| ▲ | adgjlsfhk1 6 days ago |
| Google seems harder to split up than Bell to me. Bell was split regionally which makes sense since each region has it's own wires and can make money separately. Google has the problem that all their products other than adds lose money (or make money through integration with Google adds) |
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| ▲ | ajross 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Yeah. The problem with splitting up Google is that Google products, taken in isolation, are themselves keys to preventing other monopolies. Split off Android to swim on its own and we get an iPhone monopoly. Split off Workspace and we go back to the days of MSOffice's monopoly. Splitting out Chrome essentially kills the World Wide Web as an application platform as no one else wants to support it. Cloud would probably stand alone competitively, but if not it's going to be an Amazon monopoly. Basically Google is strong in search and ads (also AI, though that isn't a revenue center yet and there's lots of competition) and second place in everything else. IMHO it's very hard[1] to make a pro-consumer argument behind killing off all those second place products. [1] And yeah, they pay my salary, but I work on open source stuff and know nothing about corporate governance. |
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| ▲ | BlueTemplar 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is like looking at a farm overrun by weeds but doing nothing using the pretext that just removing one of them isn't going to fix the problem. | | |
| ▲ | ajross 5 days ago | parent [-] | | No, it's like refusing to use Agent Orange to kill the weeds for fear of poisoning the neighboring farms. You walked right into that one, sorry. | | |
| ▲ | BlueTemplar 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I guess we might have a mismatch in values. As you hint at it, "the World Wide Web as an application platform" specifically happened more because Google was wrestling with Microsoft over the future of personal computing than because of its inherent qualities. (And then they both got sidelined by Apple's iPhone, but Google (unlike Microsoft) did manage to both enter that battlefield and hold that front.) |
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| ▲ | snozolli 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Split off Android to swim on its own and we get an iPhone monopoly. Why? Android appears to be profitable. | | |
| ▲ | ajross 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Only Google-integrated Android devices are profitable. You really think Graphene/Lineage/etc... devices have a chance in the market vs. Apple Computer? Splitting off the integration means those devices have to pay for it or go without. Even Amazon failed in this space. Which is to say, the parts of Android that are "profitable" are the parts tied to the broader corporate product suite. | | |
| ▲ | snozolli 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Only Google-integrated Android devices are profitable. I don't understand what you're trying to say. Pixel devices? Android devices being paid by Google to use Google's app store, browser, and default search engine? What does any of that have to do with whether or not Android is separated? You really think Graphene/Lineage/etc... devices have a chance in the market vs. Apple Computer? What does that have to do with whether or not the Android 'division' of Google would survive being spun off? | | |
| ▲ | ajross 6 days ago | parent [-] | | If the only way to sell a profitable product is to buy its core value-add (Google integration) from someone else, then your product isn't profitable by definition. Split off Android and Pixels become just another Fire Phone, and will compete just about as well (or worse, since the spun-off Android division wouldn't even have free Amazon integration). Again, there are Google-free Android phones in the market today. They do very poorly. |
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| ▲ | bdcravens 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That's a business model problem then. Any other business burying money into various endeavors would have to cut losses at some point, which underscores the point of an unfair monopoly. Google isn't operating at a loss in all products. About 12% of revenue is cloud; about 12% is everything else. Their business apps is estimated to be a billion-dollar business on its own. Cloud is profitable, and earns probably 1.5-3 billion dollars a year in profit. |
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| ▲ | Jensson 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > Any other business burying money into various endeavors would have to cut losses at some point Google has a massive graveyard full of killed projects, they are cutting their losses, few companies cut as much as they do: https://killedbygoogle.com/ | | |
| ▲ | bdcravens 6 days ago | parent [-] | | While at first glance this may disprove the idea that they don't cut losses, it actually furthers the argument that advertising revenue creates perverted incentives, since they blew massive amounts of money on projects with no financial value. Moreover, while those products are dead, the data gained likely made its way into the advertising information flow. If you were a competitor to one of those dead products, or an advertising company that has to carefully evaluate the cost effectiveness of an auxiliary product, Google has an "unfair" advantage over you. |
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| ▲ | 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | alabastervlog 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is exactly why it's important to bust them up: all those other products are effectively "dumping" on whatever sector they compete in. This even discourages time-investment (to develop) and learning-to-use investment (for users) for free alternatives, not just commercial ones. |
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| ▲ | whoknowsidont 6 days ago | parent [-] | | All of their products helped the sector they are in. They didn't "dump" into it. Google continually improved areas where other companies previously refused to, even if they were charging for their services. Mail. Internet browsers? Does it really need to be stated? Open source. Kubernetes. Open source. Tensor architecture. Freely released. I don't see the argument for breaking Google up other than people are holding some vendetta against Google for being successful AND a pretty good citizen in the overall landscape so to speak. If anyone needs to be broken up it's Microsoft. Microsoft actively harms every other competitor by bundling all their services together to the point where businesses won't even look at other software (teams? Azure is basically sold on nepotism). | | |
