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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Not sure how that would work...
I'm old enough to remember the breakup of Ma Bell and the way that worked was the creation of a bunch of regional telecom services, that's not going to work on the Internet.
I guess they could mandate spinning off Android, but that's not really the problem addressed in the antitrust case, is it?
Maybe split the AdWords side from the Search Engine side?
I'd guess it would be a vertical breakup rather than horizontal: separate android, cloud, youtube, search, chrome, ads...depending on how aggressive they want to be.
But if they've only been found to monopolize search, how does that remedy the search monopoly? Presumably the new separate Google Search company would still have a search monopoly.
without search and their abuse of that monopoly, google wouldn't have dominant positions or massive market shares that many of their other properties (products, services, software, etc) have.
Because that search monopoly allows them to boost their other products above all others. It’s not an impartial search result anymore. There is a financial incentive to favor their own products.
I'm speculating, but perhaps the thought would be that separating Google Search from the rest of the company would deprive them of the alternative revenue streams they used to maintain their market position? If I remember the ruling against them correctly, one of the key pieces of evidence cited by the judge was that Google spent like 30 billion dollars a year to have 3rd parties use their engine by default.
But the ads on search are the big revenue driver for Google overall. Presumably those stay with the Google Search subunit, and they would have plenty of cash to do whatever?
Yes, I believe the figure they cited was that Google earns 73% of their revenue through ads. I imagine what they would have to do is bust up the ad services in addition to the various departments of Google. Each new entity formed gets to keep revenue from ads shown on their platform maybe? E.g. YouTube gets spun off into its own thing separate from Google proper. They get to keep ad revenue from what is shown on their platform, but they don't get to touch any revenue from sponsored search listings, or from banner ads on other websites, etc.
That's an approach that makes surface level sense to me, but I am neither a lawyer nor a business bro nor a tech bro. So, I don't actually have the faintest idea if my idea bears any resemblance to reality.
Google search has some features that alternative search engines don’t. I use DuckDuckGo for 99% of everything, but I occasionally use Google to see local busy hours, or sometimes any hours, reviews, phone numbers without navigating a shitty website, etc.
I think there are ways to break up Google search on its own, and make some of those features separate and accessible on other search engines.
Then there’s the matter of advertising, data collection, SEO, exclusivity with corporations like Reddit, etc.
Google is doing things with its search that seem to intentionally reduce the ability of other search engines to compete with them, and that’s really all that the antitrust laws are meant to prevent.
They removed something that I used to use: using "-word" to exclude a keyword. Apparently it is because advertisers don't want you doing that, so they turned it into a weighting. So there are features and antifeatures too. I've seen ddg do that too before, but right now it works :)
I think you go about it the other way: break data analytics and advertising off from everything else. If every unit has to be self-sufficient without reliance on data collection and first-party advertising I think you fix most of the major issues.
I think each of these needs to be handled in separate ways. For example, search could continue to be a conglomeration that includes maps, mail and possibly cloud. Android can just be split very easily into a separate company and same for Youtube, since that would basically be another Netflix or whatever.
Ads, in my opinion, is the most important one though. That absolutely has to be shattered into thousands of tiny pieces, all of which need to be forced to compete with each other, for the benefit of all internet companies anywhere. It would be a massive boon to companies everywhere and would provide an opportunity for lots of innovation in the advertising space, ie. trying ads that are less intrusive or ones that are cheaper because they don't rely on tracking information.
And another thing I think people need to understand about search is that building the search engine is not the hard part - the hard part is figuring out how to pay for it. Search is really expensive - crawling websites, indexing, fighting spam abuse. That's what really makes Google successful - the fact that they coupled it with advertising so that they could cover all the expenses that come with managing a search engine. That's much more important than the quality of the results, in my opinion.
And as for Chrome: well, personally I think that monopoly has been the most damaging to the internet as a whole. I would love to see it managed as part of a non-profit consortium. There should not be any profit motive whatsoever in building a web browser. If you want a profit motive, build a website - the browser should just be the tool to get to your profit model, not the profit model itself. And therefore it should be developed by multiple interest groups, not just one advertising company.
Anyway, I know this is all an impossible fantasy. Nothing in the world is done because it's right or wrong, it's done because it serves whoever holds the most power. But if there were a just world, this is what I think it would look like.
There's no reason Gmail should be included in search of it's broken up. Otherwise agree though.
If you seperate Youtube from Google, I cannot see youtube surviving. It's probably a loss leader for them.
I really don't understand why people have that believe. They've heard over a decade ago that Youtube wasn't making a profit (which was mostly because they reinvested everything to grow and become the monopoly they are now), but by how much money it's raking in every quarter and with how monumental Google's infrastucture is, I find it extremely hard to believe Youtube isn't a big money machine by now. They're really squeezing everything out of it not because they have to, but because they have a monopoly as a user generated video platform that has more to offer than just shorts.
I think it's a combination of the old news, how expensive hosting video is compared to anything else, and how Twitch is basically a boat - a hole in the water that you throw money into.
People lose the connection that burning money like it's going out of fashion is only step one in the game. Step two is capitalizing on the market share that you acquired in step one. And, as every social media company has shown, ad revenue and data harvesting are very profitable. Otherwise, every tech giant wouldn't have pivoted to that years ago.
Pretty sure youtube is revenue generating on its own now. Youtube doesn't work as a loss leader because it's so different from all other products.
So YouTube shall fail.
I think the problem with Google is that none of their side projects actually make any money. I don't have a solution here
I'm drooling at the thought.
Not breaking up Google because the effects would be inconvenient would literally be letting a monopoly regin because they're a monopoly.
Shut down services if needed. We can adapt.
Never forget that the baby bells slowly reassembled themselves. They’re not a single company but they’re down to 3 or 4 now
Which is exactly where it should be... having regional phone companies sucked. Having 1 phone company sucked. Having 3-4 is the least sucky, but we have real competition.
Before tearing apart Google and Amazon, I'df much prefer we have 3-4 choices for internet providers (unless we can turn them into utilities, then we should do that).
Fuck that. Any Canadian will tell you, you don't want an oligarchy
Making YouTube its own thing again wouldn’t be that hard.
Neither you nor almost anyone who upvoted you or replied to you read the article, huh
FTA:
"DOJ attorneys could ask Judge Amit Mehta to order Google to sell portions of its business"
That's the author of the article speculating, they don't know what it would actually look like any more than you or I do.
Bonus, as I noted, it doesn't address the primary issue of a search monopoly. Even if they sell off those business unit, the search monopoly remains.
There was more discussion of potential remedies in the article than that.