this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Break up Google.
Browser is one company. YouTube is another. The search a third company. The ad one has to be the richest and should be it's own.
Then once you cut down Google into manageable companies, go after Facebook.
Antitrust regulations have been neutered in the US since the Reagan administration, which is how we have not only unfettered tech monopolies, but telecommunications regional monopolies and a national oligopoly (that is, an organized cartel, but legal)
Since most federal regulatory departments are captured, and serve their industries rather than the public. Mileage may vary re: state regulations.
Every problem in my life somehow seems to find its way back to him
While Google failing would definitely cause a disruption, I don't think they are too big to fail. I've done some experimenting with other search engines and Kagi & Duckduckgo are both sufficient.
Gmail is very popular, but everyone could find another email provider. Losing YouTube would hurt but we have other large sites with infrastructure that could cover. Facebook, Twitter, reddit, Instagram, tiktok, etc. Together I think they could take on the bandwidth
As for the browser, I'd be glad if Chrome died. We need more browsers. Chrome dying would force all of the derivatives to do something else. Vivaldi, edge, brave, etc would all need to either switch to Firefox or a project for a new browser would begin
I think while disruptive Google failing would ultimately be good. We have anti-trust laws for a reason and we need to actually use them. If we don't enforce them, why did we pass the laws in the first place? The market stagnated and the consumers lose. Plus we fall behind pragmatic countries like China who are blazing forward full speed. Their government is more than willing to turn the $$$ hose to innovate in technology. Here in the US we rely on the market. But if we hamstring the market with a monopoly... just a recipe for disaster in my opinion
There are many other email providers besides gmail out there...
Yeah, and none of them let you keep your existing @gmail.com address. Which means you'll have to update it everywhere. That's the massive problem.
That's just a bit of work. Keeping an evil monopoly because of inconvenience that isn't really a great argument in by book
You're right, but the argument was that it wouldn't be that disruptive, and that's not true.
I am old enough to remember the times the same thing was said about Hotmail and other sites... people will adapt.
Not one alone. But work will probably be split between more sites. And actual limitation are just decision that were made and can change.
Anyone who hasn't planed for this with an account on another service, at the very least like proton, kinda deserves whats coming due to the signs.
I'm no soothsayer and even I can see that Google is making enemies with governments, China, US, and Europe. You can survive one or two but not all three.
The world is much larger than just the wealthy nations. Where I'm from, the internet is synonymous with Google, emails with gmail and online video sharing with YouTube.
Digital literacy is hard to worry about when you are struggling to improve your life. Even outside of harsh situations it's not okay to expect everyone to literate themselves.
People like that need to be educated more than any other and liberating them of that responsibility only harms them, it does not help them.
Nobody is claiming it wouldn't be disruptive, but the question is if the long term it would be better for society. Monopolies are not good and the longer we allow them to survive, the more ingrained they become.
Free market capitalism only works well when there is competition. When big companies are so powerful they can just buy up any potential competitors, we're not in free market capitalism anymore. We're entering a merger of corporate and state power - teetering slowly towards a "tolerant" fascism. It's something that desperately needs to be addressed.
Digital illiteracy is easy to combat. You just put the person on a different service. As long as it "just works" they'll be fine.
Firefox is currently kept alive by Google, which pays $500M/year to Mozilla in order to have Google Search as the default in Firefox and to not let Google Chrome become a monopoly on paper too. Break Google and it would probably die.
Creating "more browsers" (browser engines I would add, we already have enough browsers) is not an easy task. The specification that needs to be implemented is massive, and doing so efficiently is even more complex. It would be a waste of resources to have many browser engines, not to mention the confusion in the webdev community when you suddently have to work around many more bugs in the implementations.
Web browsers are a critical infrastructure. Linux too, is very complex and requires lots of development and standards. But we have companies that spend the resources because it's necessary for their bottom line. Servers all run on Linux.
Similar thing I think would happen with web browsers. Many companies would have incentive to develop web browsers - Facebook for example would want people on their site and that requires a web browser.
My question is if this would simply result in another company taking Google spot in the market or there would be a new open source collaborative effort by many companies like Linux? I'm not really sure. Like you said, the specifications are massive and basically shape and mold the internet as a whole. So it's not a simple task.
Also just because Google funds Mozilla through search does not mean Firefox would immediately die should Google go under. Consider that Firefox would be only 1 of 2 browsers left alive. They could presumably make a deal with Bing or Duckduckgo or something and would be able to make up the lost income in spades because of sheer volume of users.
There was a time Firefox was actually the most popular browser.
It seems to me that they sponsor Mozilla Foundation just to thwart accusations of monopoly and make it look like they got competition.
I agree with you, but it's still a fact that that sponsorship make up most of Mozilla's income. And if Google gets broken up then will they still care about that?
Chrome became popular for 2 reasons:
Number 1 isn't always true anymore but has momentum while 2 is fixed. Until something changes, Chrome is cemented into web browsing.
If I'm not mistaken Youtube creators get something like 1/10 of a penny per view of a video. Is that really favorable for creators?
Well, NireRed also has NileBlue and a bunch of patreon supporters (over 2k, apparently getting 250k/creation, which is insane). He's not living off NileRed videos alone
Would that really be that bad? Another browser will take its place, or Chromium will be forked. The worst thing would be YouTube going down, but even that is not that bad. Even so, I don't think YouTube would necessarily disappear; it would probably be bought by some other company for pennies on the dollar. If that happened, I think it would be a mild inconvenience but nothing too crazy. In all, I say break it up!
Microsoft might take over Chromium.
Nobody's taking over YouTube, at least not for long (or without massive changes).
Hold up... You're not actually saying that Chrome and Chromium will die out within a decade, and not only that, but YouTube only has a year or less left? I do not believe that at all lol
I think they meant YouTube would die in a year or less if it was seperated from google. But I am not quite sure.
I know it's probably just me, but YouTube could disappear tomorrow and it would probably take me weeks to notice.
If there's one thing I actively avoid for it's abysmal information density, it's videos.
This is the way. The more I think about it, the more I realize it needs to happen. Market positions in each of them give Google an unfair, anti-competitive advantage in all the rest of them.
Same with Facebook. It's used its market power to copy features from its competitors and get a leg up on them from their existing userbase. It should have never been allowed to buy its competitors like instagram, whatsapp and what not. It's time to break them all apart again.
The most recent egregious example of this is the Threads app. But what it did to Snapchat with Instagram stories is another example, IMO.