| ▲ | xigency 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think you misunderstand what 'dumping' means in this market context. Sure, free software like Linux is great. But if you didn't have that preconceived notion, a competitor dumping free software on the market to make others' initiatives unprofitable would look like an anti-trust violation, rather than a charitable act of community. | | |
| ▲ | whoknowsidont 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I understand perfectly fine. I think your statement however is quite ignorant about the state of things at the time these actions were taken. Do yourself a favor and research a little bit. | | |
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| ▲ | bdcravens 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Their business apps division is probably a billion dollar business. Their cloud generates a couple of billions in profit each year. Besides that, I don't think giving away anything for free justifies any activity. If we're trying to compare to Microsoft, remember that Internet Explorer was free, and modern day Microsoft literally owns Github. | | |
| ▲ | whoknowsidont 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Revenue is not really a consideration when talking about _illegal_ monopolies. That is an incorrect way to view this. It's about anti-competitive practices. That's what the laws are about (and the reason for their existence). Google is not anti-competitive. At no point am I forced or even "guided" into doing business with Google, at any stage, in any department. There are 8 billion other ad-networks out there, and there are plenty of mail providers to choose from, and plenty of search providers to choose from, and plenty of cloud providers to choose from. If you're on gmail (even business), or Google Cloud, or Adsense, there really isn't much stopping you from switching to something else. There's no real lock-in. You cannot say the same with Microsoft. A lot of businesses are so dependent on MS's offerings they might as well just be glorified subsidiaries. You don't really have an Excel drop in, or an AD drop in, or a messaging app drop in that comes with all the other services. Google doesn't hand out Cloud credits with the express purpose of roping more of your business infrastructure under one company. Internet Explorer was not free. You needed Windows. And if you had Windows you HAD IE, regardless of whether you wanted it or not, or even tried to remove it. | | |
| ▲ | CPLX 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Google is not anti-competitive. While you're welcome to this opinion you might want to address the fact that Google has recently lost THREE separate trials, each of which individually and separately produced a verdict that they are, in fact, in violation of laws against unfair competition. | | |
| ▲ | whoknowsidont 5 days ago | parent [-] | | You mean the three trials which are definitely not politically motivated, right? | | |
| ▲ | CPLX 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Considering the cases were prosecuted in collaboration across both the Biden and Trump administrations, and decided by longstanding federal judges, then, no, these are not accurately characterized as politically motivated except insofar as all government actions have a nexus to politics by definition. | |
| ▲ | 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | ndiddy 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I would highly recommend reading the decision. The two markets defined were publisher ad servers (i.e. Google's DoubleClick for Publishers) and ad exchanges (i.e. Google's AdX). Google behaved anticompetitively in both of these markets. DoubleClick for Publishers placed restrictions on how publishers could work with non-Google ad exchanges and tilted things in favor of Google's exchange. Third-party exchanges weren't given information about the specific impression before bidding and an advertiser bid submitted on AdX could win even if there was a higher bid submitted on a third-party exchange. DFP also banned publishers from setting higher price floors for AdX than for third-party exchanges, but allowed setting higher price floors for third-party exchanges than for AdX. In response to Google's unfair ad auctions, publishers eventually started using "header bidding", a technique for getting real-time competitive bidding from multiple ad exchanges. However, Google still controlled the largest ad-buying platform, DV360. DV360 was the top buyer on every third-party ad exchange in addition to AdX. Google modified DV360 to automatically lower bids submitted to third-party ad exchanges such that they were always below an advertiser's maximum budget. When the publisher ad server received the bid, it would use it as the floor price to solicit more bids on AdX. DV360 would then bid the publisher's maximum budget via AdX, taking the win away from the third-party exchange. The decision also goes into why ad networks are not a substitute for the combination of publisher ad servers and ad exchanges: "Although ad networks are
another tool for connecting advertisers to publishers, the sophisticated publishers who receive the
majority of open-web display advertising revenue do not view ad networks as substitutes for ad
exchanges because ad networks offer very limited control and are unable to place bids from
disparate demand sources in competition with each other." The government never claims that Google has monopoly power in the publisher-facing ad network market (i.e. AdSense). | |
| ▲ | bdcravens 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Internet Explorer was not free. You needed Windows. And if you had Windows you HAD IE, regardless of whether you wanted it or not, or even tried to remove it. Can you use Gmail, Google Drive, Chrome sync etc and opt out of allowing Google to use any of your data for advertising services? | | |
| ▲ | whoknowsidont 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I can in fact, go to a different mail provider, use a different file hosting and sharing service, and use different browsers with different sync technologies. All of that I can do _for free_ with little to no hassle. This was not the case with IE. You are not doing a fair comparison here, and it's bordering on dishonest. |
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