
Is it time to break up Google? - Futurebot
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/opinion/sunday/is-it-time-to-break-up-google.html
======
mtempleton
>We have been transported back to the early 20th century

>Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his
biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large
centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free
people.”

>Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to
the corruption of the regulator

Reading American Economic History has given me the idea that problems of
corruption were taken more seriously in the past than they are today -- which
this article seems to be alluding to.

It seems to be an issue that isn't circulating today. I've never heard of
someone mention Andrew Jackson with reference to how fiercely he seemed to
want to fight against corruption. Lincoln gave the banks the finger and
instead, empowered congress to take control of the nation's money supply, and
won a war in which the banks had been betting against him by doing this. By
contrast, it seems today people view big banks as a kind of mandatory evil
that we should just shut up about and tolerate.

Further, it does appear that most politicians, especially Presidents, must be
subservient to the interests of lobbies and power groups in Washington.

Perhaps also, today we take it for granted that a lot of good sense was taken
in the past to build this country.

I have a strong sense that today's political climate and social culture is
ignoring growing problems of the _bigness_ described in the article--
concentrations of power. I have heard a lot of people say _everything is
corrupt, it doesn 't matter_, which at least in my reading, appears to have
not been the case in the past. If that is true, I'm not sure if America would
look the same today if it wasn't true.

~~~
Consultant32452
>By contrast, it seems today people view big banks as a kind of mandatory evil
that we should just shut up about and tolerate.

On the contrary, I think the population would LOVE to vote for a President
that isn't owned by Goldman Sachs, but there just isn't one. We sort of almost
kinda got there with Bernie Sanders, but the establishment wouldn't let that
happen.

~~~
tradersam
Also, 2007-09 showed that the banks are too big to fail. They don't just go
away, and they have more resources than anyone to lobby against their strong
position going away, so not much we can do besides tolerate and mitigate their
influence until a popular idealist get on the ticket.

~~~
Consultant32452
It's hard to over-estimate the lengths these groups will go to in order to
protect their position. We know that our wealthy will convince our government
to go to war or overthrow democratically elected leaders in order to protect
profits. It will probably take a revolution to unseat them.

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mg74
The author states that "is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon
have stymied innovation on a broad scale", and then points to falling profits
of music and newspaper industries as the victims of said stymied innovation,
the very actors that have fought the innovation of the last 25 years the
hardest.

~~~
evdev
I laughed out loud at that paragraph.

To be clear: obviously the assertion itself _might_ be true but is _very_
possible to deny. To make matters worse, the support for the idea is basically
that services that charge the end user nothing have destroyed the revenues of
services that had the ability to ransom themselves for money. Whether that's
good or bad to the broader public is... complicated.

------
resoluteteeth
Despite offhandedly mentioning the hypothetical possibility of breaking up
Google, this article doesn't actually discuss how this could be done or even
whether it would be possible.

I think because of how few products Google has that actually make money this
would actually be quite difficult in that it would be surprisingly hard to
divide up Google into multiple companies that still have sources of revenue,
much less were still profitable.

Even if rather than actually "breaking up" Google, you simply tried to force
some type of debundling like with Microsoft, this would still be difficult.
Take the case of Android being bundled with Google services for example.
Android itself isn't what makes Google money, so preventing them from
integrating it with sources of revenue would probably just kill Android.

~~~
xigency
The example given is forcing them to sell DoubleClick. I think Android is a
great example because that was an aquisition at one point. Google pays Apple
for default search placement so a similar arrangement could be made.

The article is a bit vague and hand-wavey (and the title is a bit off) but I
would definitely say that Apple is hugely monopolistic, for a company sitting
at #1.

Apple has a stranglehold on iOS browsers by forcing App Store browsers to use
Safari's renderer and web view.

And being vertically integrated, the hardware and software are both locked-
down in ways that restrict a consumer.

Why can't I install macOS on non-Apple hardware? Why do I need macOS to
develop for Mac/iPhone? Why can't I replace the battery or install memory
easily on my Macbook? Each of these are shady, manipulative business
practices, and lo and behold, Apple has the greatest market cap (and least
competitive pricing.)

~~~
elefanten
Your whole point about Apple seems to misunderstand the meaning of monopoly.

Which market or product category do they have monopolistic dominance of?

Vertically-integrated, closed product ecosystems are not the same as a market
monopoly.

~~~
Nomentatus
Vertical integration leveraging perhaps only a single patent can certainly be
illegal. Market does not mean "entire product category" in law, (but
enforcement has been so weak in recent decades that's been the case de facto.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Co._v._...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Co._v._Universal_Film_Manufacturing_Co).

------
Hupriene
> We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008
> financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake
> news” business to know that Brandeis was right.

I couldn't really get any farther into the article than this.

How exactly is "fake news" supposed to be a symptom of abuse of monopoly
power?

Are we supposed to believe that Facebook and Google's smaller competitors
rigorously curate content to ensure factual accuracy?

~~~
noooodle
I think they meant Facebook and google being the ones who decide what's fake
news and what's not.

------
davidgerard
> The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998
> Digital Millennium Copyright Act

aha.

> Jonathan Trumbull Taplin (born July 18, 1947) is an American writer, film
> producer and scholar

yeah, this is an op-ed for Hollywood versus the Internet. Reducing or removing
the DMCA safe harbour is their number one goal this year.

~~~
joatmon-snoo
Ah, so that's why his suggestions make no sense.

