7 ms·

Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android, Youtube need to be separate companies. It's not the only company that needs this treatment.

by bogzz 16d ago

cjarrett 16d ago
Was saying this about Chrome and Android a decade ago.
coldpie 16d ago
We had a glimpse of that antitrust future on the horizon with the previous admin. This spooked all the big tech weirdos so much that they put their weight behind the other guy and, well, they won. Antitrust is dead for another generation. Yay.
- bogzz 16d ago
  Lina Khan is lying in wait.
  - omnimus 16d ago
    Doing great work in New York actually.
  - tenuousemphasis 16d ago
    She'd have some teeth with President AOC.
    - avazhi 16d ago
      [flagged]
- shevy-java 16d ago
  Well, the current cronies that run the USA may seem to have won for the time being, but sooner or later the population in the USA will realise how much fudged up the orange clown is. Only about 30% approval rating - that will continue to dwindle.
  - dhosek 16d ago
    There’s a partisan floor¹ that’s in the neighborhood of 25–30% where people will vote for their party no matter what. The 2004 Illinois Senate election was a good test case where when the Republican nominee went down in self-inflicted flames and was hurriedly replaced with Alan Keyes, who had no in-state constituency and, being Black (which, no doubt was the cynical reason for his recruitment), eliminated the racist choice. He gained a mere 27% of the vote which is likely the floor for a major party candidate in a contested broad-population election (smaller-level partisan elections, whether for single congressional seats or in small states, generally have demographically skewed populations which can result in wider margins). ⸻ 1. Although as I think about it, this may only be valid on the right side of the spectrum given the data points.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 15d ago
      We're obviously long past the days when people's politics could be mapped on a nice normal distribution, with some outliers at either end and a big group of moderates in the middle who vote differently depending on the election. Today the distribution is not only bimodal: there's almost no overlap at all. Your politics are part of your identity now. It's part of how you define who you are, and according to the research, over 95% of people are completely entrenched and will never vote for any candidate from the "other" party. (This the highest since right before the Civil War.) That said, while nobody's changing sides any time soon, people _do_ stay home on election day, and we're going to see that next election. The races for the next couple decades will be won by the candidates and the parties who can drill up enough enthusiasm from their base. Preach to the choir so the choir sings, etc.
  - thrance 16d ago
    They'll immediately fall for the next such guy. Republican voters aren't actually reconsidering their views. Corporations and oligarchs have known no major blowbacks in decades and keep winning on every front, further eroding the Republic and its institutions little by little. And they won't stop until all that's left of America is an empty shell, a dead state like Russia, a sandbox for the Epstein class.
- soulofmischief 16d ago
  If only the DNC was interested in promoting candidates that work for the people and aren't just interested in lip service while mostly maintaining the status quo. Things could have been different. Imagine what 8 years of Bernie and a functioning Congress might have accomplished.
  - coldpie 16d ago
    Agreed. But on the topic of antitrust specifically, Lina Khan was absolutely doing the work, and Biden 100% deserves credit for appointing her. He could've chosen some do-nothing loser like everyone before him did, but he chose Khan.
    - soulofmischief 16d ago
      I agree, it was a great move. However, it's generally hard for me to give Biden much credit for anything, however, given his own and his party's general complicity with decades of genocide and apartheid in Palestine. Same for Harris. That and oversight of many more atrocities also carried forth by his predecessors really puts a damper on any good deed and make it hard to buy into any narrative of authenticity when it comes to politics that benefit human beings. I also generally think Bernie would have played hardball on antitrust and given what we got with Biden, I'd prefer to have seen what Bernie could have done with the time.
  - SR2Z 16d ago
    Terrible narrative. Lina Khan under Biden was more than willing to go after big companies. She was forced out because the American people voted Trump into office. Eight years of Sanders would have left us with a far more gridlocked country. The man has virtually no political talent.
    - Computer0 16d ago
      >The man has virtually no political talent. More unique individual people donated to his primary efforts than any other candidate in history. Wouldn't this be indicative of some large amount of political talent?
- noosphr 16d ago
  We wouldn't be in this mess is Obama wasn't sleep at the wheel. When it's been 20 years with a 10 to 10 split its not a democrat vs republican issue.
- glenstein 16d ago
  I couldn't agree more with your point. But also, precisely because I agree with you, I'm flashing back to Proton CEO Andy Yen claiming that Trump would be great on tech anti trust and an improvement on what came before, which was ridiculous from the moment he said it but symptomatic of a certain kind of tech bro mindset.
slg 16d ago
This type of populist message seems like such an easy path to popularity for an aspiring politician. You don't have to be a leftist like Bernie Sanders to be a trust buster. Just acknowledge that almost every large corporation has seemingly made it their mission to make life worse for the citizenry in the name of profit and vow to fight it.
- dylan604 16d ago
  Anyone running with that type of message will be squashed by said "every large corporation". They will finance their opponent(s). They will run deep fakes against them. Until "every large corporation" is prevented from spending unlimited money, things will not change. What would limiting corporations from contributing more than the total of max donation per employee? I've never seen numbers from that, but I've heard people discuss it.
  - godshatter 15d ago
    So next time around they point to every instance of this, post it all somewhere and link to it everywhere, and make a big point about how they are actually scaring them enough that maybe they can make a difference this time. I do agree that we need to limit spending, but I don't know how to get there without a candidate like this getting traction. Sort of a chicken and egg thing.
Octoth0rpe 16d ago
> Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android need to be separate companies. As well as youtube, and the combination of google drive/docs.
- redorb 16d ago
  I'd like to nominate, Amazon marketplace, Amazon Ads and AWS to be separate as well please. ;)
- Gigachad 16d ago
  YouTube really could hold up as its own company these days.
  - deleted 16d ago
    [deleted]
  - hirvi74 16d ago
    It was a better platform when it was its own company back in the day.
    - jolmg 16d ago
