
U.S. states lean toward breaking up Google's ad tech business - TangerineDream
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/states-lean-toward-pushing-to-break-up-googles-ad-tech-business.html
======
Barrin92
Good decision. Then do the same thing to AWS and Amazon's media branch, and
then go undo the whatsapp acquisition. Then stop platforms from subsidizing
competing products while they charge competitors high fees like Spotify vs
Apple Music.

The increasing trend of large tech conglomerates to use one money printing
product like AWS or search or the Apple Store to tactically snipe competitors
to destroy or acquire them is absolutely abysmal in the long run. I don't care
if it increases consumer prices by 10 cents or whatever, it's time to look at
the long term health of the ecosystem overall. It's really the private analog
to a state capitalist country subsidizing its own firms while foreigners have
to compete on a one-by-one basis. Everyone considers that to be detrimental
when it happens between two nations, I don't see why it's not detrimental when
it happens in the tech industry.

~~~
missedthecue
>"The increasing trend of large tech conglomerates to use one money printing
product like AWS or search or the Apple Store to tactically snipe competitors
to destroy or acquire them is absolutely abysmal in the long run."

That's literally how every company ever in any industry since the dawn of
commerce has operated. You use profits to grow and diversify. You can't
perform capital expenditure without capital...

~~~
metrokoi
Deliberately targeting growing competitors using things like predatory pricing
[0] is not the same as growing and diversifying.

[0] [https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/who-should-
ant...](https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/who-should-antitrust-
protect-the-case-of-diapers-com/)

~~~
saiya-jin
Still, it has been part of capitalism since its dawn... not saying its the
best for us all - far from it, but no huge multinational corporation grew to
its size by playing nice and polite.

The thing is, amoral behavior can be seen left and right, through large part
of history of Silicon Valley (remember Gates & Jobs & Xerox).

To me as an end consumer, Facebook has a true monopoly and progressively
shittier products compared to Google - ads comprising half of my feed, their
core product is still broken and buggy in many places but that's another
topic. Recent UI changes made it much worse product. Google looks great
compared. But again that's very personal and limited view.

~~~
buzzkillington
>Still, it has been part of capitalism since its dawn...

So was slavery. Yet somehow we managed to legislate that away.

~~~
marcinzm
Those competitors are fueled by VC money which let's them price their products
below sustainable levels. In other words they're doing predatory pricing just
as much as Amazon. Banning it will probably help Amazon more than it hurts
them.

------
nugget
I took a course taught by a former Microsoft exec who worked at the company
before and after the DOJ's anti-trust settlement. He said the settlement
profoundly changed the internal culture of competitiveness and innovation.
Lawyers were embedded on many product teams, review cycles became slower, and
execs became complacent. I think the only way Amazon or Google ever start to
stagnate is if a similar fate befalls them.

~~~
normalnorm
> I think the only way Amazon or Google ever start to stagnate is if a similar
> fate befalls them.

Google has been stagnating for more than one decade. What have they created
since 2010 that is even remotely interesting, let alone in the interest of
society?

And Amazon is Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering. Who cares?

~~~
mav3rick
Oh yes Photos Tensorflow Spanner ...not even remotely interesting. Waymo. I'll
wait for you to cherry pick another time frame. 99% of people here would work
at Google in a heart beat but love to write snarky comments here. Many
admittedly jealous of the fact that they couldn't get in. Have fun peddling
the hate.

~~~
dang
Please don't respond in the flamewar style regardless of how wrong or
provocative another comment was. It just makes the thread even worse, and it's
against the site guidelines too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

------
kanox
I don't understand how a google breakup would work. Would it just split off
the ad business from ad-supported businesses like gmail and youtube?

Some google products could stand on their own (Google Cloud) but most would
have a lot of trouble. The worst case is open-source offerings like Android
and Chrome which only make sense as part of a wider corporate strategy.

~~~
manfredo
> Some google products could stand on their own (Google Cloud) but most would
> have a lot of trouble.

Maybe I'm busting out my tinfoil hat, but I think that's the point. YouTube
and other businesses wouldn't be able to survive without Google's ad money.

In my experience traditional media companies are the ones most heavily pushing
for Google's breakup. Is this due to genuine fear of monopoly, or due to the
desire to eliminate a competitor encroaching on their revenue sources?

