So if you don’t want policy to be completely arbitrary, you’ll need some principles to follow when drawing industry boundaries.
That's ridiculous. Sure, it may be easiest to order from the guy next door, but if you don't like the pizza next door, you can easily call the guy 3 blocks down the street.
My point is you have options when it comes to pizza. There are many types of businesses that simply do not have any options besides Google. Don't believe me? Ask literally anyone who works in digital advertising. If you were planning any kind of digital ad campaign that relied on search, and you said you weren't going to spend on Google, they'd think you were insane. "Oh yeah, I've decided to put all my search ad spend on Bing." It sounds ridiculously laughable just writing it out.
[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/03/apples-app-store-...
The point I'm trying to make here is that people will use that figure (often without much thought) to justify giving Android users a sub-par experience - which only serves to reinforce it. I've worked for several companies that have given parity to iOS and Android, and one that did not. For the former we did not observe a disparity that large. YMMV by region and industry of course.
[0] https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spe...
And even if the trends did hold up internationally, and I really suspect they don't, Android would still be better for ads and subscriptions internationally due to nearly three times the market share, despite a bit more than half the disposable income.
People don't really buy iPhones as soon as they have money unless it is a status symbol in their culture, which it really is the more the country is Americanized/anglophone. I think that correlation holds up much better than GDP PPP. There is no real reason for money to predict iOS market share except for that.
In any case, if you're making a social media app or other international app, an Android version is likely more important.
There is no such thing as international anti-trust. In this conversation the US market is the only thing that matters since we are talking about US law. Hence, android does not really matter much for revenue.
Even in the US, Apple does not have even close to a monopoly over Android, anyways. At best they have 50% of the marketshare.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45063002#:~:text=The%20d....
[1]: https://www.hbsslaw.com/uploads/case_downloads/apple-dev/201...
Would consumers be better served if app developers had to pay the Google tax, the Apple tax aaaaaand the Microsoft tax, the Samsung tax, the HTC tax, etc etc etc?
And inversely, if you cut any industry coarsely enough, you will never find any monopolies.
"Don't break us up! Sure, we may own the entire telephone service, but we do not have a monopoly. See, you should be looking at total human communications. People talk in person, send letters, etc. We own a teeny tiny slice of total human communications."
"Don't break us up! Sure, we may own the entire rail network, but we do not have a monopoly. See, you should be looking at entire human travel. People walk, ride horses, travel by ships, etc. We own a teeny tiny slice of total travel industry."
“Anyone that has a monopoly will pretend that they're in incredible competition. If you're a non-monopolist, you will rhetorically describe your market as super small, you're the only person in that market.If you have a monopoly, you will describe it as super big, and there is lots of competition in it"
In this definition, Google's not going to be a monopolist as advertisers can easily reallocate their budget to alternative options (FB, Amazon, etc) to improve their ROI if Google decides to increase their fee significantly. Publishers don't have much options other than AdSense to sell their ad slots so it's monopsony(=single buyer controls the market). Not sure if the US antitrust law can handle this situation. If so, then this is going to be a landmark case.
That is the point I 100% absolutely disagree with. Ask any digital marketer, most of them see FB and Amazon as serving different purposes than what targeted search ads do. If you put 'Bing' or 'DuckDuckGo' I would agree with you, but in that case you'll find that the way Adwords bidding work that Google pretty much already takes a huge portion of potential margin - in many areas with deep-pocketed investors who think they'll eventually turn profitable Google actually takes more than 100% of potential margin.
I'm very well aware of this, but this doesn't necessarily mean that budget planning will be done completely independent across multiple different channels. We already have observed a significant fraction of search advertisements budget has been moved from Google to Amazon as Amazon becomes a more effective ads platform. In fact, nowaway this becomes a much more attractive option since Amazon now owns literally everything from advertisements, auction, optimization and measurements in a single platform.
> in many areas with deep-pocketed investors who think they'll eventually turn profitable Google actually takes more than 100% of potential margin.
Most of the Google's largest advertisers are big, conventional companies with a strong cash flow, not those burning the money from investors. They really care about incrementality, efficacy, measurement and performance. Sure, you can probably burn a few million dollars without a good reason but you cannot spend x100 like that.
If you limit them, you are not improving your ROAS or even efficiency. For most of the companies, they would end up spending higher per qualified lead compared to what they get from Google. This is very hard to break and side by side ensure that the advertisers (and publishers) are not harmed in the process.
Facebook has its own audience Network, but that is really bad in terms of returns. There are others like Taboola, Smarty Ad and so on, but all of them end up not delivering enough returns, and as a publisher, you end up going to google.
