If I'm not mistaken, this problem is exactly what is attempting to be solved by the current anti-trust suit against the big tech companies in the United States (this is the suit brought by Texas and a few other states). Depending on the outcome, vertical integration like you're describing could be deemed monopolistic and result in Google being spun off into separate entities for each of the parts you're describing.
I think views related to this topic somewhat depend on whether or not you consider Google a monopoly in the digital advertising space. If you do, it would seem that bringing more of the world in-house would be deemed illegal under anti-trust laws.
Re:The Fantasy of Opting Out
by Wowfunhappy on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:10PM
(#26183323)
I do believe that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and even Apple ought to be broken up. However, I don't have a ton of faith that it will happen, and even if it does, I'm wary of policies that would encourage future consolidation.
Good, let us forbid cross-service sharing of data. Gmail can do everything it likes to with whatever data is generated while I am using that. Let us just not allow it to also use this data in google maps and on Youtube.
Re:The Fantasy of Opting Out
by Wowfunhappy on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:37PM
(#26183694)
How do you define a single service? What if Google adds gmail results to Google Search, or Facebook integrates Whatsapp into Facebook Messenger?
Perhaps more importantly, restricting third-party but not first-party sharing creates bad incentives. If Google could share search data with first-party services like Google Reviews, but not third-party ones like Yelp, what does that mean for Yelp? We'd just be encouraging the largest companies to bring even more of the world in-house.