Re:Google is a monopoly. Breakup may be coming; what comes a...
by nubinetwork on Friday August 16, 2024 @01:25PM
(#41268405)
> The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company
Just barely, 95% of their ads are scams.
Re:Google is a monopoly. Breakup may be coming; what comes a...
by jemmyw on Friday August 16, 2024 @06:30PM
(#41270966)
> problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company
This is a little unimaginative. Google's ad business could be split horizontally or vertically to make space for competition. It's simplistic to say they are an ad business, they are performing several functions in the online ad business space.
> I'd like to see a competitor
Me too!
Re:Google is a monopoly. Breakup may be coming; what comes a...
by nielsbot on Friday August 16, 2024 @08:23PM
(#41271483)
> but they're with Google because they like it
are you sure? what if they had other options?
> Make it illegal to pay to be the default
Yes
> I'd like to see a competitor with a better model that Google used their market advantage to intentionally kill.
I hope the government will show this is exactly what happened. The competitor doesn't even have to have a "better model"
The judgment makes a lot of hay over google paying to be the default search engine and how google has all this data on how valuable default is and how much people don't tend to switch from them. That's all true but I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Make it illegal to pay to be the default?
There has to be a default and I think the outcome there is that Google is still the default because people prefer it. Google only pays to be the default because, if they don't, someone else will. Google would love to not have to pay Apple to be the default.
I also notice the lack of acknowledgement that people actively do switch away from default browsers regularly, from their OS defaults, to Chrome, which defaults to Google Search. Bing's market share is basically entirely because Edge is the default browser in windows with Bing as the default search engine. "Solving" this default problem will probably crater Bing if it involves forcing a user to make a choice on install (or something similar).
The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company, not a browser company, not a mobile phone company, not a search company, not an email company, etc. All of those other products exist to serve the ad company, they are loss leaders. Splitting up google is bad for consumers who use gmail, chrome, android and search.
The only real split that I think is possible is Google Ads from Google Cloud.
As far as the idea of Google's position being a drag on the economy, I'd like to see a competitor with a better model that Google used their market advantage to intentionally kill.