- Large publishers and news agencies who have seen declining revenues due to increased competition for ads.
- Left-leaning people who believe large companies are inherently bad for society.
- Right-leaning people who believe "big tech" is biased against them.
- Advertisers.
- General consumers.Curious to read more about this. It could just be me, but I have not seen much criticism of Google coming from this perspective. The closest I can think of is criticism of their skill at avoiding taxes.
This is the weakest part of your argument.
But are they pushing against it? Would they, if asked?
Are we, though? It sounds like you're saying why go after google when there are so many other companies with similar levels of control over their own markets who we also don't go after. That's not a reasonable objection, unless you can find somebody who thinks that we should go after google, but not go after these other companies.
But you can -- the US Department of Justice, who are apparently preparing a case against Google and not companies in those other markets.
The market they are defining does not include Facebook, Amazon or other "walled gardens". Details in the PDF.
The "why not look at other industries/companies" argument is old, tired and makes little sense. Looking at one company/industry does not prevent AGs or DOJ from looking at another.
If I had a general consumer business, I would much rather use FB advertising because they know more about their users than Google.
2) As a consequence of #1 (all those Google Analytics install collecting data) and their properties (YT, Search, etc...) they have excellent data on pretty much every one.
As a matter of fact, someone in the industry made a test on Grindr to see what kind of audience quality each player had in the adtech world. Google was the best provider and by a large margin.
The "choice" described in the paper is not between Facebook and Google, it is between Google and nothing. According the the authors, Facebook does not particpate in the business of ads for the "open web".
Assuming the later, academics and people working on these investigations, if the "open web" is the market they are using for their antitrust analysis. If Facebook participated in this market then one could argue that there is some competition.
From a footnote in the PDF:
Facebook's Audience Network allows you to buy ads on 3rd party (open) websites[1] as does VerizonMedia/Oath
[1] https://www.facebook.com/business/marketing/audience-network
The argument that Google is dominant in search is much stronger than the argument made here.
In the CMA report "open web advertising" is referred to as the "open display market".
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5dfa0580ed915...
"We have organised our work into three thigh-level themes:
Theme 1 considers to what extent Google and Facebook have market power in search and social media respectively and the sources of this market power;
Theme 2 assesses whether consumers have adequate control over the use of their data by online platforms, by exploring the choices they are given, how easy it is to exercise those choices and whether there is adequate protection for those who do not engage; and
Theme 3 focusses on the business to business digital advertising markets, exploring a range of concerns including a lack of transparency, conflicts of interest and the leveraging of market power to undermine competition."
Not disagreeing with your premise, however the Google response to the CMA report devotes a significant amount of verbiage to explaining and defending their position in the "open display market". On page 4 of the 25-page response to the CMA report you will find the heading "Competition in Digital Advertising". Under this you will see the subheadings "Search Advertising", "Display Advertising on Third Party Websites" and "Our Relationship with Publishers". The "Search Advertising" section is just over 3 pages. The "Display Advertising on Third Party Websites" is 4.5 pages. The "Our relationship with Publishers" section is just over 2 pages.
It is true the CMA did not make precisely the same arguments as the authors of the "roadmap" paper. They are two different jusrisdictions. However the CMA report forms the factual basis for all the arguments in the roadmap paper.
I found the Google response[1] and I'd note that they don't name any other companies at all (at least in a very quick glance through). I suspect this is a policy choice by Google - they don't want to be seen as pointing regulators at competitors.
I would also note that on page 23 footnote 69 they point references showing "the top 100 U.S. advertisers use an average 4 to 7 DSPs according to a 2016-2018 study" and "500 largest U.S. publishers use an average of 6 SSPs"
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d78ba3540f0b...
Not sure I understand what you are thinking regarding the "policy choice" idea. Would need some more elaboration.
Could you refer to page number or something? I'm not going through counting paragraphs. I searched for "publisher ad serving" and didn't find it, and searched for "Facebook" and didn't find anything that seemed to sound like what you are talking about.
I don't understand the gist of your comments here either. You asked me why Google didn't refer to competitors in their response, but now you say that they do?
> Not sure I understand what you are thinking regarding the "policy choice" idea.
"they don't want to be seen as pointing regulators at competitors."
You claimed the authors of the roadmap paper are "wrong". You cited a couple of purported Google competitors, Facebook and Verizon. I noted that in their response to CMA report Google did not mention those two competitors. They mentioned several other ones, none of them as prominent as Facebook or Verizon. Then you said there are "many other" competitors, too, besides Facebook and Verizon. I am wondering why Google did mention any of these competitors you are referring to in their response to the CMA report. Seems like it would be relevant to mention them.