~~~
kart23
I'm still confused at what exactly they're trying to accomplish.

So youtube and google drive basically die, some of the most useful free
services available right now. I think this does more bad than good and I don't
think any American citizen would support this given the effects.

~~~
manfredo
YouTube is taking a lot of ad money that would go to cable and newspapers.
People's attention is finite. Less competition for eyeballs.

~~~
bagacrap
I don't really want to go back to watching ads for heartburn meds and Chevy
pickups. At least Google shows me something I might be interested in.

------
tracerbulletx
I will say both of the eCommerce businesses I worked at were 100% in thrall to
google's decisions. Unless you are a brand the size of amazon that can get
attention directly, everyone just does a google search. Which mean's if google
decides to do something that impacts your ranking or ads you might just be
completely out of business with in a matter of days, or slowly bleed out. They
might even decide to compete with you or partner with one of your competitors.
It's like if the owner of the streets could make a deal with walmart to build
more lanes there and always have construction in front of your building. Or
even not have a turn off. It controls online commerce basically.

~~~
Mistredo
It almost feels like internet search should be a public property in the same
way roads are.

~~~
andromeduck
That makes no sense. Search is more like a map or address book or perhaps a
pamphlet station. What they choose to prioritize/display is inherently
editorial. Why should that powe be given to the government?

~~~
lexs
You mean like the U.S. Geological Survey? National mapping agencies are very
common [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_mapping_agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_mapping_agency)

~~~
andromeduck
They exist but it's been a long time since mapping were an exclusive privilege
- which is to say a government search engine might make some sense but
favouring it with funding to the extent of roads likely doesn't.

------
somethoughts
I feel like Google would have been better off if they had stayed out of the
newspaper aggregation business and stuck with Search and long tail media
content, GCP, GSuite and did R&D in AI (Waymo, Verily) and AR/VR. There is
just too much baggage when wading into politics.

I think there are too many well connected, well funded media companies that
are lobbying and retaliating behind the scenes as they see their news
publishing business models get disrupted by the Google News aggregator. Couple
that with politicians frustrated by the Google News opaque aggregation
algorithm and that leads to anti-trust rulings.

~~~
alecb
Their issue isn't that they are in the newspaper business. Their issue is that
they own almost all of the ad tech business from top to bottom.

~~~
spaced-out
If that's true, why is their market share in the online advertising dropping?

[https://www.investopedia.com/news/facebook-google-digital-
ad...](https://www.investopedia.com/news/facebook-google-digital-ad-market-
share-drops-amazon-climbs/)

------
jeffbee
It is fairly amazing that this action would come against a player with a
minority and shrinking share of a market where prices are rapidly falling.
Antitrust actions under US doctrine are supposed to benefit consumers, but how
can this action do anything other than increase profits for Facebook and
Amazon?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> Antitrust actions under US doctrine are supposed to benefit consumers

Note that the viewpoint that antitrust is SOLELY about benefit to consumers,
and not also about restricting corporate power, is relatively new in US
antitrust jurisprudence (around the 80s I think), and there are currently many
scholars reassessing this viewpoint.

Edit: Some more info about current reassessment of the Chicago School of
Antitrust: [https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/reassessing-chicago-
school...](https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/reassessing-chicago-school-
antitrust-law)

~~~
jeffbee
Chicago School antitrust doctrine has been the direction of US jurisprudence
throughout the existence of the online advertising industry and predates all
of the market participants. Even if we throw it out, what's _any_ ethical,
moral, or legal reason to break up Google's business? Surely it can't be that
the government has an interest in boosting Verizon's market share.

~~~
topkai22
There used to be a pretty strong belief in the separation of media production
and distribution, originating in the break up of the studio system. I'm not a
historian or legal expert here by any stretch, but at some of the arguments
supporting this were about ensuring the limited platforms (movie studios and
broadcasters at the time) would have to allow competitive access for
distribution of content.

Google is in a position similar to being a major broadcaster- it is a
gatekeeper of content, whether through search, YouTube, or ads. While Google
started off with a pretty radical view of free speech that resulted on a
pretty content, that has waned in the last 5-10 years.

