[LeifCarrotson]

The power that Google used to build those other lines of business was not artificial, but it was very effective. The existence of that power is anti-consumer because no one else can afford to build anything better, because Google makes more money than your hypothetical new world's best product ever by charging absolutely nothing for their competing product.

Step 1, in 1997, was to build the world's best search engine.

Step 2, was that running the world's best search engine allowed them to create an ad network that most accurately knew what the largest number of viewers were looking for, best ad platform and massive revenue. All others follow from that.

Steps 3 and on were to start an email service (what are people talking about), create an image search tool (shows what pictures people are looking for), acquire/develop a mapping application (where are people and where are they going), acquire a video hosting platform (what are people watching), create a mobile OS (get more people on the Internet and especially on their parts of it), create a web browser (get more people on the internet and especially on their parts of it), etc. etc. etc. Those other properties only work because they're financed by and create value for Google's ad network.

[garyfirestorm]

It sounds like you want to punish them for being successful. I still haven't seen the harm to the consumers. They build search and ad networks and email and android. I use them all the time. I now have access to youtube and infinite amount of information on it on my fingertips.

[cj]

> I still haven't seen the harm to the consumers.

IMO the main problem is the existence of an institution that is (arguably) more powerful than any government in the world.

That's not necessarily a problem on its own.

It becomes a problem when those same institutions have a very small number of people with specially concocted classes of shares that give people like Zuckerberg majority control of the company despite owning < 30% of actual shares.

I don't want to live in a world where 1 person can have such immense and unchecked power. Especially when that 1 person is immune from, for example, being removed as CEO.

I'm not sure if it's still the case today, but I believe Sergy / Larry had 51%+ control of the company despite only owning ~10% of shares.

[autoexec]

> IMO the main problem is the existence of an institution that is (arguably) more powerful than any government in the world.

Which is why the US government has been collecting all the data they can from google. It's a perfect means to perform mass surveillance on everyone and google has no power to refuse to hand that data over or even to tell anyone about it.

[fn_bb_sqr_pnts]

if we allow that this combination of market power (search + ads + channels of distribution like youtube, android) wld lead to mass surveillance, what prevents other companies from arising and abusing this power? Other countries would hv to go along. I don't think trading Google dominance outside the US for Baidu solves anything.

[autoexec]

I guess if google went full evil they'd have enough blackmail material to take down just about anybody at this point including politicians. The backlash if they were caught would be huge, but honestly what would we do about it? Switch to Bing who is just hoping to get enough data on us to do the same (and leveraging data collected from our own PCs to do it)?

They only way I can think of to solve this would be to limit the amount of data that companies are allowed to collect, but can we expect the government to vote for that until google does start to abuse what they have on us? Right now they can take that data and benefit from it as well.

[romanoderoma]

> It sounds like you want to punish them for being successful.

People are worried by their power.

Too much power is dangerous.

Google works at global scale, if even the US want to stop them from becoming even more powerful there must mean something.

If you think about it the NBA draft was invented to avoid that the best team chose the best players year after year

It's what you call "punish their success"

I cal it "enable competition"

[garyfirestorm]

Facebook came after google, and managed to compete in ad business, got orkut and google+ discarded pretty quickly. Playing devil's advocate here, but doesnt that prove that no matter how big/powerful you are, some random kid could still take you down. Look at Big 3 and Tesla...etc

[romanoderoma]

Facebook ad business have become a thing after an enormous amount of money have been poured into the company

Google is king of the keywords (products and services), Facebook is king of targeting (brand awareness)

But they are not really competing against each other on the contrary the gap is widening

Google made 61 billions more than FB in 2018 and 65 more in 2019

That's why FB is moving towards a marketplace based on their own cryptocurrency

[TheOtherHobbes]

People who produce content for YouTube and have had content - or entire channels - removed for no good reason might disagree.

Also, there's the issue of public trust. We have no choice but to trust Google not to skew its search results. It's not obvious this trust is justified.

Google can literally make individuals, companies, and events disappear from the Internet. You can put up your site or your business and if Google removes you from search you might as well not exist.

A moment's thought will suggest that this is exactly the same as the YouTube problem, but on a larger scale. And that's an unhealthy amount of power for a corporation that isn't subject to any oversight or accountability.

[Siira]

> charging absolutely nothing for their competing product.

Most people prefer this. What you're suggesting is to subsidize the rich by removing free products thus making everyone share the costs for the premium services.

I.e., this is not a local maximum preventing the global utopia of premium services for the rich. The current design serves the world better than that exclusionary, elitist dream. (Though the market is actually open for such elite products as well, when the rich actually want to pay their own fees; Hey.com is a thing.)

[LeifCarrotson]

In no way am I suggesting that we "subsidize the rich". I'm suggesting that we do the opposite, that we restrict and regulate the richest monopolies (Google) to preserve freedoms for the poor.

We're very much at risk of being a world in which people either have to be rich or not participate in society to avoid privacy invasion by companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. If you're poor, you can have a free email address, but that comes at a cost of allowing Google to read your email (and pass it to their ad customers) so they can serve you ads. The answer to this hegemony is not "Well, Google provides free email addresses, better let them keep doing what they're doing so we don't discriminate against the poor", it's to regulate them so they're not allowed to read your emails, or otherwise provide some alternative service that can provide email addresses for cost plus a small profit margin.

And yes, I know that in this particular example there are other free or inexpensive email providers, but they're not world-dominating products; the market is distorted because the few willing to pay are signalling something pretty strong by rejecting the free, high-quality option offered by Google.

[gundmc]

> If you're poor, you can have a free email address, but that comes at a cost of allowing Google to read your email (and pass it to their ad customers) so they can serve you ads.

Google doesn't show ads based on email contents.

"When you open Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to show you the most useful and relevant ads. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads."

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

[saagarjha]

This is a relatively recently change.

[Siira]

Why would Google continue to provide free emails if this has no benefits for it? Even if it continues because it has already paid most of the cost and the small marketing benefit will be worth the maintenance, it will not develop the product further. This also sends a signal to all the economy that success will be punished, creating distorted incentives and huge deadweights. The reality that you advocate is very much giving the elites what they want, with little innovation and choice power for ordinary people.

> otherwise provide some alternative service that can provide email addresses for cost plus a small profit margin.

As I said, for email specifically, because we already have the necessary interop, there are solutions such as hey.com. What more do you want?

PS: It's much more efficient for your government to just subsidize open-source solutions based on their usage levels.