[roenxi]

I don't particularly like Google, but I think that the rumblings here amongst the comments about bringing the government in for antitrust or regulating are much worse ideas than leaving Google alone. I like to be ahead of trends, I've been gently phasing Google out of my life. It isn't causing me any problems, there are alternatives for most things. They are currently pushing all the people I watch off YouTube, so wherever they go to I'll follow.

If a person trusts Google (or YouTube) to decide what they see or host their content, then that is the person's choice. Google have a long history of unchallenged market dominance because they provide, frankly, better service than the alternatives. Not because of shady tricks, but because Google is a technically amazing company. But at some point they will cease to be technically amazing and sink back to being average, and then the market will open up space for some competitors.

I'd love to see innovative advertising models to break AdWords and redirect profits from Google to the advertisers. That'd be an improvement. Getting the government and judges involved to decide how to rank search results is not an improvement. I do not want any US administration, or US Congress, or US appointed judge deciding what I should see in my searches. Nothing good will come of that.

[torben-friis]

I think your view ignores many arguments, like the giant network effects that these kind of social companies have, the giant infrastructure costs of hosting video at scale that make it really hard for adversaries to rise, or the technical skills required to move your data out of some google services, if it's possible at all.

Even if those barriers were overcome, the exceptionality of such a feat as taking down one of the big guys makes it really likely that the competing services that potentially succeed google, facebook, amazon et all are going to be just as monopolistic, so it's not clear at all that we would end up better off at all.

> I do not want any US administration, or US Congress, or US appointed judge deciding what I should see in my searches. Nothing good will come of that.

That's of course a matter of preference or ideology (and perhaps partly me being a European) but I do prefer government oversight over monopolies rather than unregulated wild west business areas - admitting it's prone to failure, as both systems are. I do have issues with the US part of it, but we don't have supranational regulatory bodies - perhaps something that we should work for, although it is very unlikely to happen successfully considering the ever diverging interests of the US, the EU and China.

> They are currently pushing all the people I watch off YouTube, so wherever they go to I'll follow.

Out of curiosity, who do you regularly watch that has been pushed off the platform?

[nonbirithm]

I keep thinking that either YouTube needs to continue to exist, or one day we'll have the potential to lose so much content at once. Entire companies predicate themselves on the fact that they can upload to or stream on the large services. It's a hard dependency not many think about consciously.

The sheer amount of technological progress that gets consolidated in the largest companies creates a lot of societal dependencies that would be catastrophic to undo. It reminds me of the work done to lift families in developing nations out of poverty through new jobs, then being unable to move those jobs domestically without it looking like there is now a tangible entity to blame for plunging those families into poverty again.

[fakedang]

We really don't need China in the equation, since they have chosen an altogether unique and separate ecosystem for their shit. The big ones IMO are the US, EU and India.

[torben-friis]

I mean, I'd really want us to work towards global communication, rather than a second steel curtain. But whatever works.

[fakedang]

It's perfectly alright to want a global comms network, but the Chinese don't want to work for that goal. If a global network were to be established, China's position in it would be akin to that of the UK in the EU (as outlined by Sir Humphrey wittingly in Yes Minister).

[roenxi]

> ... but I do prefer government oversight over monopolies ...

Harshly but speaking honestly, this attitude is why Google is in America and not in the EU. Google is better at ranking search results than any parliament or regulator on the planet.

They are in America because the US government knows to leave them to it.

> Out of curiosity, who do you regularly watch that has been pushed off the platform?

No-one formally banned yet, but people like Chris Martenson, Joe Rogan, a couple of libertarian types. The usual suspects. I don't like their odds of being on YouTube in 5 years. They 'spread disinformation'.

If I'm wrong then I'll stick with YouTube. I don't mind what they decide to do, even if I have opinions on whether it is good or bad.

[torben-friis]

>Harshly but speaking honestly, this attitude is why Google is in America and not in the EU.

America certainly has a better track record launching innovative tech, that's indisputable. But I don't think the reasons can be waved away as simply "lack of regulation". There are dozens of variables: some related to the different market environment, like having to support dozens of languages to reach the whole European market vs being able to reach more than 300 million users just with english in America; some related to European bureaucracy making harder to start businesses and raise capital; some related to the culture in the US being more entrepreneurial...

In any case, American companies being better at disrupting the market doesn't really take away from the fact that it's lead to a monopolistic situation, and that said situation is having unwanted consequences.

> Google is better at ranking search results than any parliament or regulator on the planet.

The point is not that a regulator should rank results, but that there should be a set of enforced good practices regarding how the search/ranking system and the company's personal interests can interact, how should the data extracted from users be handled, etc.

In theory, if we end up deciding that social networks, messaging systems, internet search and the like have become so necessary to consider access to them a basic right, I wouldn't be opposed to developing public-funded alternatives freely available to the public.

In practice however, I fully agree that the chances of public bodies feature matching private alternatives are almost nil, and that's just one of the many points that make it unfeasible. So we have to settle for making sure that private actors play clean, and possibly funding potential alternatives to help the market be more diverse.

[buran77]

> They are in America because the US government knows to leave them to it

That's great up to a point but I feel like that point is in the past. Companies need freedom to innovate but beyond that point they will use the freedom to commit abuses. Incidentally the government also represents the targets of those abuses.