[deevolution]

How do you break up alphabet?they will just move their corporation over seas, set up in africa and avoid any monopoly breakers. The government has no power over these companies. They would have to raid the offices and send the ceo to prison before alphabet agrees to break their monopoly.

[toast0]

Restructuring the company as Alphabet with a set of subsidiaries was a start to setting up lines to divide the company along.

The way to divide up Google is into the ad network, the search engine, operating systems, and everything else. Allow them to contract each other on public FRAND terms to start with, but setup annual reviews to consider a bigger hammer.

If they play games with moving house to avoid jurisdiction, ban payments to and from them.

[option]

you do understand that ad network pays for search engine, right? And operating systems isn’t exactly a profit generator either...

[g00gler]

You can also say the search engine and operating system drive the ad network.

Google the search engine could charge an ad network a lot for the right to show sponsored results and provide analytics.

Android/Chrome could charge a lot for user data, analytics, have their own mobile ad network and app store. Android could also start charging a licensing fee to vendors

Etc etc

[zepto]

How does any of this help anyone?

It seems like it just creates a lot of inefficiency.

[g00gler]

More companies, more jobs, more competition.

For example, other ad networks can buy ad placement in google search.

[zepto]

Since google will still be the monopoly search engine, all the profits will still be captured by Google.

There may be some completion in ad networks, most likely racing to the bottom since margins on ad-tech will be razor thin.

This will do nothing but make things worse.

[satya71]

It will allow other ad networks to compete. And other search engines to get ad revenue.

[zepto]

Other search engines already get ad revenue.

[SpicyLemonZest]

The market didn't always work that way. Until Google monopolized it, search engines and ad networks were independent pieces competing on an open market. For example, one of early Google's successes was getting Yahoo to license its search engine.

[adventured]

> Until Google monopolized it, search engines and ad networks were independent pieces competing on an open market

It was always a mixture of both scenarios.

Yahoo prior to using AltaVista, Inktomi or Google had its own search tech - going back to 1995 - and its own advertising network.

AltaVista had its own search tech and its own ad network.

Lycos, a top 5 portal at the time, had its own search tech and its own ad network.

GoTo.com, very popular in its day, was both a search engine (acquired) paired up with its own famous ad system.

For several years AOL flirted on & off again with their own search tech, initially based on WebCrawler, prior to and after their deal with Excite. They also ran their own ad network.

[klipt]

Google tried monetising search in other ways and apart from ads, none of them would have kept the company profitable. Even duckduckgo which considers itself the "anti Google" gets all its money from ads.

[lonelappde]

That's not a response to parent comment, which is about competitiveness in the ad placement market, not ads on Google Search.

[toast0]

Of course an ad network would pay a search engine for clicks (and a premium for exclusivity, perhaps). There's certainly some synergy, but it's also quite possible to run them as separate businesses.

Operating systems might have to get lumped into the 'everything else' bucket if they don't generate enough revenue through charging manufacturers or getting paid by ad networks.

Splitting up these things may not make any of the markets (search, ads, OSes, other consumer services, other enterprise/cloud services) more competitive, but it would prevent using monopoly positions in search and ads to subsidize Google products in other markets.

[fmajid]

Structural separation: you can't run a search engine and at the same time services that are the subject of it. For Amazon, you can't run the marketplace and at the same time sell own-brand (AmazonBasics) products. For Apple you can't run the app store and also sell apps.

It's in Warren's program, although of course the devil is in the details. Lina Khan is the thought leader on these issues (I am sure there are others, but like Hal Varian and Carl Shapiro, they tend to get coopted by the monopolists).

[zepto]

This is a completely destructive plan that will enable international competitors who aren’t subject to it to simply take the tech industry away from the US.

[option]

A lot of people just don’t get it. The US is the most powerful country in the word because of its technology and economy. Losing that will pretty much mean that others (likely non-democracies) will rule the world

[zepto]

100% agreed - it’s completely bizarre that people don’t see this.

[cannaceo]

It's pure insanity. In many parts of the world there is no divide between government and business. That's what these companies are competing against.

[lonelappde]

There's no reason that foreign companies that don't follow US law must be allowed to operate in US.

[zepto]

True - but then there is no reason the counties those companies operate in should continue to trade with the US or supply the resources it needs.

Seems a lot like communist isolationism.

[GhettoMaestro]

Yeah that's not how laws work. Sure, they can move overseas, but for the business they conduct in the US they would need to comply with the post-breakup laws (assuming that happened, I don't think it will).

And if they don't comply? Fairly simple. Indictments. Raids. Arrests. Asset seizures. Public shaming of employees and executives working for the company. Etc.

[lovich]

Moving jurisdictions isn't a magic spell that grants protection. As long as a company is deriving value from something in a jurisdiction, then the government of that jurisdiction has power over that value because they can physically control it.

Companies have outsized power these days imo, but they still aren't at the point to compete with the United States military and resist the actual violence that be visited on their assets if they do not comply

[WWLink]

The same way that most companies end up when they leave California. The engineers don't move away. They start up new companies that end up being competition to their old employer. Half the time, after some years, the big old company buys out the new competition and ends up with offices in the area again.

This happens all the time in the space industry lol.

[bryan_w]

Except in this case it would be the government sending the message that if you become too successful, we'll find a way to break you up.

That would drive startups away permanently

[dickeytk]

People are going to be reluctant to start companies because Google gets broken up?