern hardware, and won't run modern software either. I see why some people would like to have that code (education, research, maybe some embedded applications or servers), but I'm pretty sure Microsoft would remain the standard.
To stop being standard, in addition to that law MS need to screw up Windows in a huge way. I wouldn't expect that to happen ever, they're large company managed by reasonable people.
Uh, yes they would? It's literally trivial - you just hit compile. As you note, a 64-bit build did exist, so it's not even limited to now-obsolete hardware, although unless you want to call some of the things at [0] automatically better than XP just because they run on amd64, even that wouldn't disqualify it from being better than windows 10.
That's not correct, it is limited. The primary reason being GPU drivers, Vista switched to hardware compositor, as a side effect they reworked kernel API of GPU drivers. I don't think Intel, NVidia or AMD ship drivers for WinXP x64, or Server 2003, for their current generations of products. To lesser extent, same applies to the rest of the hardware: I don't expect it's easy to boot XP from NVME SSD, or support modern flavours of wireless like 802.11n or BT4.
Software is even more diverse, vast majority of modern apps won't run on XP64. For the software that I currently work on, the largest missing pieces are Direct3D 11, Direct2D, DirectWrite, Media Foundation, and .NET framework. These components are huge, Microsoft spent many millions to make them.
Windows is not just code, it's an ecosystem.
It seems like if anyone wrote a single implementation of that it would work.
The driver is called “basic display adapter” or something like that. Modern Windows is barely usable without 3D GPU acceleration. Too many pixels to render and doing that on CPU is too slow, especially so on laptops. Vast majority of modern software, web browsers included, normally use a 3D GPU to render. And since Vista, windows desktop compositor, dwm.exe, uses a 3D GPU to compose windows into desktop.
Old Win32 apps working on XP will be OK, though. WinXP shell didn’t require nor use a 3D GPU, and very few apps of the era were using GPUs. Unless you have too many pixels in the display, or the app in question renders 3D graphics of any sort, the performance probably gonna be adequate.
That is a specific example (admittedly only one) of why Windows XP is better than Windows 10, so I'm not sure why you're citing that as if it supports your point.
Other hardware requirements are much lower too, XP will work on Pentium 233 MMX with 64MB RAM, Win10 requires at least 1GHz CPU and 1GB RAM. Some old software, and many old device drivers, won’t run on Win10 even if the OS is 32-bit.
> why Windows XP is better than Windows 10
The hardware evolves just as fast as the software. If you run XP on modern PC with a 4k display, I don’t think it will do great even if you’ll manage to install a 3D GPU driver (you probably need some GeForce 900-series GPU to try that, or maybe virtualized VMware GPU will do). If you run Win10 in 800x600 resolution, will probably work OK even with that basic unaccelerated driver, will render on CPU.
Not only is it plausible we saw it done with Microsoft, and the result was an explosion of entrepreneurship and innovation in the relevant markets, which were software and internet services.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/file/503541/downlo...
But the threat stopped them from dominating the browser market and enabled the first dot-com explosion.
We would be way better off today if there was a powerful countervailing force to all this FAANG consolidation. The current environment is deeply harmful to innovation.
The first dot-com explosion was well under way at that point. Microsoft's domination of the desktop didn't stop any e-commerce companies.
So, no. The threats of antitrust enforcement against MS were a key part of the timeline for the first dot-com explosion, as they made MS curtail their behavior and provided startups with a little breathing room to exist without being instantly crushed by Bill Gates.
I'm old, I was starting my career and working in and around tech startups at the time, it was a big part of the discussion then. It's hard to overstate how dominant and scary MS was at the time, they didn't have any real rivals.
Name an e-commerce company Microsoft tried to compete with.
https://www.jitbit.com/news/3304-browser-market-shares-1993-...
MS lost the mobile market - but outside of Apple, “winning the mobile market” was a Pyrrhic victory for Google [1]. Apple won by selling hardware not by licensing.
But they are the second largest cloud provider and are making far more than Google is making on mobile. Microsoft also don’t have to pay the competition a reported $8 billion a year because their competitor has the most valuable customers.
They also successfully pushed their way into the console market. MS is still the 3rd most valuable company in the US. Down from #1 in 2002.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generate...
