DOJ may want to break up Google

If somehow this happens, the big question is, how many splits? How many lines do they draw, and where do they draw them?

Clearly they want to separate search and advertising, as that was the crux of the case. But advertising is the only place that makes any money. If they split that off by itself, the rest, which is the good parts, may completely crumble.

What of the small, but important, products that Google hasn't killed yet? I guess Google Flights is arguably part of search. But what of say, Google Fonts?

The goal is to increase competition in the marketplace. A noble endeavor. But all those other Google products, if left to hang out to dry, stand a good chance of dying or being absorbed by competitors.

Well and good, there may be increased competition in the realm of search and online advertising. But if Google Cloud Platform can't stand on its own, and merges into AWS or Azure, that's less competition. If Chrome and Chromebooks can't stand on their own and Microsoft acquires it, that's less competition.

No matter how the split goes, whichever parts of Google's business are not in the same company as the advertising business will need to find a way to profitability.

Do apple at the same time and I'll support it.

How long are we going to allow the 30% apple tax to continue? See the recent patreon debacle for how it hurts people (not to mention the 30% being eaten as apple as well...).

You could switch from using Google's web products today. Literally.

I think Google, what we initially knew as the search engine company, should spin off the advertisement and the browser division. Not making any statements of the rest of Google, it's just that I'm most familiar with the impact of those 3 together.

Google Chrome in the past greatly pushed the quality of web browsers, but now their roadmap isn't for the best of the web, it's for the best of Google.

Their browser is going to kill a system (Extensions v2) that will dramatically reduce the quality of adblocking, which will benefit their Advertisement group.

The same browser tried to get rid of a system (3rd party cookies) that reduced the useability of tracking for other companies, while they have much more data to link to you (DNS, Search, Mail, etc).

There's plenty of bad blood on the topic/reasons why Google isn't a perfect white knight.

But man, I'm gonna miss the hell them when they're gone.

The ability to use the big giant firehose of money to make amazing often open source things isn't bad. It's been like 90%+ great, in spite of our frustrations. Chrome is an astounding browser that sets powerful expectations for how good hypermedia ought to be on every on this planet. Android is an incredible mobile OS that powers a bogglingly large number of devices that just would never have gotten made. Google hardware isn't perfect but Pixel has been a brand leader for ages, pushing the way forwards again & again.

Without Google as a giant omnibus company whose top problems include figuring out how to spend all that money, I don't know who else is going to have the largest to invest in the technology world's general health & thriving.

I remember when they tried breaking up Microsoft into Windows and Office... now look at them...

Windows and Office / 365 / Skype, and Xbox and Activision / Mojang / Zenimax / Rare / Obsidian, and Bing and Edge... and Nuance... and Github / npm... and Azure... and LinkedIn... all under one roof.

I think I'd get laid off if this happens. I'm hard pressed to think of many products that make sense split off. They've always felt like science fair projects that barely break even, but the search ads monster money machine keeps funding us as long as we vaguely promise to funnel people in.

How do Microsoft get away with being a Monopoly?! (And don't tell me about the wrist slap they got in the 1990s.)

If the purpose would be to bust monopolies, being next to impossible to find an email delivery service as a startup which sends emails successfully to Yahoo/Gmail would be more of a hurdle.

Even if that means directly setting up a service with the US government to ensure deliveries, would be a bigger step towards getting new technology companies.

Apple and Microsoft and Amazon next. These companies can simply copy the features of smaller players, take losses for years, bundle products, use existing enterprise contracts, etc to keep growing without fair competition. Break them up, fine them, tax them.

Good initiative but only Google? Here is but a concise list of companies that are in desperate need to be broken apart to foster innovation and entrepreneurship:

Amazon: E-commerce, AWS, Twitch.

Microsoft: Azure, Office, Windows, Linkedin.

Facebook: Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook.

Google's monopoly position makes them invaluable to US intelligence and related psyops. They won't be broken up in any meaningful way. At most this is a threat to gain further control.

I can only imagine what it would look like to break up the main users of google3. What happens to borg? Colossus and Spanner?

Would this potentially mean getting meaningful customer service? Looking at admob, ads, and play console...

[dupe]

Actual article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/doj-consi...

more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41239596

The real question is whether Harris or Trump will stop the DOJ from breaking up Google.

Is the game to pretend that you're going to get rid of Khan to keep the cash flowing, then to boost her at the last minute for the anti-corruption vote? If it's not, I can't understand why they're not falling over themselves to praise her. Better said, I can't understand why they aren't publicly praising her unless they hate what she's doing and can't wait to get rid of her when nobody is looking - Harris with her media shield, or Trump with the carte blanche he'll have to fire everyone in this administration.

Biden used to pretend like he didn't know Khan, or what she was doing. Maybe he wasn't pretending.

The ultimate re-org

Google has the closest thing we have to the Bell Labs of the past that invented the transistor. If the DOJ breaks them up, we will lose another valuable industry research facility.

If a company wins the game of capitalism it should be nationalized. If no one can compete with you anymore the market is better of without you. Print the stacks of money, pay who needs to be paid.

The alternative is for them to gradually absorb everything. You cant compete with them.

We've done the great privatization experiment. We can experiment with the opposite. We can fabricate arguments for and against anything, as many as we want. Only time will tell.

If the US gov takes over Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Apple it would go a long way justifying $35200000000000.- in debt? Credibility would improve dramatically.

What would happen if those companies worked together as one big government department? All the logos replaced with big bird... ehh... I mean the great seal.

All the money men gravitating towards market companies. Play the game again.

Search is actually useful, like roads. No need to have a billboard every 20 meters. It is useful as~is. Who could resist the temptation to make curvy roads so that travelers get to see more billboards?

They are behind the curve at this point.

Right before the election, what a coincidence. I hope they remember that if Harris wins. But I doubt it.