Unironically I think this would be a good thing for Google. Lots of smart people, and a lot of amazing technology.<p>If you took away the firehouse of money from search I'm sure a lot of those other parts of the business would find a way to make some incredible products. Think of everything that came out of the Baby Bells
Hopefully it actually happens, in a way that's positive for people.<p>Maybe Google will even be forced to provide the dreaded "Customer Support" (of reasonable standard) for <i>all</i> of their products and services too. :D
> <i>The US government is considering seeking the break-up of the world's biggest search engine, Google ...</i><p>Sorry, that BBC article reads like it was written by a nerd on HN or something. Google/Alphabet, first and foremost, is the largest online advertiser via its acquisitions of YouTube, DoubleClick, and others, in addition to selling ad placement on Google Search via AdWords, plus a growing number of consumer portals for price comparisons etc. integrated with Google Search (leaving out tracking your activity on Android devices, Google's cloud business, and Books/scholar). The immediate antitrust perspective starts by looking at Alphabet/Google subsidiaries both providing search results and ads on the pages listed in search results (and to a lesser degree even by pushing Google services via Google Search). This is what had ruined the web.<p>US antitrust is a lame duck anyway since it allowed the aquisitions of DoubleClick and YouTube in the first place, as well as the aquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook. The US stance of protecting business and turning a blind eye as long as US online hegemony and intelligence superiority is served isn't helping their case against TikTok today. With the antitrust enforcement's glacial pace, it's not clear if and when a breakup will take place to help the deranged market or if it's just political theater anyway, so other countries are well advised to take their own antitrust actions.
For context, this relates to an earlier court ruling that Google search was an illegal because it pays others to make Google the default search engine. This isn't about Android or any other thing that might separately be investigated.<p>So the government wants "structural relief" here meaning to break up Google. But isn't the remedy simply tp make such payments illegal? That's certainly one argument I would make were I Google's lawyers. In addition to just appealing the finding outright of course.<p>Now I've previously said (and I stand by this) that making such payments illegal would <i>help</i> Google maintain its search dominance. Why? Because Firefox, Apple, etc could no longer extort Apple to make Google the default when that's what most users want anyway.<p>Mozilla already tried making Bing the default. They went back to Google eventually, probably because Google paid them, but I would guess the user response was probably negative too. That's just a guess however.<p>Those of us who are old enough will remember the Microsoft antitrust trial and how that really went nowhere in the end. And that was for something that was profoundly much more harmful. There is such a larger barrier to entry to installing a new browser.<p>And that's the thing: this will take a decade or longer to actually play out. Any administration in the meantime could not have the same resolve or otherwise choose to settle with Google in some form of consent decree that limits their behaviour for a period of time.<p>So I don't see this going anywhere realistically.
We need some serious trust busting in the USA. It's been a problem for decades and has culminated in the slow destruction of the middle class. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to fix the issue.
This doesn't feel like a real solution to the problem. How would breaking Google into pieces solve a monopoly in search? The search part would still have that monopoly. Since it doesn't solve the problem, I doubt it will survive in court. Google's 1% drop in stock price is evidence of this being no real threat. IMO this isn't an honest attempt at anti-trust enforcement and is just more Democratic party vengeance against the tech industry.
Frankly, it's really crazy how much of the modern web is controlled by google.<p>The most common kind of consumer-facing computer is a mobile device, and the most common mobile OS worldwide is owned by Google.<p>The most common way that people interact with the web is either mobile apps or a web browser, and Google-owned Chrome/Chromium has basically eaten the world.<p>The most common way that people find new information on the web is a search engine. Once again, Google's namesake search engine is the unambiguous leader in terms of market share by a landslide.<p>Obviously there's more: YouTube, Google Maps and Waze, GSuite/Drive/Docs. But it's these first three verticals that smell the most monopolistic to me.
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> <i>Google has pushed back hard against the proposals, describing them as "radical" and "sweeping" and claiming they "risk hurting consumers, businesses, and developers."</i><p>Breaking up Google would undoubtedly be good for consumers, businesses <i>and</i> developers. Having a monolithic, anti-competitive, closed source, advertising driven behemoth with the bad habit of killing off their own mediocre projects on the regular, would be a huge win for all of us.
The article continuously mentions Google, but how does that affect Alphabet, its parent company?<p>When I read about breaking up google, I had assumed that the division would simply force all alphabet companies to operate fully independently. But this is specific to the Google search engine part.
I think it <i>should</i> happen for the health of the web, however, sadly too much capital is behind getting rid of Lina Khan so they probably will get rid of her as soon as elections happen. They will just backtrack on the one good thing Biden did which was turn back on the "allow companies to acquire every competitor without worrying about monopolies" that Clinton started.
The powers that be inside the Beltway will never let this happen in the current geo-political climate, it's like shooting themselves in their own foot. All that the Alphabet leaders/lawyers have to say is something on the lines of: "We can leverage AI better as a big integrated corporation and so we can better defeat the Chinese", and the game is theirs.<p>This is irrespective of what some minor judge or even a Federal agency not directly connected to the "war-adjacent" institutions in DC might say (i.e. something like the FTC will never have the upper hand against the White House, the CIA, the State Department or the Pentagon, again, not in this geo-political climate).
When the rich and powerful (including politicians) have their positions sold and will make money from the FAANG companies' stocks going down, we will see some real antitrust activity and society will get better and break away from the tech dystopia we are living in. So in a sense Gordon Gekko was right and greed is good. At some point you can't pump stocks anymore on vapors and you make money from them on the way down in shorts, buying lower, etc.<p><a href="https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-reversion.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...</a>