~~~
mifield
That, and he's a adjunct communications professor with no experience in
antitrust law

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cidibe
The threat of anti-trust to Google is good enough, I hope it's not acted on.
It makes them try to play fairer than they would otherwise eg making customers
can export their data. I feel like they've made more of an effort on things
like GCP to make customers not locked in than their competition because they
are the most in danger of getting busted up.

It'd be too bad though to break up yet another company that does interesting
long term projects with a comfortable cash faucet because it is too
successful.

~~~
shouldbworking
The only true monopoly Google holds is search. They have a lot of successful
products in other venues but nothing that reaches 90%+ market penetration. The
only other thing that's close is chrome browser.

Chrome is already starting to get some "google only" features...Like hangouts
and Chromecast support. If any of these become a necessity to browse regular
sites it will be a defacto monopoly on the web browser market.

Random thought, but one reason I don't like Angular is because it "shapes"
your site exactly how google wants it. Much like AMP, this just makes it easy
for Google to "borrow" your content for other purposes.

~~~
ghaff
Chrome actually has higher desktop marketshare than I would have thought,
about 60%. [1] But that's still pretty far from a monopoly.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/firefox-
overtakes-m...](https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-
microsoft-internet-explorer-edge-browsers-first-time-statcounter/)

~~~
shouldbworking
Consider the mobile market as well, it outnumbers desktop these days

~~~
ghaff
Chrome seems to be in about the same range on mobile though, about 50%.

------
rrggrr
Self-serving. Google news has brought regional, independent and small
journalists to the masses... much to the NYT dismay. Digital media by many,
including Google, has brought with it digital journalism, journalistic data
science, micro-news and multi-source real time news. It's brought readers
print, video and interactive information, and machine consumable feeds. I
learn more from HN daily than I do most news sources I consume directly.

NYT can raise its journalistic and UI game, or it xpcan wither and die. Either
way, there will be more alternatives than ever.

------
protomyth
Let's just say the Mr. Taplin got his way. I cannot imagine any site allowing
any user content without a heck of a screening process. I really cannot think
of a scenario that would allow discourse on the internet except in private
forums or irc channels with no logs.

------
raldi
How could anyone possibly consider Google a monopoly? There's no lock-in
whatsoever. If someone were to build a better search engine, you could switch
to it in seconds.

That's what separates Google from Microsoft in the 90's, AT&T in the 70's, and
the oil and steel barons of yore.

------
scarface74
1997 - Apple Computer Company might as well have been called "The Beleagured
Computer Maker" and Microsoft had an "unbeatable" monopoly in operating
systems and browsers.

2017 - Apple is the most valuable company in the world and now known as phone
company while Microsoft is still dominant in operating systems for desktops it
doesn't matter and a company that barely existed in 1997 has the dominant
browser and becoming the dominant desktop OS in schools.

Facebook is on top now, but so was Friendster and MySpace. Facebook is already
seen as the place for "old people".

In other words. In technology, no one stays on top for long no need for the
government.

------
jtlienwis
Lets see. Intel has had an 80% market share since the days of the 8086. Yet
here we are 30 years later and the cost for a transistor on the latest Intel
chip are THOUSANDS of times cheaper than then. Tech has a pretty slippery
slope for competitors that are not paranoid as Andy Grove used to say. Look at
what happened to Yahoo, the Google of its day.

------
Oletros
Without Safe Harbour, what sites will survive?

~~~
davidgerard
Wikipedia sure as hell won't stand for it, I can (I think reasonably, on my
understanding of editor and Foundation viewpoints) tell you.

------
jtlienwis
I think Intel had an 80% market share for all its days. Yet here we are 30
years past the 8086 days and transistors on the latest Intel chip are how many
thousands of times cheaper than they were then? One big competitor in tech has
to remain paranoid as Andy Grove said to stay alive. Look at what happened to
Yahoo.

------
Ericson2314
Why the hell is this flagged?

~~~
HillaryBriss
i second that. i don't see the sense in flagging this story.

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surrey-fringe
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

~~~
ceejayoz
That's it, I'm starting an article titled "Is Betteridge's law of headlines
true?"

~~~
surrey-fringe
dun do it

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fiatjaf
It's time to stop breaking up any companies.

~~~
smt88
That is absolutely ludicrous. Monopolies are terrible for everyone except the
owners of the monopolies. I've never heard anyone argue _for_ monopolies
before.

~~~
joshuamorton
Being large does not imply being a monopoly.

~~~
smt88
You're attacking a straw man. Someone said we need to stop breaking up
companies, implying that breaking up companies (even monopolies) is always
bad.

I'm not saying large companies are all monopolies. I'm saying that all
monopolies are bad.

~~~
joshuamorton
> I'm saying that all monopolies are bad.

Including regulated, natural monopolies? (I'm speaking of utilities mainly).
Sure they're not great, but I can't think of a better alternative.

~~~
smt88
Yes, those are bad. Something can be bad without having a better alternative
(wars can be examples).

Also, there increasingly are alternatives, like home solar panels.

~~~
joshuamorton
True, but wars don't generally provide necessary services. That is, most
people would like to avoid wars. Most people would prefer to have utilities.