The most obvious of this is the de-monetization of YouTube channels. While I
hardly disagree with their choice to distance themselves from many vitriolic
personalities, I've also seen them demonetize science channels for doing
experiments involving explosives and smaller channels they just didn't want to
bother monitoring. The theoretical reason for this- their ad partners don't
want their ads accidently running on offensive content.*

There isn't any real alternative to YouTube. Searching for how to videos on
google often results in a page of only YouTube videos. Content producers
cannot directly negotiate interstitial ad content. The old-time concerns about
a single broadcaster dominating the marketplace of ideas is absolutely
applicable here. Breaking up Content, Search, and Ads would go a long way to
ensure access to the platform.

*As well they should, and I actually kind of LIKE that its become harder for offensive crazies to make money, but I'm providing the argument for breaking up the content, search, and ads.

~~~
johncolanduoni
Wouldn’t an independent YouTube have the same problem? They would still be
beholden to the companies purchasing the ad space and demonetize channels that
risk upsetting those advertisers.

~~~
topkai22
Not if they were required to allow content creators to utilize alternate ad
platforms to inject ads before or after the run. Sure they'd still have the
option to kick the creators out of search or off the platform entirely, but
that potentially enables alternative hosting platforms.

There used to be (and might still be) limits on how much national advertising
national networks could require local stations to carry, on the theory this
made local stations more independent (and in tune with local needs). This is
my 21st century version of that regulation.

Like I said, I'm not even sure I'm in favor of such a break up, but I can see
the historical parallels.

------
enitihas
More like lean toward a future where Bing (giving MSFT a monopoly on search,
OS, Office Suites, browsers and whatnot), or worse, giving Chinese companies
the lead in the rest of the world, and maybe even the US (if the US doesn't
regulate them out). I don't see how a lot of Google products survive without
the ad revenue.

1\. Android -> Difficult to compete against a well financed Chinese competitor
here for whatever new subpart of Google takes over android.

2\. Chrome -> Again, either MSFT or a chinese fork.

3\. Gmail -> Outlook, or maybe some chinese/russian mail service

4\. Google Cloud -> This might be gone fully. I don't see them having any
advantages if they can't piggyback on the world class google Infra.

Even if the US regulates out Huwaei and Alibaba, almost all of Asia and Africa
will surely be dominated by big Chinese tech, rather than small US tech if the
US big tech get broken up. Not to mention they might dominate Europe too.

~~~
DethNinja
I completely disagree with you, in reality more competition will open up and
smaller US/EU firms will take place of larger firms.

This will result in decreasing inequality and help the general society as
well.

There is a good reason why anti-trust laws exist people. Billionaires are
already a policy failure, we don’t need trillionaires in future as well.

~~~
enitihas
> smaller US/EU firms will take place of larger firms.

Why do you think smaller EU/US firms are more likely to take their place than
Big Chinese firms. The Big Chinese firms will have economies of scale and more
capital.

> This will result in decreasing inequality and help the general society as
> well.

I don't know how is that going to decrease inequality. Even if big tech is
replaced by 5 small tech, there is no way on earth it will decrease
_inequality_. Do you have any basis for such an extraordinary claim?

> There is a good reason why anti-trust laws exist people. Billionaires are
> already a policy failure, we don’t need trillionaires in future as well.

Sure. In the totally globalised world, you can decide you don't want big
companies. This will just ensure a Chinese company dominates the market.

~~~
DethNinja
I’ve been using software products past 25 years, and been developing them for
quite a while, in my opinion scale of a company has a minor relevancy to
software quality after a certain size.

I never worked at google but I’m willing to bet giant firms like Google have
bunch of problems with their organization size which limits their code
quality, product delivery times, and their agileness. A smaller, more agile
company can definitely produce better products than Google (case in point:
protonmail).

It will decrease income inequality because profits will go to different
shareholders / employees.

~~~
enitihas
> , in my opinion scale of a company has a minor relevancy to software quality
> after a certain size.

Possible, but I didn't talk about software quality, I talked about number of
users.

> (case in point: protonmail).

I think your case undermines your argument. Protonmail is not a very
successful product. It is behind even many paid mail services. If that is your
idea of success then sure, many small companies will become like protonmail,
while tencent mail might become the new gmail.

