United States vs. Google

> Their assets give them undue and unsupervised influence over a very big chunk of what's happening online. This gives them ability to control big part of collective human consciousness, across languages and borders.

These are questions we possibly should have asked in the 60s or 70s with the Automakers.

Heck, let's think about THAT for a moment. When we look back at history we see that the big 3 took a number of anticompetitive actions over the years while managing to usually avoid government action through careful planning. (GM at times would hold back products in those decades, knowing if they went over a magic number of market share it was bad news.)

But look at the RESULT. Look at 2008. Look at the future of self driving cars and the future of the trucking industry.

By letting large monopolies run unchecked, they embed their ways of dependence into society such that impacts can be felt for generations.

Maybe its not about the number but what the damage is.

Edit: hit reply early, sorry.

The big 3 managed to get taken down by the factors of the oil embargo and the growing Asian auto industry, but we still felt the effects I listed above.

And, to that end, its worth restating that GM specifically tried to 'avoid' fitting the government definition.

I remember browsers before Chrome and Firefox. They were terrible. I'd love to see why Google should be punished for making a good product. I'm open to a good explanation.

Same for Youtube. I cut my cable because we now get all our entertainment from Netflix and Youtube. We dont get locked into 2yr cable agreements, dont get magical regulatory recovery fees, $100 of charges, and stations that disappear (e.g., Disney on Fios). I'd hate to lose it just because the product is too good

REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

XERXES: The aqueduct?

REG: What?

XERXES: The aqueduct.

REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.

COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.

LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?

REG: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

MATTHIAS: And the roads.

REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--

COMMANDO: Irrigation.

XERXES: Medicine.

COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh...

COMMANDO #2: Education.

COMMANDOS: Ohh...

REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.

COMMANDO #1: And the wine.

COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah...

FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.

COMMANDO: Public baths.

LORETTA: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.

FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.

COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

XERXES: Brought peace.

REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!

If we're not careful we may simply lose democracy to corporations. Some argue that it might already be too late.

Furthermore, as other point out, how do you even objectively count these categorized "things" correctly?

Even once you do have a number of "things" specified in a law, and this is somehow "objective", remember that objective reality cannot be perceived outside of the lens of the subjective.

Therefore, your honor, your laws on blood alcohol level when driving are asinine and I rest my case.

If some other innovative company “started in a garage” or whatever does challenge one of those, Google has the power to kill it before it becomes a threat, cripple it while they copy the technology or poach the development team, acquire the company with a truckload of money, etc.

So in the end, Google will always come out on top, and consumers will always be stuck with them. The only remedy to that situation is government intervention.

https://x.company/projects/mineral/

Their advertising business was built on a number of acquisitions (DoubleClick, AdMob) - strategic acquisitions, surely, and they improved on them since - but it is not as if they bult the business from the ground up. The same goes for video streaming (YouTube - after attempting to create their own), and mobile OS (Android).

With Android in particular it can be argued that it would not be what it is today without them, but they also heavily leveraged their other services to promote and maintain control over Android.

They bought Android in 2005, Youtube in 2004? and all of their other, non-search successes.

Step 1, in 1997, was to build the world's best search engine.

Step 2, was that running the world's best search engine allowed them to create an ad network that most accurately knew what the largest number of viewers were looking for, best ad platform and massive revenue. All others follow from that.

Steps 3 and on were to start an email service (what are people talking about), create an image search tool (shows what pictures people are looking for), acquire/develop a mapping application (where are people and where are they going), acquire a video hosting platform (what are people watching), create a mobile OS (get more people on the Internet and especially on their parts of it), create a web browser (get more people on the internet and especially on their parts of it), etc. etc. etc. Those other properties only work because they're financed by and create value for Google's ad network.

We don't know if they make the best services. Perhaps there would be much better mobile OS or search engines made by others, if it were not for Google's dominant position discouraging new entrants or crushing them in their infancy.

No it's not. The best XXX run by a single company, is super-effective! Allowing it, we know from all of human history, is anti-consumer.

