The feds are also weighing “less severe” options, such as requiring Google to share data with rival search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Microsoft’s Bing.
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.
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 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.
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’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.
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 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.
I think the problem with Google is that none of their side projects actually make any money. I don’t have a solution here
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.
So YouTube shall fail.
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.