Will this work out for consumers if other tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon, etc. aren’t also broken up simultaneously? Won’t Google’s assets just get sucked up into another existing monopoly and we’ll be right back where we were but with one less choice than before?
I’m genuinely curious.
It won’t. It simply benefits Apple and Amazon who should have been broken up a decade ago
Amazon literally has had a mostly worldwide monopoly
Don’t forget that the right wing has a hard-on for Google. People like them are Apple’s target market (I guarantee their families were the first to get iPads) and don’t forget their really warped questions during the congressional hearings which demonstrated that they had done absolutely no research and had a huge inherent bias. Stupid questions like “if I walk 3m to the right, can you guys see that”. Or, why does president Trump come up as the first hit on Google for loser
I support this, but only if it happens to all 3 companies simultaneously . Otherwise, we’re just transferring more power to Apple (who honestly have followed some Trump style tactics over the last 25 years)
I get the idea behind a duopoly, but from an economics and game theory point of view, but, if applied unequally, another monopoly will simply take advantage.
Capitalism finds a way.
God I hope it ends up splitting off Chrome. I think Google has done a great job with Chrome. But the recent Manifest v3 makes it clear they’re going to greatly degrade their users’ experience for Google’s bottom line. And they’re using their market dominance to do it.
Isn’t Manifest 3 about 3rd party tracking cookies?
Everyones going ape about UBlock, but that’s an unintended consequence.
I’m very happy to have 3 party cookies more limited. FB already tracks me everywhere everywhen.
(But I will be very very sad when UBlock doesn’t work anymore)
That’s what they want to focus on. And hey, that’s great. But there’s no reason they need to limit how a user installed plugin can filter API requests. Ad blockers and the like were tools to help with the ads and tracking issue. So it’s great Google’s trying to help. But it mostly just seems like PR at this point.
What does that even look like as a business model, though? There’s an expectation now that you don’t pay for web browsers. What would a standalone Chrome, Inc. look like?
Something very close to Mozilla in my opinion. They’d have the browser as their core product, a few more apps as a logical extension of that (maybe a mail client like Thubderbird), perhaps Chrome Inc would inherit google’s office suite? That would be a breath of fresh air. Maybe revive a few of Google’s killed ventures that seemed more than promising.
Mozilla basically gets all its money from Google
Chrome on its own does not make Google money, in fact the only reason they care about chrome is because it helps Google search engine. I can’t find the article, but there was an email from a google exec saying something along those lines
Yeah, they could puppet the chrome company if the courts don’t keep a close eye on it. Basically there’s a good chance it would be another Firefox but with way more influence.
Do it! Then, do every single major conglomerate they’ve allowed to form over the last 30 years
Antitrust comes in waves in the US. First, it’s a free for all to let the tech develop freely…then you see the horrors and a time of antitrust kicks in. This would be the 4th wave since the Sherman Act. Let’s hope it’s a good one.
Interesting! Go ooooonnnn 😍
That’s all I had, I’m not an expert, but I hope they go after FB and microsoft too (in case that makes you feel randy like that other guy in the comments) :P
Do you think they’d do Apple?
A human can live their whole life without ever interacting with an Apple product by mistake. I’m not sure about that for android/google/adsense/maps/youtube. It takes a deliberate effort to avoid these guys and I’m still not completely free from it. Slightly easier but still a minefield with Microsoft and FB, especially in niche areas.
You can also read about Lina Khan, the current chair on the FTC side of antitrust.
Keep going I’m almost there
😂
I so want this to happen, but at the same time I’m scared that Samsung or whoever will buy AOSP and enshittify it completely
Isn’t it already licensed under permissive Apache v2? Anyone can fork and carry on the project without the permission of Google, every manufacturer already does as a result of the license.
The OS is but the Google Play backend isn’t. Google has a monopoly over Android by keeping a monopoly on the appstore which dictates that you must allow google spyware to run on your OEM fork to be able to qualify as a “Secure Device”.