------
astan
I am really worried about Chinese cyberwarfare while we keep shooting
ourselves in the foot. Just look at how easy it is to spy on millions of
americans with things like TikTok and Huawei. Google could be a lot worse at
the size it currently is. I view Google as almost a kind of university that
tries to enhance technology by "poaching" good people and in some sense,
allowing them to work on whatever they want while guaranteeing them a very
good wage. Aside from the standard Chrome, Android-tier projects, let's think
about all the stuff that they've done that has been pretty radically useful.
I'm not talking about products, they do a terrible job with maintenance and
shutting down products is very infuriating to any user. But it is almost like
research projects. So let's just focus on technical contributions to the
software engineering field.

Golang, gRPC, Protobuf, Kubernetes, Tensorflow, WebRTC, QUIC protocol, very
interesting innovations in camera technology such as NightSight, Google Maps
which has changed my life completely. Furthermore, millions of contributions
to open source projects and protocols, so many security improvements by the
Security & Cryptography teams that I have on occasion worked with.

Personally I wouldn't work for Google because I don't enjoy the kind of
atmosphere where there's no real "mission". But doing this much innovation is
impossible unless you are funded by the government, or have a money printing
business.

------
dang
The submitted article was [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-google/u-s-
states-lea...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-google/u-s-states-lean-
toward-breaking-up-googles-ad-tech-business-cnbc-idUSKBN23C2NZ). There's
nothing in there beyond "CNBC reported on Friday, citing sources". That broke
the site guidelines, which ask: " _Please submit the original source. If a
post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter._ "

We've switched to the CNBC article now, but it clearly should have been the
one submitted in the first place.

------
game_the0ry
Google, Amazon, FB are not the monopolies that you should be worried about.
They are fun to talk about and tech is sexy, but there are bigger problems -
ISPs / telecoms, for example.

Remember the baby bells? In 1982, AT&T (ma bell) lost an anti-trust lawsuit
and was broken up into 8 companies (the baby bells).

Guess what happened since? If you guessed they merged back together, you would
be correct. The baby bells merged back together and became 3 companies - AT&T,
Verizon, and CenturyLink.

For those who are customers of AT&T - how do you like your service? Is it as
good as Google?

Oligopoly is the new monopoly. Financial services, airlines, oil majors,
media, pharma, auto, etc. Those are the industries that need breaking up. You
pay for their services / products and they price fix (airline baggage fees,
overdraft fees, etc), you don't even pay for Google. You can easily use
duckduckgo and delete your FB / Insta with no consequence.

Edit - to address the comments saying that the tech companies should be broken
up: sure, but how exactly? Google and Facebook in particular. You don't even
pay for their services, so you (the citizens) can't claim consumer protection
from their business. Only the companies / individuals that pay for Google and
Facebook ads can.

Again, I get the frustration of the times and misinformation sucks, but Google
and Facebook are not the cause. They are the means of distributing info
(including ads that are sometimes just fake new), not the root source of all
evil.

~~~
old-gregg
You are making a good point, and yet...

> For those who are customers of AT&T - how do you like your service? Is it as
> good as Google?

Since you asked... AT&T is way better, here in Oakland and also in Austin
(fiber). It's always up and there's actually decent customer support you can
call. Their cellular service has been great too. Meanwhile, Google's search
has turned into a content marketing delivery machine, and Google Drive web UI
still cannot catch up to Windows 95 File Explorer features&performance.

But if you asked me which company can ruin my life or my company's future due
to a glitch in an algorithm, the answer will be Google, not AT&T. I worry that
Google is allowed to control both the search and the web browser everyone
uses. I also worry that as Youtube is becoming increasingly more important for
video, they'll control the "future of TV" as well. I am less worried about
"dumb pipes" which is what AT&T is to me, especially with the latest migration
to encryption for everything, even DNS.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _AT &T is way better_

Seconded.

I can also call AT&T and, eventually, reach someone. If I'm angry enough, I
can ask to be routed to cancellation. (They fix things quicker.) If things go
awry, I can threaten, and act on the threat, to escalate matters to my state
regulator.

None of these are options with Google.

~~~
techntoke
That is actually false. You have to pay for AT&T. If you pay for G Suite then
you have access to live support.

~~~
8note
Live support for what though, your YouTube account?

~~~
techntoke
Any service that is covered under G Suite.

