I started reading that and... it really doesn't say anything. Even after introducing "Some specifics:" it's just generic FUD hemming and hawing. Basically it says Google doesn't like some legislation (without getting into any details about why) and I guess we should be concerned because Google says they will have to take their balls home.
The big problem here is Google has a long history of handing out balls to the public and taking them away whenever Google got tired of those balls. So what if Google gets rid of Gmail or Maps or Search or whatever. Shouldn't everyone expect Google to get rid of any of their free services at any time anyway?
I'm really very curious what exactly this legislation is proposing that makes Google so hysterical? Maybe that they must provide support and appeals processes when their machines grind up users?
For 'hurt small businesses', two links deep is this article[0], and the only accusations it actually makes are:
> Like the House’s bill, the Senate’s bill would force companies like Amazon to separate their marketplace from their own retail offerings. This sounds “good” in theory, but the end of hybrid services would inevitably mean the decline of the SMBs who use and succeed on these platforms.
and
> The Senate’s legislation would also make it impossible for Amazon to offer its Prime free shipping service on millions of products, many of which are from small and medium-sized businesses. Consumers will likely turn to big retailers, none of whom are targeted by the bill and most do not provide the same seamless and robust access to massive consumer markets or promote small businesses nearly as well.
Despite these, I can't find the bill text in these articles.
(also, I hope the marketplace breakup would also affect walmart.com - they made a 3p seller marketplace that has caused confusion in customers who now think Walmart is selling GPUs at scalper prices[1] when they're actually just taking a % of those scalpers' revenue)
It seems pretty specific to me. If Congress writes a law that says Google can't integrate hours of operation into Google Maps, they have to defer to Yelp, that harms consumers and only helps Yelp. Viewed through that lens, you can and should think of these bills as Yelp welfare.
If you are a big fan of Yelp I guess that's OK for you, but most of us can see that it's a scam.
Speaking of "free" google services - I found it interesting that the free covid home testing kits signup links by the USPS have google advertising links.
Even if Google is being genuine with this article, it's still a bad look. They've expended their social capital, they could speak pure truth and nobody would believe them. And not for no reason. People have good reasons to distrust them.
But having read the article, it references "these bills" without a single sentence from any of them. I'm supposed to take your word for it that all of "these bills" would harm me? There are absolutely no anti trust approaches that wouldn't be harmful to me?
Sounds like a load of scaremongering, a little "hurt national competitiveness and security" language as a thinly veiled message to legislators, and grasping at public perception to protect their asses.
If you want to convince anyone, quote the lines in the bills and lay out how they would affect the public. People see through your bullshit and nobody is buying it.
Trust and ethics aside, maybe they should worry less about controlling everything, and more about the actual quality of their products... Currently there's literally no good search engines... I've tried em all, and google's results are just like slightly better but hardly enough to notice, and the only reason I use it is because it sometimes guesses what I want from the omnibar better... if I'm revisiting doc sites, etc...
> These bills may compel us to share the sensitive data you store with us with unknown companies in ways that could compromise your privacy.
Is that really any worse than sharing the sensitive data we store with them with known companies in ways that definitely compromise our privacy though?
Google sells advertising. They don't sell your private data to 3rd parties. Same with Facebook. It's not in the interests of these companies to sell their proprietary user targeting data to other companies. They need to keep it closely guarded if they want to retain any edge in the marketplace.
Two very different things, but they've been (intentionally) conflated in a lot of the public debates to make it sound more evil.
If I don't want to share my data with Company X, and Google doesn't want to share my data with Company X, why should Google be compelled to share my data with Company X?
So you mean Google won't use cookies to track the things I browse then use retargeting which is basically selling my data/habits (by proxy) to the advertiser? I totally thought they did this...
“The government’s attempts to rein in our harmful monopoly will cause a slight dip in our absurd profits and potentially protect citizens and users from some, but certainly not all, of our abuses”
Just because the bill is bad for Google doesn't mean users will be protected. I, for one, remain confident in the government's ability to come up with solutions that will leave everybody equally miserable.
I dont agree with Google or Apple. But I also dont think regulation or Anti-Tech bill is the answer.
But both Google and Apple seems to be blindsided as why the world have turned against them. Not surprised given how they think of themselves as so righteous. Which is also why this piece doesn't actually address any of the underlying issue, and instead writing what is like propaganda.