Several Chinese OEMs have China only variants that don’t use GPlay and also ship with some some other cool apps, but they can’t sell it globally because Google says “screw you” since no one publishes apps outside Gplay, and because several major apps refuse to run on Googless android which GrapheneOS has threatened to sue
This is still just the tip of the iceberg though. Google already got sued for GPlay monoply last year and reached a $700 settlement just for developers.
On top of that, several of Android’s underlying features are considered archaic and dated. They always have huge kernel patching issues because no OEM (especially Qualcomm) releases the source code for proprietary binaries, meaning no one easily upgrade kernels (practically impossible for FOSS android, expensive for OEMs). The android runtime is imo a piece of crap compared to some low power optimized linux distros. ADB is still needed to delete system apps. Settings lies about permissions, which themselves are poorly sorted. Oh and Google hired the dev behind Android rooting (magisk) so they could kill magisk hide which circumvents system app abilities to tell if you are rooted and therefore not worthy of running proprietary apps.
There’s so much more the deeper you go, it’s just really hard for any contender to step up because of the sheer might Google has over the market. They have so much power that they coerced Samsung into dropping RCS support which makes Google Messages the only app on android that supports RCS, even though RCS is an open OEM standard from 2008
invest in Sherman Antitrust Act memes now
Unless Savannah is some girl he knows, not sure this lands. Savannah, GA wasn’t really ever ravaged in the Civil War or anything.
Atlanta’s the one that got leveled.
Like that is what you point out, and not the fact they got the wrong Sherman pictured lol. John Sherman ≠ William Tecumseh Sherman
Here you go. Right guy.
Maybe if all their shadiness hadn’t been allowed in the first place they wouldn’t have been able to become a monopoly.
But please, I beg of you, do Adobe next.
I remember the days of google being a cool startup that had just made news releasing gmail with a whopping 1GB of storage making everyone go crazy for the invites. It’s a strange feeling.
Yeah, I thought Google was so cool around 2004. Now I can’t wait for them to become irrelevant. I need to stop using “googling” as a verb…
No,
AmazonNestle next.Hell, do all the “to big to fail” megacorps.
I worry what a broken up Adobe would do to workflows. One of the reasons I can do what I do is because Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere all work with each other.
Now if we want to save Behance and Frame.io, substance, Mixamo, etc, I am all for that.
I don’t know how deeply their different programs integrate with each other (I don’t do video or illustration seriously) but one would hope that it might encourage them to adopt more open standards and formats. For example, in my photography workflow I can import and catalogue a RAW image with Shotwell, which passes it through to my RAW developer (Rawtherapee), which in turn passes it through to my raster editor (GIMP). These programs are all developed separately from each other by people with much less resources than Adobe, so I think it’s a matter of choice rather than a technical limitation.
It would depend on the actual file formats. For example I can import a live after effects file into premiere and all the updates I make will apear on premiere’s timeline, without needing to render out. The same goes for bringing photoshop or illustrator files into After Effects. I guess we’d just have to rely more on third party plugins that connect these programs like Overlord
Separate the search engine from anything that stinks of advertising so it can return to what it’s supposed to do: return the most relevant results.
Because even appending
udm=14only gets rid of promoted links and in-page advertising, it does f**k-all to correct manipulated search results.Can you elaborate on the business model of a search engine that has no ads?
Let’s not make them a business. Search Engines are fundamental core services for the modern globalized and connected world. It’s just like your post-office service. Make it an internationally owned and funded non-profit organization with open-source and the goal of enabling the unrestricted sharing of knowledge over the internet.
What does the creation of a multi-national state owned search engine have to do with Google? I presume nations have the resources to do that all on their own.
What would you suggest the Google search engine be allowed to do to profit as a business?
There’s no suggestion. There is currently no way a search engine can be a viable modern business model and a good tool at the same time. It could potentially be a good business model and a decent tool even with ads, but only in a world where we accept that things can’t grow forever.
The only business model that really works is charging people to use it, like Kagi is doing.
like Kagi is doing
I haven’t seen much to suggest Kagi’s results are better than Google’s. But that’s as much a function of time and horsepower as anything.