------
mrkramer
I think government should not be breaking up big successful companies only
because they control >50% market share. What Microsoft did with IE was nasty
but Google acquiring DoubleClick, AdMob, YouTube etc. is not nasty at all. If
Google for example made the same exact product like YouTube and then leveraged
its massive resources and distribution channel to destroy YouTube and claim
the market share that would be problematic but otherwise I don't see a
problem.

Punishing the best student in class only because he or she is the best is not
cool at all.

~~~
sumedh
> If Google for example made the same exact product like YouTube and then
> leveraged its massive resources and distribution channel to destroy YouTube

Like what it did to Firefox?

~~~
mrkramer
Is Mozilla for profit or non profit I don't even know but they didn't complain
back in the day when Google Chrome took over.

------
kediz
How do you achieve this technically? Monorepo would be a pain to break.

Or just break up Google into two but let both of them keep the access to the
same repo? Then what would this achieve?

~~~
mayank
> Monorepo would be a pain to break.

It's generally acknowledged in technical circles that antitrust action is a
highly effective way to break up a monorepo.

~~~
kediz
It would be a case of LDD (Lawsuit driven development). The engineers would
need to redo a lot of the infra and products

------
summerlight
The core issue here is that this regulation doesn't directly introduce any new
competition while it only tries to weaken Google's network effect. Network
effect is a new corporate tool to fight against antitrust regulation; it's not
that straightforward to handle it within the scope defined by the US antitrust
jurisprudence especially when it actually benefits the consumers (in this
case, advertisers).

I personally believe that we need to deal with those aggregators but not sure
if this kind of breaking up will result anything other than lost opportunity
costs from several years wasted from a lawsuit. I hope DoJ to develop a new
effective framework to regulate aggregators but it's very unlikely since
William Barr seems to be mostly driven by political motivation.

------
rch
This effort seems fundamentally out of touch, misdirected, and politically
motivated.

------
trianglem
What a bunch of nonsense. You can advertise anywhere and no one has a monopoly
over it. This is just scared media companies running their propaganda so they
can protect their failing cable advertising markets.

------
m0zg
I'm pleasantly suprised to find relatively little knee-jerk in the comments.
For the record, even as an ex-Googler and as a business-friendly conservative,
I support the move and not just for Google but for all of the FANGs. It's
verifiably impossible for anyone to compete with these companies in the
markets they dominate, so they'll sort of have to compete with themselves
after the breakup, and perhaps allow more competition to emerge (or enter the
market from abroad).

Disclosure: I do not own any stock in Google. I do own stock in Facebook and
Amazon however.

------
MR4D
A clean Google breakup seems to look like :

1 - Search,

2 - Youtube,

3 - Gmail

The rest can go anywhere, as they don't seem to be powerful enough to control
a market (although that may change in the future).

For Amazon, it seems clean to do it like this:

1 - AWS,

2 - Amazon (shopping website + logistics)

Audible & IMDB are nice, but to me not big enough to be trouble. Audible might
be, but I don't know enough about that market.

Facebook seems straightforward:

1 - Facebook,

2 - Instagram,

3 - Whatsapp

Apple would be hard to break up, but allowing other stores on their devices
might be all that's needed.

Microsoft seems to be under the radar compared to 20 years ago. Splitting
Office and Windows seems less important to me now than it did back then.

~~~
1propionyl
> A clean Google breakup seems to look like:

> 1 - Search,

> 2 - Youtube,

> 3 - Gmail

And where does advertising go? I doubt any of those 3 are profitable on their
own.

~~~
MR4D
Search. It doesn’t really work without it.

Plus, that allows YouTube to have its own advertising, or a third party
advertising network.

------
29athrowaway
The problem when you break up a domestic giant is that opens the door for
foreign giants to enter the market.

What would you rather have, Amazon and Google, or Alibaba and Baidu?

------
jackcosgrove
US antitrust law uses the test of whether consumers are worse off as a measure
of anti-competitive practices. This assumed that consumers and customers were
one and the same.

Does this doctrine still hold given that many online business models put
consumers and customers in different buckets? Most of Google's services are
free for consumers, but customers are less fortunate.

------
mensetmanusman
Regulators have said this is going to be challenging to do in court because
laws currently are focused on the consumer in a very dollars and cents kind of
way.