And, again with respect to video hosting there are plenty of very valid competitors technologically - with respect to search if you secretly rebranded google to bing I doubt anyone except the most techie would notice a difference - they win in search because everyone "googles it" - they used to win because alta vista, ask jeeves, lycos and yahoo were all trash, but now there is legitimate competition.

This is somewhat similar to TikTok's situation. There's currently no other company that can offer services that match the quality of the product TikTok is giving. The US government's solution? Force ByteDance to divest unless it wants to get banned. This is Big Tech protectionism, perfected.

In the same vein, the US is going to force Google to break itself into fragments. This can also be seen as a Big Tech protectionist measure, because Google has no incentive to improve its monopolistic byproducts. In fact, it routinely kills them. Spinoff companies of Google will compete with each other and undoubtedly yield much better (and pro-consumer) products, no matter which way you look at it.

How would the common folk avoid Analytics or Ads?

Google benefits from me even when I visit completely unrelated websites.

When Google is not the best I don't use it. I use Audible and Kindle not Google Play Books. I use a opensource pod catcher I like rather than what ever the google android podcast app is. I use Open/LibreOffice rather than Google Docs. I have Chrome installed, but can't remember the last time I opened it as I much prefer Firefox as my daily driver because its superior in the measures I care about extensions, customization, and privacy.

Google only has me a as a customer as long as they offer me better service, if they don't I go elsewhere easily.

The antitrust law already exist.

Just like it didn’t take a time traveler to know that Kodak, Microsoft, and Sears would grow to be unstoppable?

US wise, the threat isn't the money in politics or where it goes but that two parties have near exclusive say on what is allowed and what is not. It took someone with the fame and money of Trump to defeat both of them and that extreme of an example should have made it obvious to people the real issue; that for any other party to gain traction is impossible and every attempt to limit how people may assemble and spend money only needs to looked at when it is done through the two established parties. As in, they need reigned in, not political movements looking to get into the game

I think most tech aware people are wary of Google, at best.

I think most people people don't care. They use Google to search things every day and it seems to work for them. They might hear about privacy every once in a while but don't give it any thought. Most people think Android is synonymous with Samsung.

> it is exceptionally difficult to make the case that any of these companies are causing consumer harm, which is the de facto standard for antitrust in the United States.

My fundamental issue is that "consumers" are not the customers here, the customers are the ad purchasers, and those are the ones where it's very easy to show the harm.

Why is google allowing one cannabis play but not the other?

I'm the ad consumer being harmed. My prospects are possibly harmed because my product is hidden.

To the contrary, we have HUGE problems with them. I'm not sure there's any company more vilely detested in America than Comcast.

Alas, for some reason the Democratic party hasn't shown any real interest in regulating them or promoting competition, which is a failure of democracy. I don't personally know why -- I could guess something about campaign contributions and lobbying but if anyone actually knowledgeable could speak up I'd love to know.

The major disagreement, instead, seems to be from the people taking the position that a corporation can't monopolize a market by intentionally isolating it. They want to claim that Google Play doesn't have an effective monopoly for Android apps, even though it has something like 90+% of the Android app market, because the iOS app store exists, even though you can't actually use it to distribute apps to Android devices.

Whether that's the case under the law is something the courts will have to decide, but the harm to consumers is transparent. It creates an insurmountable barrier to creating a major app store competitor, because a challenger would have to establish a major phone platform in order to do it, and the resulting suppression of competition gives the incumbents market power and leads to higher prices. And also prevents the two incumbent app stores from having to even compete with each other.

There was nothing stopping another company from stringing wires across the country and building their own telephone network separate from the Bell System. But they don't just have to build all that infrastructure, they have to have the customers that are already under the Bell System. So they would have to pay gigantic amounts of money to people to switch, because if they didn't, there wouldn't be a value to switching for that consumer.

There are a lot of analogues to these two companies. And the argument against breaking up Facebook would be similar. It's wrong that they're being punished for building something that so many people have found useful. They spent billions building the network, and now they're shattered into multiple companies because of it?