I would argue that the private model is what’s fundamentally wrong with modern search. Nationalize Google and make it a public utility, like any public library or publicly financed research institution. Open up the front end source code and let people apply their own filters and modifications, rather than locking everything down to force feed you sponsored content.
That’s the only real way to fix search.
Nationalize Google and make it a public utility, like any public library or publicly financed research institution.
This would be great. Running a search engine is very expensive though.
The Internet Archive is probably the closest thing we’ve got to something like this. It’s a non-profit but AFAIK they don’t get any government funding. They’ve got the scrapers and could probably work on a search engine project, but I doubt they could afford it in their current state. They’re spending a lot of money at the moment due to companies filing lawsuits about Internet Archive archiving their content (and a bunch of content is gone from the archive forever as a result
Running a search engine is very expensive though.
The federal government spends about $1.3B a year on advertising and another $37.5B on data collection, with Google being a major recipient of both budgets. Nationalization would save a small fortune.
And for the economic tailwinds that efficient Internet research provides, I’m willing to bet we’d see significant economic benefits that eclipse the base cost, not unlike with Amtrak or the USPS.
The Internet Archive is probably the closest thing we’ve got to something like this.
Them and Wikipedia, definitely. Both make for excellent models of non-profit free-at-point-of-use information services.
Yeah, let’s see how much worse corrupt bureaucrats can make this already rotten turd of a product!
Not trusting the EPA because Exxon has done such an awful job.
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A decentralized search engine, running on something like what Locutus (neo-Freenet) is intended to be, can work without a business.
Don’t ‘break it up’, nationalize it, and do the same with all these other giant corporations.
Profits could support UBI instead of encouraging billionaires.
Unfortunately one of the big ideas republicans have conditioned half our population into believing is that government itself is basically a flawed idea and that our government will not ever be able to do anything right. So it would be a tough sell to say the least.
And also as an American, I imagine many people around the world would not be thrilled with the prospect of the US government owning the web browser they use.
There is a kernel of truth in that sentiment though. The government has a tendency to be grossly wasteful of resources, but I feel this is offset by the fact that they aren’t profit driven in their goals and less likely to skyrocket prices to line shareholder pockets. Corporation are also “wasteful” in a sense, where they charge insane markups over actual cost and refuse to pay taxes on them, the difference here is that corporations move their profits offshore and out of Americans pockets, where the government always ends up paying private contractors more than they should. In the end corporations do more with less while government controlled services are always WAAAAAY cheaper than their private counterparts for the consumer despite them being inefficient.
This is the part they don’t get. Do you want zero waste and ever rising prices for the sake of some worthless rent seeking billionaire cocksucker, or do u want some inefficiency, but you pay less overall. One makes someone else rich at your expense, the other allows you an affordable life while preventing another billionaire from existing.
Not like the CIA doesn’t already have full access to your browsing history already
Can’t disagree there. It’s not like Google is trustworthy or resists the govt/CIA. But I do still think the official change in ownership would hit people differently.
That’s not in anyone’s interest. It’s the surest way to have a thousand national search engines which are all shitty. National walled internet Gardens etc
Break it up instead
How would there be thousands? There aren’t thousands of nations, and everyone would still use Google.
If you break it up, that’s how you get thousands of shitty versions.
Maybe some countries might disable Google if it was owned by the US, but I have a feeling those countries already have their own issues with Google as it stands now.
I just think if the monopolistic corporations are too big and too essential to take down, then nationalization is a solution with many more positive traits than negative.
That hasn’t been the case if you look into what happened with Microsoft and browsers.
The other thing is
everyone would still use Google.
Is actually wrong, and what they proved with the antitrust case itself. A huge chunk of the anticompetitive activity was Google paying to be the default because people don’t change the default.
Not sure where you’re getting the idea that there would be thousands. But as for the shitty part, it’s already shit. Google’s search engine utterly fails at it’s job, and not just because of the rise in LLM/SEO. They waste billions on fancy new AI searches that nobody wants, they accept bribes to get pages to the top of the search, and even when you’re looking at an actual for real result, it often isn’t even what you want.