Here's food for thought: most of the "regulations" in the tech industry have started well past the point of when apple & google, facebook have established themselves as the big monopolistic players.
So while Google complains now about regulation, and i'm in the same boat generally speaking: less regulation is net positive in the vast majority of cases, it's kind of hypocritical from them to say it:these corporations have enjoyed 10-15 years or even more of non-regulations towards them.And, without sourcing the following statement because i don't have the information at hand, in most cases Google,Apple & Co. themselves have >lobbied< for legislation, regulations, which raise the bar of entry in the market.Again, no sources to hold my statement, but i would be surprised if anyone is able to dig anything up considering the amount of collusion that kept happening for the last 20 years when talking about billions->now trillion dollar industry.
Afaik the Antitrust law, from the third paragraph. Not American, but why is it suddenly being talked about? Is it being discussed for change right now?
Wow, is this a bad post. Hand-wavey discussion of "these bills" without even the name of them (let alone a thomas.loc.gov link)... Isn't Google an internet company? What's the call-to-action for the reader... Dial in to their Congressperson and complain about "these bills?"
It’s more or less undeniable that if you cracked down on Google, their end users would be negatively affected, yes.
The question is whether or not better companies would be born and ultimately provide even greater services to the same set of customers.
That - is what is obviously harder to prove.
Personally I think the answer is to simply say that after a certain reach per industry a company must provide “access” to platforms or pay a percentage of revenue to nurture the smallest competitors.
Google is also the company that had a motto of "Don't be evil".
> However, legislation being debated in the House and Senate could break these and other popular online services, making them less helpful and less secure, and damaging American competitiveness. We’re deeply concerned about these unintended consequences.
The point of breaking up these services is so people can actually compete with them?
> Antitrust law is about ensuring that companies are competing hard to build their best products for consumers. But the vague and sweeping provisions of these bills would break popular products that help consumers and small businesses, only to benefit a handful of companies who brought their pleas to Washington.
Yeah, the benefit would be for the other S&P 500+ companies to even stand a chance. Google holds top market cap for the #5 & #6 spots today. More breaking up tech = more competition in smaller niches to make products that are absolutely amazing and affordable. Not increasing subscription plans when you have a monopoly on the market.
The ad-supported part of the economy has become far too big. It used to be just a few ad agencies on Madison Avenue in New York and TV stations that were purely ad-supported. Now it's a sizable fraction of the economy.
Maybe it's time to stop allowing advertising as a tax-deductible business expense.
Encourage companies to focus on doing the thing, instead of hyping the thing.
Well I was on the fence but Google has sold me. I'd love to not be forced into their entire ecosystem just by using one of their products. Choices? That would excellent.
This is a mix of surprisingly good arguments and absolute howlers.
In my experience, the only way Google search results could be less relevant is if they disregarded the query altogether and invariably dispensed a liquid almost, but not entirely, unlike tea.
More outrageously, wet streets apparently cause rain: "sectors where prices have actually been rising and contributing to inflation". You heard it here first folks, from the self-proclaimed most reliable source of information in the universe.
So true. This line was great, “And when you use Google Search or Google Play, we might have to give equal prominence to a raft of spammy and low-quality services.” I’ve had to help family members put locks on their credit report because of top-ranked, fake websites that offer global entry, DMV license and registration renewals, etc. Digging deeper, you can find troves of consumer complaints about these websites being scammy. If they can’t even prevent spam websites for critical government services from being recommended, I’m not sure how much worse it could get before people start dropping them faster than Ask Jeeves.
Ummm... This is Google propaganda, nothing more. There's no actual content that substantiates their claim that Congress will hurt people, or to substantiate their bullshit "anti-tech" title.
[+] [-] fluidcruft|4 years ago|reply
The big problem here is Google has a long history of handing out balls to the public and taking them away whenever Google got tired of those balls. So what if Google gets rid of Gmail or Maps or Search or whatever. Shouldn't everyone expect Google to get rid of any of their free services at any time anyway?
I'm really very curious what exactly this legislation is proposing that makes Google so hysterical? Maybe that they must provide support and appeals processes when their machines grind up users?
[+] [-] csdvrx|4 years ago|reply
As they haven't do that in the EU and Australia, everyone knows they're bluffing.