As many have mentioned below, this will increase cost to consumers because
there is an inherent connection between price and economies of scale. This is
why so many startups (and their backers) are willing to lose money on every
sale for the first decade to build dominance.

Now, if politicians are going to fight to raise prices for their constituents,
they need a strong argument that will convince Joe Sixpack it needs to be
done.

I challenge anyone here to describe the benefit for the average American in a
politically feasible way (many of whom are struggling to pay bills, struggling
to affordhealth care for their children, or dealing with drug addiction and
racism, etc.)

------
esoterica
I wonder if any of the tech workers here cheering on the breaking up of Google
or Facebook realize that the obscene FAANG compensation packages are only made
possible by their massive profit margins, which are in turn enabled by their
pseudo-monopoly status.

Monopolies are "bad" because they have the pricing power gouge their customers
at the expense of boosting profits. But Google's and Facebook's customers are
advertisers! When you support "breaking up tech monopolies" you are basically
saying programmers should get paid less money so advertising companies can buy
cheaper ads. What an utterly ridiculous and self-destructive thing for tech
workers to advocate.

------
keiferski
I don't know enough about antitrust law, but it's my (possibly wrong)
assumption that it is legal to use the profits from Product A to subsidize
lower prices for Product B, a sort of "sell stuff to Peter in order to give
Paul a discount."

I imagine it would be difficult to determine if this is happening, but it
would seem logical to say that if this subsidization leads to an unfair
advantage over competitors (who otherwise couldn't match the low price), it
should be regulated, at least according to antitrust theory. The problem for
Google is that this describes a solid chunk of their product portfolio.

------
kgin
Other commenters are suggesting that this would mean the end for YouTube and
Gmail.

My understanding is that a hypothetical breakup here wouldn't mean that
YouTube and Gmail would have no ads. They would become clients of an
independent "Google Adtech" company.

That certainly changes the economics of the business, but ad-supported Google
services would be here to stay.

What would likely change is Alphabet would no longer profit from "Google
Adtech's" ads on third party services.

------
occamrazor
If you carve off the ad-tech business, what revenue-generating activities are
left at Google? I don’t understand what kind of break-up would make economic
sense.

------
machinehermit
I have started using DuckDuckGo more and more but the biggest issue I have
with it is that DuckDuckGo is such an incredibly poor choice for the naming of
a search engine brand.

The results almost seem better in many instances for what I am actually
looking for. We are never going to say "Just DuckDuckGo go it" though. It
sounds just so stupid.

------
nickreese
What happens to shareholders when a company is broken up? Do they end up with
shares in both companies?

------
ravenstine
> Google, Amazon, FB are not the monopolies that you should be worried about.

Not at all?

> For those who are customers of AT&T - how do you like your service? Is it as
> good as Google?

Google's "support" for their products has one of the worst reputations.

~~~
jasonvorhe

      Google's "support" for their products has one of the worst reputations.
    

Unless you pay for it, e.g. for Google Cloud Platform.

------
Vysero
"companies like Google censor conservative content"

Certainly, isn't all their censoring.. in fact, I am less concerned about it
than other things.

------
ericmcer
Can they do this with all sectors? Instead of targeting the last sector they
haven’t completely brought to heel.

------
iron0013
Which is preferable, politically “neutral” search results, or search results
that prioritize truth and accuracy? I prefer the latter, which is what google
provides now, but I’d be interested to hear from those who would prefer the
former.

If one party says that little green aliens are going to raise ATM fees and
another party doesn’t, should google be obligated to return search results
supporting both perspectives?

~~~
blockmarker
I do not trust Google to give me accurate and truthful results. Not the
engineers, not the executives, not the company. They are my political
opponents.

They are people and Google is still a corporation: they can all be bought,
infiltrated, deceived, manipulated and threatened. I would not allow such a
centralized point of failure for all information and knowledge to be
controlled.

Given that not even soft sciences academics, who are supposed to be erudites,
can separate themselves from their biases and look at things objectively, and
their whole job is supposed to be that, I do not trust that the engineers at
Google are able to do that.

And finally, simply giving an incredibly small elite what the rest of the
population can see and know, is a bad idea.

These are the reasons why I oppose prioritizing "truth and accuracy". It would
not be such thing.