When a critical industry fails to do its job, it is time to nationalize it. With that said, the criticality of search engines is debatable. I’m cool with breaking it up at a bare minimum. The list of corps in need of getting broken up is way to long.
The idea stems from the propaganda tool that would be if it were state owned. Other countries would seriously discourage or ban its use, but as it is useful they’d need a replacement. Hence a thousand shitty ones.
The idea stems from the propaganda tool that would be if it were state owned.
How is it not currently a propaganda tool? It’s owned by shareholders like blackrock and vanguard. At least with it being nationalized it’s possible to control it democratically.
Our options are:
- An open source nationalized search engine (which would promptly run into problems with SEO, because anybody could see what would get their site the #1 spot). This option can’t honestly be called propaganda, because everyone would know what weights if any are placed on results.
- A blackbox search engine that has been nationalized, with limited ability of the people to know/modify the algorithm, which could be called propaganda, especially if this is controlled by a failed democracy.
- A blackbox search engine owned by the likes of blackrock and vanguard, with no ability to democratically modify the algorithm
None of these options are good, but the third is clearly the worst. The rich should not dictate what results pop up.
Other countries would seriously discourage or ban its use, but as it is useful they’d need a replacement. Hence a thousand shitty ones.
There is only ~200ish countries out there depending on how you count it. Most of them share search engines across borders, and that is unlikely to change, because if they were to see a nationalized search engine as a security problem, they would have already seen google as a security problem. So even if every third country made their own, there would only be a few dozen search engines.
But even assuming there would be 1000 search engines, 1000 shitty search engines is better than 1 shitty search engine with 85% market share. At least with the 1000 shitty engines there is competition. As of now, google is free to mess around with their black box engine however they like, showing and hiding what they like, all at the behest of blackrock, vanguard & company.
So I don’t see how this would be to everyone’s disinterest. Killing google and nationalizing it is exactly in everyone’s interest. Though like I said, the criticality of search engines and therefore the need for nationalized search engines probably isn’t there.
How is it not currently a propaganda tool? It’s owned by shareholders like blackrock and vanguard. At least with it being nationalized it’s possible to control it democratically
It is somewhat, but it’s not as bad as if it was run by Trump and co.
Which is how x would become the whole internet.
Which is why the best option. Which you didn’t include, is splitting Google up. Split the advertising from search. This is the surest way to make them cater to us. Especially if we can force them to compete with other search engines.but it’s not as bad as if it was run by Trump and co.
The U.S. isn’t a functioning democracy though, which is why that’s a problem. And just because a nationalized service is controlled democratically doesn’t mean it is controlled by a president. There are a lot of different ways to have democracy.
And we no longer live in an era of horse and buggy, so democracy can be far more direct than it has in the past.
In addition, there is already a multitude of positions filled/appointed/approved by the president. The administrator of NASA, the administrator of the EPA, etc. There is nearly 500 federal agencies like this.
So this would not be a problem unique to a nationalized search engine. So the solution is an actual democratic control of these agencies/administrators, not a wanna be dictator.
Another thing to keep in mind, what I’m proposing is something that would only ever work in an actual functioning democracy. So therefore I am not proposing this within the U.S.
Which you didn’t include, is splitting Google up
As I said, I think it is debatable if a search engine is even critical enough to warrant nationalization. I don’t think the need is there. And as I (admitted retroactively edited my comment to say), I have previously stated that I’m totally cool with breaking up Google at a bare minimum. The rest of this is just about the hypothetical of nationalization.
Split the advertising from search.
Short of publicly funding private companies, this would just result in a subscription model, which nobody wants. It’s either ads, subs, or public subsidization.
This is the surest way to make them cater to us.
It’s a half measure. The only real way to make them cater to us (aside from previously mentioned nationalization) is regulation, workplace democracy, and so on.
Even if Google got turned into a small company that only ever does search, they’ll still be a business running under capitalism, with all of the profit seeking motives that got us to where we are now.
