Will Google be broken up

[SassyLady]

What kind of remedies will be instituted to break up this monopoly .. if any

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/15/google-court-monopoly/

[Kathianne]

One take:

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/08/14/the-unthinkable-just-became-thinkable-for-google-n4931640


The Unthinkable Just Became Thinkable for GoogleStephen Green | 3:30 PM on August 14, 2024



AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File
The U.S. Justice Department is "considering" breaking up Google parent Alphabet as the remedy to the company's dominance, according to various reports on Wednesday. The company was found in a court ruling last week to be in violation of antitrust law with its illegal monopoly in internet search.


But don't get too excited.


Investopedia reported Wednesday that "breaking up Google would be 'a stretch,'" according to Wedbush analysts they spoke to, and that the case "could potentially be tied up in the court system for years" before a final decision is reached. Google will also appeal, of course. The closest thing we have to a benchmark for the breakup of a major tech company is AT&T. That one took ten years from Justice's 1974 suit to the dissolution of the Bell System into the "Baby Bells" in 1984.


Honestly, I'm not sure that a breakup is the remedy for Google's search monopoly. But I'm damn sure that Google needs to be broken up for even better reasons.


Before I get to that, please understand that I hate Google. I hate their business model, and I hate the way they've abused their position in myriad ways. Mostly I hate a massive corporation that has tried repeatedly to put much smaller companies — not even competitors! — out of business. I'm talking about my employer, PJ Media.


My personal experiences aside, the reason to break up Google is simple: there's no consumer veto possible against the company's practices or abuses.


It's been five years since I first shared the story of Gizmodo’s Kashmir Hill, who went to almost superhuman lengths to divorce herself completely from Google. Hill didn’t just stop using Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Waze, etc.; she got “the help of a Motorola engineer who designed a custom VPN (virtual private network) that restricted all of her devices — laptops, phones, smart speakers, everything — from talking to Google servers.”


That last part is vital because Google's tracking abilities are baked into so many services without consumers ever being aware of it.


With that custom VPN keeping Google completely off Hill's back, all was well, right?


RIGHT?


Wrong. Denying Google's ability to track her and profit from her pretty much broke Hill's ability to use the internet.


Here's what happens when your smartphone, laptop, and tablet are denied access to Google’s 8,699,648 (!!!) IP addresses:


1. When trying to get across town for a meeting, Hill discovered that her Uber and Lyft apps were essentially useless. That’s because they rely on Google Maps.


2. Hill was unable to stream her favorite on songs on Spotify. Yep. Spotify hosts all its music on the Google Cloud.


3. Attempting to simply browse the web created flashbacks of the internet in the '90s. “On Airbnb, photos won’t load,” Hill says. “New York Times articles won’t appear until the site has tried (and failed) to load Google Analytics, Google Pay, Google News, Google ads, and a Doubleclick tracker.” Many of the sites she visited were also dependent on Google Fonts. . .


4. When trying to share video journals to her colleagues at Gizmodo, Dropbox refused to let her log in because the service uses an invisible CAPTCHA — hosted by Google — to verify that real humans are trying to access it.


(Those CAPTCHA puzzles don't verify whether users are human. They're a surreptitious way to train artificial intelligence to recognize objects in photographs without paying the trainers. That'd be you and me, bub.)


So your choice as a consumer is to either serve as a profit center for Google or not be able to use the internet.


That's no choice at all, of course, and that's why I believe the Justice Department has no choice but to break Google up.

[fj1200]

Probably not much; more akin to Microsoft in the 2000s than AT&T in the 80s. Slim chance of a divestment more likely a change to business practices including allowing competitors into Google Play, Google search not being the default for Chrome...

Of course everything subject to appeal(s). I think some of the aspects of the decision are an overreach and other aspects are just not that critical.

[Kathianne]

Probably not much; more akin to Microsoft in the 2000s than AT&T in the 80s. Slim chance of a divestment more likely a change to business practices including allowing competitors into Google Play, Google search not being the default for Chrome...

Of course everything subject to appeal(s). I think some of the aspects of the decision are an overreach and other aspects are just not that critical.

What's good about Google is really good. Unfortunately what's bad is really bad. They tend to destroy what is not 'theirs' ala Fitbit. I'm looking at Garmin now.

[revelarts]

No, because they are to intertwined with the federal govt and other govts worldwide.
And officials don't really even have a handle on how to deal with it if they wanted to.

[fj1200]

Breaking up Google would be misguided (https://www.ft.com/content/440c4b0c-1d3a-45a5-949d-2ea43afa4495?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9)

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https://www.ft.com/content/440c4b0c-1d3a-45a5-949d-2ea43afa4495?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

So what should be done? The DoJ is better off focusing on other, forward-looking remedies it proposed on Tuesday. That includes curtailing Google’s ability to strike contracts with other tech companies to set its search tool as default. These deals prevent other search businesses from scaling up.Encouraging tech firms to provide a choice of possible search engines, including AI-driven ones might help too. Asking Google to share a portion of its data trove could also support new entrants and help level the playing field for companies trying to build up generative AI search tools. But data privacy concerns abound.