However page 7 does say:
The Market Study will need to take account of the ways in which other players are entering, expanding, or consolidating in the supply of digital ads Examples include Amazon’s growing ads business, Verizon (which purchased AOL and Yahoo!), the integrated AT&T/Time Warner/AppNexus businesses, AdForm, and Alibaba – one of China’s largest digital ad providers that recently...
The reference in that quote include footnote 29. Perhaps you are confusing footnotes/references with the substantive response?
As for "reality" you would need to be more specific what you mean.
What if someone said, "Who cares if they are slicing a market to fit a narrative?"
Are you saying the authors who are "slicing the market to fit a narrative" are not allowed to do that? Or are you just saying you do not like that they are doing that? Or both?
Again, your mileage may differ, but FB knowing more about people didn't seem to matter for me. When it came down to it, a dollar spent with Google was far better than a dollar spent with FB.
Every major tech company’s product has a viable alternative.
There are other monopolies and Google isn’t alone, but I think if this were political then Twitter and Facebook would be bigger targets.
Maybe it’s petty because Google completely bungled the Congressional shaming.
We need real competition there and it doesn't seem like Bing and its clones (Duckduckgo and so on) are going to get us there. They are at too big a disadvantage out the gate.
Not to be too tangential here but does anyone know if Visa/Mastercard monopoly has a negative affect on the consumer right now? I havent noticed one, so it must be a lot more subtle than, say, internet / cable monopolies.
Credit cards are already competitive i.e. Visa, MasterCard, American Express. And the payment space is one of the most dynamic and competitive around. Endless amounts of new startups and bigger players in digital payments e.g. PayPal.
Add Discover and you essentially have a complete list of credit networks in the US. The other offerings you see are mostly white label products built on top of the usual credit networks.
I wouldn't consider PayPal a competitor since they don't operate a credit network (although they sometimes facilitate money transfers that don't involve the credit networks). Whenever a physical credit card is used in the US, it's almost always the case that one of those four credit networks collects an interchange fee.
Amazon's ad business is a small fraction the size of Google. Facebook's ad sales are less than 1/2 that of Google.
Market share isn't the only factor to consider in pursuing anti-trust.
However if it's market share you're interested in: Google has three other monopoly positions and their ad business is the cornerstone that makes it all function, providing an excellent reason to target the ad business to inflict a reduction in total system power in one shot. This is the proper way to view the giant tech companies: with a holistic view of how they maintain and integrate their overall monopoly positions and extend them, rather than focusing on very narrow abuses.
Pleonasm.
But fully agree with your point.
https://twitter.com/william_fitz/status/1270740531081932801?...
Googlers downvoted and flagged a comment that raised the possibility of astroturfing. Looks like we hit a nerve. Their employer is spending millions trying to sway public opinion.
Even if another user works for Google and is commenting about Google, a lot of people comment based on what they know or how they feel from work. Nothing could be more natural than to do that, so it's not evidence of an organized campaign. Moreover, it's not something we'd want to suppress on Hacker News, because we don't want to disincentivize [1] people from showing up here to talk about what they know, and for most of us, what we work on is our area of greatest knowledge.
Should an employee of $CO disclose that they work for $CO whenever they comment on a topic that's related to $CO? Arguably that would be courteous to other users. But not doing it is certainly less discourteous than accusing someone else of being an astroturfer or shill, and the implication that someone was paid to post an HN comment rather than expressing a sincerely held view is a slur.
There is plenty of past explanation about HN's no-astroturfing-accusations rule at [2].
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Remember that to argue that the comment contained an "accusation" requires that one draw some inference from the inclusion of the Wikipedia URL. Inlcuding the URL was a mistake. The statement I made however contained no accusation. It merely drew attention to the fact that Googlers often disclose their employer when talking about Google stuff on HN but in this case the person made not mention of it. I found that noteworthy. The inference to be made there would simply be potential bias. I think that's fair.
Is it within the rules to state that a commenter is an employee of "${CO}"? I note the commenter who did that did not get flagged.
> Is it within the rules to state that a commenter is an employee of "${CO}"? I note the commenter who did that did not get flagged.
That's a tough one to answer unequivocally. Bringing in someone's personal details as ammunition in an argument is generally not allowed: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so..., so if I had to pick yes or no I'd say no. But one can imagine lots of borderline cases.
- Ephraim, "Munich" (2005)
As for payments, the Visa/MC/Amex hegemony will get challenged by crypto. Ethereum's scalability is rapidly approaching Visa scale and with stablecoins and DeFi skyrocketing in popularity, it's going to be an interesting thing to watch.
Smells like political rent seeking to me.