It's hard to know what the right thing to do is, in terms of benefitting the public, maintaining the incentive for future new technology & infrastructure to be built, and being fair to Facebook & its employees, shareholders, and customers. There's a lot to balance out, and it doesn't seem like there will ever be a right answer. But, I find the similarity to the Bell System very striking, and I do think that it being broken up was on whole the right thing to do for the country and its citizens, which is what a government is ultimately tasked with doing.

Really. Go ahead and stifle a company, because in this particular case, they make Google’s search results worse.

Therefore as competition in this space is naturally limited I would rather see a third option than status quo or break-up; recognition as a natural monopoly and regulations to benefit consumers.

A specific example - Google pays Apple billions of dollars each year to make Google the default search engine. That wouldn't be allowed. What Apple does in response isn't outlined.

Not sure if it works on all Windows 10 editions though.

I believe America is desperately in need of voting reform. And I believe the only way to achieve that is by voting against the establishment. I won’t be voting left or right this election. I’ll either be voting third party or writing in a strong left/right P/VP ticket.

BS. Americans will happily send half their disposable income to Amazon in the name of convenience.

The problem is that there is no coordination of the people to actually change the status quo. Too many people are still content with it. From both sides movements like BLM, Antifa, Occupy, the Tea Party, the alt-right, etc represent at most a tenth of the nation. And by-and-large the other 80% not participating in political activism at all largely either A. don't believe in the ability to organize a movement for change or B. don't want it at all.

This is not to say it would not be in the self interest of a vast supermajority of Americans to seek such change - for example, universal public healthcare would be a tremendous boon to like 4 in 5 people at least. Better elections, with election day being a public holiday, universal mail in voting, and any of the myriad alternatives to first past the post voting would all improve the conditions of like 95% of the country. The problem is that most people were taught and conditioned to be non-participatory and largely will not become so no matter what anyone else does or says . Even if things did get bad. Even if there were tangible impacts to their day to day experience. Conditioning is an extremely potent force and a combination of American corporate news, American public education, the cultures of swathes of the country raise their kids on, the material conditions you live through and your life experiences within them, etc all contribute to the apathy and attitude.

Thankfully the dial is moving in a positive direction, I think. Anyone under the age of 40 to greater and greater degrees was unable to grow up in an isolated microcosm of Americana that conditioned them into non-participation. The numbers still aren't great, but they are getting better, and unless we see systems collapse take us all offline it will hopefully keep improving moving forward, albeit centralized private social media has done a lot last decade to stymie progress.

Also it's not like those old farts in the congressional seats lift their pens to write laws. They have a team of policy wonks that do that for them. They just present it in the respective chambers to play along with the charade. If you email your senator directly, it's going to be a staffer that fields the email, addresses your concerns, types up a response, and signs the senator's name in the signature.

Anyone who has lived on the Hill for any amount of time know what really makes this country churn, and it isn't the public faces.

A significant portion of American's would find this too close to socialism and with too much government involvement for their tastes, even though they would be far better off with these perks. It's depressing how much worse off they would rather be than to have these regulations and government controlled benefits.

You're conflating two things.

1. The government is more evil than Google.

2. Google may still be evil.

therefore... use the more evil thing to fight the less evil thing?

I disagree with this assessment.

I'd say we should focus on mitigating the _most_ evil thing, using _less evil_ tools.

> The government is the only tool we have to fight Google.

The missing piece here is - we have plenty of tools to "fight google". Everyone could up and leave, stop using their service, and boom. no more revenue. Google is gone, irrelevant, de-monopolized.

The government is indeed the only _coercive_ tool available to fight Google, because the government can make credible threats of violence against the Google leadership.

There are plenty of other non-coercive tools we can use to "fight" google, and it's called "competition".

For example, notice that we're talking about Google right now, and not Microsoft. This is because Google "fought" Microsoft's monopoly by _making better tools_.

I cannot wait to see what company comes along and beats Google at their own game.