I, personally, would add that just the two American political parties deciding
what is politically neutral is pretty bad. Even if the Republicans are
nominally on my side, I do not trust such people to treat fairly all other
politics than the ones chosen by the leaders of each party. And all the other
points I have raised wholly apply even to those on my side of politics.

It would still, however, be better than letting my political enemies
controlling the internet. If the roles were reversed, you would think the
same.

~~~
downerending
"Truth and Accuracy" sounds like a good name for a government ministry. Wonder
if it's been done.

------
tosser0001
Would this benefit China or Chinese companies in any way that would be
detrimental to U.S. interests?

~~~
jjcon
I’ll probably get hounded for saying this here but:

I genuinely believe that one of the biggest things harming American society
right now is adtech. From social media to traditional media they have become
obsessed with clicks and view time. This leads to negativity and extremism
getting promoted and sensationalism overtaking authentic journalistic
approaches. Not only that but it means a population that is getting constantly
bombarded with terrible, often overinflated stories. Why? Because all this
sells because the human brain is wired to focus on danger before all else.

China doesn’t have this same problem because it controls the media and censors
social media. From a purely psychological standpoint this is a positive but
there are obviously deep implications for what that censorship does to a
society as well.

To answer your direct question, any losses by Google due to this will be
dwarfed by the positive implications for the American society. I’m not saying
this will fix the above problems but the amount of good it will do (in
conjunction with other legislation especially, ie link tax and repealing
section 230) is greater than the amount of bad by a mile.

------
bogwog
About damn time regulators start paying attention to the blatant anti-
competitive practices all the tech giants have been engaging in for years.

And if you're one of those people who are worried that doing this would hurt
innovation, don't be. The free market was what got us here, and regulators
will ensure the market stays free so we keep moving forward.

------
joelbluminator
Anyone good with investments here? How worried should I be if I own alphabet
stocks?

~~~
austincheney
If this works out like it did for the breakup of Standard Oil you will be very
wealthy.

~~~
mikestew
I don't mean to be snarky, but do you think a comparison to a company that was
dissolved over 100 years ago by people long dead is apt?

~~~
vorpalhex
Standard oil may have a different name now, but it still very much exists and
those children companies are still amongst the wealthiest companies in the
world.

------
alkibiades
if you comment on a post like this and work at the company it’s talking about
you really should disclose it

------
moneywoes
Does Facebook not bundle their products?

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sytelus
How much of a connection of this with Trump's pledge to bring on antitrust
after the videos of Google leaders in distraught got leaked> I understand
Trump can't decide to bring on antitrust just like that but Republican
machinery can activate all red states to rally for it. Unfortunately, many
blue states would join as well. I suspect if Trump gets 2nd term, big tech
would look very different in coming years given they consider them as powerful
machines for progressive movement. Very likely Amazon and FB might also get
targetted on similar grounds.

PS: I'd like to remain this discussion remain apolitical and have more
rational discussions than folks leaning on either side.

------
coldtea
Amen! E.U should do the same...

~~~
tiborsaas
Break up to separate countries? We tried it, it sucked.

~~~
coldtea
No, break up Google.

As for EU breaking up into separate countries, that would be great too. As
opposed to a big entity that passes laws and handles monetary policy in favor
of 1-2 top dog countries and big coporations.

The whole reason the EU was founded (as ECC and before) was to contain Germany
[it was a stated goal of the politicians and diplomats involved]. Some irony,
huh?

------
mayneack
Seems like it just refers to (but doesn't link to)
[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/states-lean-toward-
pushing-t...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/states-lean-toward-pushing-to-
break-up-googles-ad-tech-business.html)

~~~
dang
Yes, that was bad. Changed now. More at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432441).

------
4636760295
I feel strongly that ads are a net-negative to society in their current form.
They provide some value (a way for people offering products to reach an
audience) but the current implementation doesn't work.

Ads make sense in certain scenarios: for example, if I'm explicitly searching
for a product I want. But in most cases it's just noise and it incentivizes
the wrong behaviours.

------
yuhong
Good WSJ article:
[https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Google_Agonize...](https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Google_Agonizes_on_Privacy_as_Ad_World_Vaults_Ahead)

------
nojito
Very interesting!!

I wonder if through the course of the investigation we finally get a
definitive reason why Alphabet was created.

My gut tells me that it is to hide data sharing between entities.