Ex: Only 25% of the screen real estate can go to Google-owned ad products for allowing it to continue as a monopoly.
2. YouTube should possibly be broken out as a separate company and it shouldn't get favorable placement and treatment in search results
3. Businesses need to have more control over how their businesses appear when users search for them directly
Again that's vague. And once there are such guidelines who enforces them? Will it be law applicable to all companies? Will there be a special govt office enforcing this? What kind of punishments? Fines?
> 2. YouTube should possibly be broken out as a separate company and it shouldn't get favorable placement and treatment in search results
Who and how will determine if treatment is favorable? Auditing code and internal comms for signs for favoritism? Otherwise if you can go only by appearances then how do you keep this system fair to the companies subject to this scrutiny?
> 3. Businesses need to have more control over how their businesses appear when users search for them directly
Again how do you codify this into law?
There is very little precedent to regulating tech companies on such a granular level. The closest thing I can think of is various EU regulations that usually amount to shaking down US giants for money once in a while. It's hard to compare this to regulating something like electricity or water delivery which is much more stable technologically. Google has changed tremendously over the years and still is innovating rapidly.
And as to healthcare, well, I do think people should actually go through the same thought exercise. Tons of totally broken overregulated healthcare systems out there. "Lawmakers" usually effectively ends up being a combination of lobbyists, politicians and public pressure.
By proposal I don't mean an actual bill ready to be passed, just a high level overview that does talk about the implementation. Obviously doesn't need to be a sound legal document.
I think it's perfectly fine and important for people to speak out against perceived injustices committed by tech companies. But yes I do also think that calling for "regulation" while being very vague is also a bad idea.
We've seen this play out with GDPR. Tons of people were (and are) calling for more stringent data privacy regulations. So EU came up with this monstrosity nobody fully understands in its consequences (because you can't). Enforcement is totally random. Some websites ended up just banning EU users. Many now come with very annoying cookie popups. Those that try to "comply" can never be sure they fully do. Very few people are happy or have benefited from this thing in any way.
I think this is exactly what you get when you want something done but don't know what.
What about other products? Gmail? Maps? Android/App Store? Chrome? Google News? Shopping? Translate? Docs? Should these be separate companies?
Only once you define that can the plan be criticized.
This is so much easier to do as one only needs to list up to 20 names (and perhaps some minor obligations), yet we're still not seeing too many people spell this out. I think for exactly the same reason - it becomes obvious how unpractical it is.
Google search is approx. 60% of Google's revenue according to the latest 10-K. And may be an even bigger portion of the net income. If you keep that intact you won't kill Google's golden goose nor will you solve many unfairness issues as relating to search.
AdSense et al. is 13%. YouTube is 10%. These 3 are most of revenue-generating Google.
It is important what happens to their many other products. Most of which are not bringing in big money (in an obvious way) but are widely used.
Does everything not-search become one company consisting of Google leftovers? (this may be what you're proposing, but it's not clear)
The goal of any such action is to benefit the consumer in some way. When you actually do start defining how things would be broken up it becomes more obvious how consumers could suffer. And it becomes more obvious how you're not de-monopolizing anything.
> The discussion was about the case for why something needed to be done, not specifically what. Yet a lack-of-sufficiently-detailed-solution let's you shut it down
This may be what the original linked article talks about. I started this thread talking about how instead and it never discussed the why. It's merely a thought exercise aimed at illuminating what I consider a lack of workable solutions. Not telling anybody they cannot be interested in yet-undefined solutions.
In a world where the question of "Should we attempt to do a thing?" depends in part on whether or not there's a way to do it that brings more help than harm, I think it might be worth considering that these could be seen as reasonable questions.
Given that regulated utilities have occasionally produced massive messes like California's ongoing issues with PG&E and wildfires, do you think it's worth being cautious and considering possible consequences?
So I think the specifics are rather important.
It's the something that makes all the difference.
Search results would be available for navigation in a card UI (one screen per result) where 25% of the screens real estate being devoted to Google on a products would get them a lot more impressions.
wrt #3, no, I don't want businesses to control the information I get when I search for them, because I want neutral and true-ish information, not ad copy.