[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.

[lonelappde]

If Google is a search monopoly (or really and ad impressions monopoly, which is the core issue for competition) that's another issue to address.

[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.