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Comment by soared | Hacker News Reader

Generally an excellent and accurate write up, nervous/excited to see where this goes.

A bit over the top with some of the things google has done in the programmatic space, but aligns with reality. I disagree with the display/programmatic space innovations being held back by google - there are an insane amount of small players who are doing different things and it’s easy to integrate them into the existing space. IE if I want to measure foot traffic, there are like 6 vendors who all do it slightly differently, 1 huge and 5 small companies, some super anti-privacy and some very pro privacy.

Its is called out in the article but not made extremely clear - the vertical integration google has is insane. They own the sell, intermediary, buy, measure, and operations software for a large percentage of the space. Imagine if NYSE owned Fidelity, SP500, and the SEC.

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The issue is not whether startup alternatives exist, it is more in my mind that no mid-market companies exist because they are taken out at the knees before they threaten the incumbents through acquisitions.

It eventually becomes impossible to avoid doing business with them.

I guess it’s hard to know if there should be significantly more mid market companies or not - I work in the space and am aware of hundreds of them, but perhaps with the size of adtech that number should really be thousands

At least with NYSE, Fidelity, SP500 and the SEC, one could avoid them, eg., by choosing not to invest, working for unlisted employers, etc.

But avoiding the web or mobile apps is becoming nearly impossible. Google tentacles are all over this stuff. No escape. For example, one visits a US government website and it needlessly sends data to "google-analytics.com".

The blog tends to be a bit hyperbolic but the author does do the research. If his facts were wrong and he was notified, I suspect he would publish a correction.

In general I do not understand how auctioning for a thing with fixed cost aligns with the principles of free market.

Google owns the infrastructure of search, maintaining them and showing ads has a finite cost. How does piting ad buyers in an auction is different than price gauging?

Imagine apple every year introducing the new iPhone without a price and when you go to the cart it asks for your credit limits before it creates a unique price that magically matches exactly your credit limits.

> In general I do not understand how auctioning for a thing with fixed cost aligns with the principles of free market.

Isn't it kind of like real estate?

In theory, it should cost roughly the same amount to build a house in the middle of nowhere versus the center of Manhattan. But more people want to live in Manhattan, and there's a limited amount of space, so buyers effectively bid up the price.

On any given website, there is a limited amount of ad space.

An ad for a specific user is worth a different amount to each advertiser for a couple reasons. You don’t sell something based on what it costs, you sell it based on what it worth.

Search is a bit different than display which is covered in the article, but imagine 2 jewelry companies that are exactly the same. A user searching for “necklaces” you’d think each company would bid the same amount to advertise there. But say one company is trying to raise a round of funding and needs to drive sales, they’ll bid higher to increase sales but at a lower roas. The other company is satisfied with their revenue and doesn’t bid higher.

In display each bidder has different information about a user (they may have their own data about a users behavior on their website, or it may be provided by a vendor that other bidders aren’t using). So the difference in price is largely a difference in information.

"a thing with fixed cost", just imagine the billboard in downtown. The cost is finite. But you'll know that the price would be aligned with ups and downs of the demand. You may use auction model, or you can continuously tune the price. Actually they may converge similarly, to the principles of free market.

Same thing with real estates, or stocks.

However the iPhone example you mentioned follows a different scheme. iPhone is not something people competing for, as long as stock lasts.

Why is it wrong for apple to charge differently.fpr different people? This already happens I'm different geographic regions. Apple devices are not essential goods. Why not charge people who get more value out of a product more?

> In general I do not understand how auctioning for a thing with fixed cost aligns with the principles of free market.

Simple: the 'free market' exists to maximize the price for a given good or service with respect to the demand for such. That's really the whole story here.

> Imagine apple every year introducing the new iPhone without a price and when you go to the cart it asks for your credit limits before it creates a unique price that magically matches exactly your credit limits.

This is how sevreral 'free' markets work already. Anything involving credit or finance, real estate.

It is a grave mistake to assume that the actions of a free market have anything whatsoever to do with what is morally right, or even what is legal.

The market makes line go up and that is the only thing it cares about. Capitalism does not give one good goddamn about who or what it may hurt, it can only ever consider the bottom line.

Reading between the lines, what you're pointing out beyond the ideas of "free market" and "price gauging" (I don't see any difference between the two TBH) is exactly that Google has monopolistic power in the space.

They can set arbitrary prices and have customers pay anyway, with little fear of competition or market loss.

Can't wait for Google to be broken up and made an example of. Same with Amazon soon, I hope.

And the CIA not being able to read the Google Docs spreadsheets of all companies, NGOs and diplomats of the world?

Why would that stop if they got got broken up?

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