FTC may break Google up

bartosimpsonio

bartosimpsonio

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Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts senator, has been among the most outspoken about targeting Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon, saying earlier this year that they have too much power and should be broken up. The companies are “using mergers to limit competition” by buying competitors, she said, citing Facebook’s deal for Instagram, Google‘s acquisition of mapping company Waze and Amazon.com’s takeover of Diapers.com.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ng-to-break-up-companies-amid-big-tech-probe?

My take:

This is urgent. Google is turning the WWW into AOL with standardized sites, distorting the link graph, mandating a standard single way to do things that turned the web into a massive google adsense content farm.

Ads, search and other departments should be broken into separate companies. The conflicts of interest are way too blatant as it is.
 
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They'll still operate in conjunction with one another. I don't think breaking them up will do much of anything. Breaking up companies was more impactful pre-internet, when physical location mattered.
 
JamaicanMoose said:
They'll still operate in conjunction with one another. I don't think breaking them up will do much of anything. Breaking up companies was more impactful pre-internet, when physical location mattered.
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Look up the history of AT&T. The companies can't collude. The FTC is watching.
 
  1. The percent of searches available as organic traffic from Google is steadily declining, especially on mobile.
  2. Paid clicks tend to increase whenever Google makes changes to how those results are displayed, then slowly decline as searchers get more familiar with spotting and avoiding them.
  3. Google’s ongoing attempts to answer more searches without a click to any results OR a click to Google’s own properties are both proving successful. As a result, zero-click searches, and clicks that bring searchers to a Google-owned site keep rising.
 
bartosimpsonio said:
Look up the history of AT&T. The companies can't collude. The FTC is watching.
Click to expand...

Big Tech already colludes with each other, any rival that isn't bought is deplatformed. Gab was booted from both the google play store and apple app store for being a serious competitor to Twitter. Paypal, Microsoft, Shopify, and Godaddy also followed with bans to limit their growth.
 
ExperimentalSEO said:
Big Tech already colludes with each other, any rival that isn't bought is deplatformed. Gab was booted from both the google play store and apple app store for being a serious competitor to Twitter. Paypal, Microsoft, Shopify, and Godaddy also followed with bans to limit their growth.
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No, it was because their first submission of Gab as an app contained pornographic content. Their follow-up submission violated hate speech rules. Gab is most known for being a gathering place for neo-Nazi and white supremacist dissenters from Twitter and other social media where they had been removed. Want to not get your app removed? Don't promote hate speech. Remember, "freedom of speech" is not "freedom from the consequences of speech". In this case, consequences = no presence on app stores.
 
Even if they do break up G, I don't think it's going to change our lives on a micro-level.
 
Sherb said:
No, it was because their first submission of Gab as an app contained pornographic content. Their follow-up submission violated hate speech rules. Gab is most known for being a gathering place for neo-Nazi and white supremacist dissenters from Twitter and other social media where they had been removed. Want to not get your app removed? Don't promote hate speech. Remember, "freedom of speech" is not "freedom from the consequences of speech". In this case, consequences = no presence on app stores.
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Gab wasn't promoting hate speech, they promote a platform where anything legal is allowed to be posted and it's up to individual users to ignore anyone they don't like. Twitter is full of "hate speech" as well, but they are part of big tech so they get a pass.
 
Sherb said:
I would picture any forced breakup of Google by the federal government would align closer to Standard Oil than to Bell System.
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Good point. The Rockefeller of search.

ExperimentalSEO said:
Big Tech already colludes with each other, any rival that isn't bought is deplatformed. Gab was booted from both the google play store and apple app store for being a serious competitor to Twitter. Paypal, Microsoft, Shopify, and Godaddy also followed with bans to limit their growth.
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As Sherb said, Gab had many other serious issues. Their platform is almost pure political trash. I see some very toxic content on social media and almost always it's linked to Gab or the user has a little frog on their profile.
 
Hello Google,

After review of your appeal, we're unable to reinstate your company.

Your account has been terminated due to multiple violations of the anti-monopoly laws. We’ve reviewed and confirmed these violations.

Company break ups are associated with developers and may span multiple company registrations and related business services. Do not attempt to register a new company. Any new accounts will be closed and your business registration fee will not be refunded. We recommend that you use an alternative method for distributing your search engine in the future.

Thank you for your understanding.
 
That letter, no warnings, just like they have raised their middle finger to developers for years.
 
If Google and Facebook want they can break their country, politicians and the whole politics. The time where governments had total control over companies is over. They could break AT&T and Standard Oil, but Google and Facebook have so much power in form of data, especially meta-data and also to control the public opinion. Exactly for this reason the government would never ever break them. Instead they are taking advantage of it. They are definitely working with intelligence agencies.

The question is very simple: What can I win? What can I lose? The worst thing, which can happen to the USA is, when they break Google and Facebook, and then a Chinese or Russian social network/search engine comes a long and mines all the data. Just think about it.

About Amazon it is more realistic.
 
I don't know that breaking up these companies will change much either. I think limiting how, what are tracked and what can be deemed relevant results would offer a better balance.
 
bartosimpsonio said:
Good point. The Rockefeller of search.



As Sherb said, Gab had many other serious issues. Their platform is almost pure political trash. I see some very toxic content on social media and almost always it's linked to Gab or the user has a little frog on their profile.
Click to expand...

There are genocidal postings on twitter that have been up for over 5 years.
 
nakamura said:
If Google and Facebook want they can break their country, politicians and the whole politics. The time where governments had total control over companies is over. They could break AT&T and Standard Oil, but Google and Facebook have so much power in form of data, especially meta-data and also to control the public opinion. Exactly for this reason the government would never ever break them. Instead they are taking advantage of it. They are definitely working with intelligence agencies.

The question is very simple: What can I win? What can I lose? The worst thing, which can happen to the USA is, when they break Google and Facebook, and then a Chinese or Russian social network/search engine comes a long and mines all the data. Just think about it.

About Amazon it is more realistic.
Click to expand...

I find it hard to believe that Facebook or Google would try to blackmail the US government. Their stock would collapse 50% upon news of such a thing. Also they couldn't blackmail their way to impunity tens of times. They might be able to pressure one or other politician but not a whole commission.

KappaCo said:
I don't know that breaking up these companies will change much either. I think limiting how, what are tracked and what can be deemed relevant results would offer a better balance.
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They're publicly traded companies. If their financials get separated they can't collude without the public knowing. All EDGAR filings are public, you would be able to see all their transactions.

Google search would have to do some acrobatics to collude with Google ads like they do today. Also other ad companies would probably have access to google search, not just google ads.

ExperimentalSEO said:
There are genocidal postings on twitter that have been up for over 5 years.
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Yeah but not on the scale and proportion of other radical networks. Most of twitter is acceptable, with some exceptions. The other networks are mostly unacceptable with few good exceptions.
 
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