I think what we’re running into here, is that you want to talk about removing capitalism. Which I’m all for, in the context of a functional democracy. Which isn’t the case in the US or anywhere in the world.
Until we know what that looks like, and its parameters you won’t admit how bad nationalising a search engine is without other privately owned alternatives.
Lol… Democratically.
Just because the U.S. is a joke of a democracy doesn’t mean democracy as a whole is a joke.
*Constitutional Republic.
Why would we support UBISoft? They haven’t released any good games recently
“Give me the fruit of some else’s labor!!!” Gross.
Right? Fucking billionaires
Welcome back from your 6 month bad take hiatus.
Ignoring the snark in your comment…
I assume you take issue with UBI?
Would you feel different if we ‘required service’ for UBI? For example, some countries have mandatory military service. If we nationalize these giant corporations, we could make working there a way to qualify for UBI.
Do you think UBI is just taking money from the average person and giving it to lazy people who do nothing? Or do you enjoy the separation of the rich while the rest of us struggle for scraps? Do you understand that the UBI would apply to you as well?
Or am I missing deeper thoughts given to your comment?
I don’t worry much about people who have more than me. I am grateful to enjoy my work and my life. I don’t want the government to steal from me and I don’t want them to steal from others either. Even in the black and white world of marxists, exploitation of labor just moves from the oppressors to the government. The government becomes the oppressors. It has never worked, it will never work. People are naturally motivated by profit. It’s built in. Messing with that or short-circuiting the work-reward system is unsustainable.
I don’t agree with that guy but doesn’t that apply to the people running these companies. Profit can only be made by exploiting labour. There can’t be any other way
Profit can only be made by exploiting labour. There can’t be any other way
This is a bad take and suffers from overly-simplistic thinking. Corporations are force multipliers for labor and the economic value of your labor is increased by joining forces with others.
Why is it a bad take. How can there be any other way. Where exactly is profit created from?
Profit is created from the output of productive labor. The amount of profit varies depending on the efficiency of the market and the company.
Companies are force multipliers for labor. The company’s profit comes from that force mulitplication, not by withholding profit from the worker who generated it.
Who’s labor?
Who is labor?
How about we start restricting how many businesses a company is allowed to buy out in a year. Maybe allow like 1-2 mergers a year. There no reason we should allow one company to buy everyone and then kill their products and services leaving the consumers holding the bag that will no longer function because the server is gone.
I’d go further, restrict the market cap for businesses so they have to spin off if they get too big. Add to that a value limit for the number of boards you can sit on so 30 companies can’t be controlled by the same people.
One thing that I’ve always found interesting is that silicon valley has a common start up strategy that is basically: do well enough to get bought buy your bigger competition. Basically, be a threat so your VCs can cash in when a Google, Facebook, etc buys you.
I’m other words, Silicon Valley has a start up culture that feeds an anticompetitive/anti-trust ecosystem. No one complains because they are all making money. It’s the users who slowly suffer and we end up were we are not with 5 companies running the modern web and Internet infrastructure.
A dog that barks doesn’t bite.
“Considering” means they want to get something from Google in exchange for not breaking it up.
“you kids break it up or I’m gonna do it for ya”
- your mom probably, also the justice department
Don’t stop with them
Crush corporations, swiftly and without fanfare rebuild capitalism with worker co-ops, seize the means of production without all that stagnation and failure that usually follows.
rebuild capitalism
Replace, yes?
Let’s just choose our words carefully for now or the people with the money will get spooked and pay the people with the missiles to start blowing things up.
Will cooperatives really be able to offer good services or will they become corrupt sooner or later?
History says corrupt…
Best news I’ve heard all day! Break up Meta, too, while you’re at it!
Amazon.
Disney, Bayer, Unilever
It would probably do Google a world of good, depending on what gets split or spun off. A lot of Google products have unrealized potential that’s hamstrung by poor leadership and privacy issues. Maybe at least some of their products will be able to thrive on their own.
Now break up Coca-Cola, those tax dodging fucks.
A tiny bandaid on the capitalism that’s literally destroying the planet.
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