[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
> Like the House’s bill, the Senate’s bill would force companies like Amazon to separate their marketplace from their own retail offerings. This sounds “good” in theory, but the end of hybrid services would inevitably mean the decline of the SMBs who use and succeed on these platforms.
and
> The Senate’s legislation would also make it impossible for Amazon to offer its Prime free shipping service on millions of products, many of which are from small and medium-sized businesses. Consumers will likely turn to big retailers, none of whom are targeted by the bill and most do not provide the same seamless and robust access to massive consumer markets or promote small businesses nearly as well.
Despite these, I can't find the bill text in these articles.
(also, I hope the marketplace breakup would also affect walmart.com - they made a 3p seller marketplace that has caused confusion in customers who now think Walmart is selling GPUs at scalper prices[1] when they're actually just taking a % of those scalpers' revenue)
0: https://www.ocregister.com/2021/10/26/small-businesses-would...
1: https://www.walmart.com/ip/MSI-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3080-Ti-Gr...
[+] [-] jeffbee|4 years ago|reply
If you are a big fan of Yelp I guess that's OK for you, but most of us can see that it's a scam.
[+] [-] m463|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] betwixthewires|4 years ago|reply
But having read the article, it references "these bills" without a single sentence from any of them. I'm supposed to take your word for it that all of "these bills" would harm me? There are absolutely no anti trust approaches that wouldn't be harmful to me?
Sounds like a load of scaremongering, a little "hurt national competitiveness and security" language as a thinly veiled message to legislators, and grasping at public perception to protect their asses.
If you want to convince anyone, quote the lines in the bills and lay out how they would affect the public. People see through your bullshit and nobody is buying it.
[+] [-] gremlinsinc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|4 years ago|reply
Is that really any worse than sharing the sensitive data we store with them with known companies in ways that definitely compromise our privacy though?
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
Two very different things, but they've been (intentionally) conflated in a lot of the public debates to make it sound more evil.
[+] [-] mannerheim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gremlinsinc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] more_corn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannerheim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|4 years ago|reply
But both Google and Apple seems to be blindsided as why the world have turned against them. Not surprised given how they think of themselves as so righteous. Which is also why this piece doesn't actually address any of the underlying issue, and instead writing what is like propaganda.
May be Self-reflection really is a rare thing.
[+] [-] sebow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fendy3002|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pronlover723|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadowgovt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
The question is whether or not better companies would be born and ultimately provide even greater services to the same set of customers.
That - is what is obviously harder to prove.
Personally I think the answer is to simply say that after a certain reach per industry a company must provide “access” to platforms or pay a percentage of revenue to nurture the smallest competitors.
—-
As an aside, I believe the bill in question (https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23177323/B...) is dumb.
Basically it bans ads as a model for monetization. Terrible idea imho.
[+] [-] frabcus|4 years ago|reply
For example - by offering a way for any provider to embed info boxes and search UIs, all competing with each other.
Or by reducing adverts to increase better quality organic results (Google can have much less cash and still run fine).
Or by solving all the basic search relevancy flaws discussed on Hacker News in recent weeks.
[+] [-] bryan_w|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenerdhead|4 years ago|reply
> However, legislation being debated in the House and Senate could break these and other popular online services, making them less helpful and less secure, and damaging American competitiveness. We’re deeply concerned about these unintended consequences.
The point of breaking up these services is so people can actually compete with them?
> Antitrust law is about ensuring that companies are competing hard to build their best products for consumers. But the vague and sweeping provisions of these bills would break popular products that help consumers and small businesses, only to benefit a handful of companies who brought their pleas to Washington.
Yeah, the benefit would be for the other S&P 500+ companies to even stand a chance. Google holds top market cap for the #5 & #6 spots today. More breaking up tech = more competition in smaller niches to make products that are absolutely amazing and affordable. Not increasing subscription plans when you have a monopoly on the market.
The fun is over. Stop trying to play God Google.
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emptyparadise|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vorpalhex|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrkramer|4 years ago|reply
Yea don't do it Google Search is already bad enough.
[+] [-] puffoflogic|4 years ago|reply
In my experience, the only way Google search results could be less relevant is if they disregarded the query altogether and invariably dispensed a liquid almost, but not entirely, unlike tea.
More outrageously, wet streets apparently cause rain: "sectors where prices have actually been rising and contributing to inflation". You heard it here first folks, from the self-proclaimed most reliable source of information in the universe.
[+] [-] njstraub608|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mandeepj|4 years ago|reply
"HN: The harmful consequences of Google's anti-user approach"
[+] [-] Hamuko|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnklos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_doctah|4 years ago|reply