      Really? I don't remember it from back then, but right now must be better in terms of the content available, the player (not the shorts one; that's awful), automatically generated subtitles with transcripts that can be searched, automated translation, dubbing, etc.
      - hirvi74 16d ago
        I would enjoy automatically generated subtitles more if they weren't wrong about 10% of the time. I constantly get something like "Today, we are going to discuss which model is better at programming. Is it an tropic's latest model, Cloud Fable? Or is it, Open AI's Chat G pity?" It's as though Google hired my dyslexic ass to write the subtitles. It trips me up even more because I can't tell if I misread something or the chat messed up sometimes. I cannot comment on translation or dubbing. English is the only language I can somewhat understand.
brazukadev 16d ago
This won't ever happen, the US and the US government can't afford to weaken its corporations and risk impact their data collection, social control, influence and profitability world-wide.
- shevy-java 16d ago
  Sadly you are right, but the people can still learn. There is a reason more and more folks move towards De-Googling. This is also a world-wide movement - it is not just the US government. Tons of lobbyists in other countries support mega-corporations dictating terms to us. Just look at EU legislation recently in the news again - constant betrayal of EU citizens here. All paid for EU taxpayers. The EU commission works for these mega-corporations.
whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
I'm quite torn on this. The United States needs a strong economy to counter China and keep Europe safe. In the short term, this might be nice, but in the medium term these moves might cause significant disruption to what makes the United States the highest gdp in the world. I'm unsure what the polymarket on this post is will be flagged. It's kind of surprising for HN to be so educated but not know (academic) international relations Realism.
- Firaxus 16d ago
  One could argue that it’s all the centralization and monopolistic behavior which hinders tech development in the usa. So a breakup might have short term stutters but long term gains.
  - skinfaxi 16d ago
    Tech development is hindered in the USA?
    - brigandish 16d ago
      By monopolies, yes. Know what an acquihire is? Heard of a buyout leading to a shut down? That hinders development.
      - skinfaxi 15d ago
        The creator of a specific technology getting acquihired doesn't stop others from competing with the original. If anything, acquihire is a validating signal and probably leads to more entries into the market.
        brigandish 15d ago
        The reduction of competitors and no win for the investors is somehow a signal that entry to the market against an even stronger than before incumbent would be a good bet?
Sir_Twist 16d ago
Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? I’m for less consolidation in the tech industry, but I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money.
- stuartd 16d ago
  The latter two potentially yes, as they can sell a product. Chrome - not so much: sell the browser, embed ads… nothing palatable.
  - cyberax 16d ago
    A $1 a year payment (like in WhatsUp) from all the current Chrome users can easily cover all the reasonable browser development.
    - eclipticplane 16d ago
      Bonus: they might not be able to fund the anti-user behavior like sunsetting MV2, all of the "anonymous audience tracking" that prevents any other advertiser from identifying you (but Google's scale still can), aggressively pushing 'sign in with Google', retracting their stance on blocking third party cookies, continually removing settings that drive user control, and more.
- bogwog 16d ago
  > Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Definitely. > I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money. I see you have an unconventional definition of the word "great". I'll take that to mean you're an outside-the-box thinker, so you're in a good position to understand that a break up of Google would radically change all the markets they're dominant in. If Android 'dies' post-breakup, that would leave a gaping hole in the economy. iOS might fill it, but regulators would need to break them up too. Say iOS 'dies' too, would we all collectively just stop using smartphones? Obviously not. Entrepreneurs who can see opportunity will raise money and hire the right people to build a new OS, foundations will apply for grants to maintain Android or iOS forks, industry standards will form to improve interop and reduce development costs, etc. The sky's the limit!
abighamb 16d ago
I look forward to a new era of trust busting. It's an old American Tradition in need of revival
deleted 16d ago
[deleted]
dylan604 16d ago
We've done this in the past. AT&T was broken up into the regional baby bells. Eventually, the baby bells started to get absorbed back into the monolith AT&T again. Nobody stopped it. I assume that the fact that few people use landlines and there are more than one provider of communication services where the AT&T voltron is no longer a monopoly. The point? Not really sure, but as much as I'm all for breaking up Alphabet, I'm not convinced it will work. I'm willing to give it a go though
- kibwen 16d ago
  Trustbusting is like weeding your garden. It's just a chore that must be done periodically to counteract the natural tendency of markets to degenerate into monopolies. It's not something you do once and then never again, it's something that you have to do regularly, forever, if you want a functioning market.
  - dylan604 16d ago
    Your "do regularly" got me thinking. There's only been 2 companies in the US to have been busted up, Standard Oil (1911) and ATT (1984). Microsoft (2000) got close but cut a deal. So yeah, we haven't been tending garden very well
glenstein 16d ago
I think there's a remarkably clear precedent at least for browsers, which is having Android users pick from a list of browsers instead of having Chrome as the pre installed default. That's already been done previously with Microsoft and I believe with search on Apple, andI think it would reverse the Mozilla market share trend overnight. I don't think Chrome being spun off as a company leaves them with a realistic path to revenue unless, ironically, they do something like what Mozilla does, and strike a search licensing agreement albeit a much bigger one proportionate to their share of users. I also don't think it should just be Alphabet/Google because at full strength they are an important check against the power of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and arguably Facebook. Weakening Alphabet while leaving them unchecked could have the net effect of increasing monopoly power of the other giants. I think the order of operations would go something like (1) Amazon (online retail), (2) Google (search and web), (3) Facebook (social media). Microsoft and Apple are giants but I don't think they are strategically cornering any particular tech markets right now (though I could be wrong). And I think international competition is complicating the picture of how close to monopolies they really are, though Google at least is clearly abusing its position in the browser and web standards space.
kylepomykala 16d ago
I really wish we had an admin that would be willing to do this.

Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android, Youtube need to be separate companies. It's not the only company that needs this treatment.

by bogzz 16d ago

Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android, Youtube need to be separate companies. It's not the only company that needs this treatment.

cjarrett 16d ago

Was saying this about Chrome and Android a decade ago.

coldpie 16d ago

We had a glimpse of that antitrust future on the horizon with the previous admin. This spooked all the big tech weirdos so much that they put their weight behind the other guy and, well, they won. Antitrust is dead for another generation. Yay.

bogzz 16d ago
Lina Khan is lying in wait.
- omnimus 16d ago
  Doing great work in New York actually.
- tenuousemphasis 16d ago
  She'd have some teeth with President AOC.
  - avazhi 16d ago
    [flagged]
shevy-java 16d ago
Well, the current cronies that run the USA may seem to have won for the time being, but sooner or later the population in the USA will realise how much fudged up the orange clown is. Only about 30% approval rating - that will continue to dwindle.
- dhosek 16d ago
  There’s a partisan floor¹ that’s in the neighborhood of 25–30% where people will vote for their party no matter what. The 2004 Illinois Senate election was a good test case where when the Republican nominee went down in self-inflicted flames and was hurriedly replaced with Alan Keyes, who had no in-state constituency and, being Black (which, no doubt was the cynical reason for his recruitment), eliminated the racist choice. He gained a mere 27% of the vote which is likely the floor for a major party candidate in a contested broad-population election (smaller-level partisan elections, whether for single congressional seats or in small states, generally have demographically skewed populations which can result in wider margins). ⸻ 1. Although as I think about it, this may only be valid on the right side of the spectrum given the data points.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 15d ago
    We're obviously long past the days when people's politics could be mapped on a nice normal distribution, with some outliers at either end and a big group of moderates in the middle who vote differently depending on the election. Today the distribution is not only bimodal: there's almost no overlap at all. Your politics are part of your identity now. It's part of how you define who you are, and according to the research, over 95% of people are completely entrenched and will never vote for any candidate from the "other" party. (This the highest since right before the Civil War.) That said, while nobody's changing sides any time soon, people _do_ stay home on election day, and we're going to see that next election. The races for the next couple decades will be won by the candidates and the parties who can drill up enough enthusiasm from their base. Preach to the choir so the choir sings, etc.
- thrance 16d ago
  They'll immediately fall for the next such guy. Republican voters aren't actually reconsidering their views. Corporations and oligarchs have known no major blowbacks in decades and keep winning on every front, further eroding the Republic and its institutions little by little. And they won't stop until all that's left of America is an empty shell, a dead state like Russia, a sandbox for the Epstein class.
soulofmischief 16d ago
If only the DNC was interested in promoting candidates that work for the people and aren't just interested in lip service while mostly maintaining the status quo. Things could have been different. Imagine what 8 years of Bernie and a functioning Congress might have accomplished.
- coldpie 16d ago
  Agreed. But on the topic of antitrust specifically, Lina Khan was absolutely doing the work, and Biden 100% deserves credit for appointing her. He could've chosen some do-nothing loser like everyone before him did, but he chose Khan.
  - soulofmischief 16d ago
    I agree, it was a great move. However, it's generally hard for me to give Biden much credit for anything, however, given his own and his party's general complicity with decades of genocide and apartheid in Palestine. Same for Harris. That and oversight of many more atrocities also carried forth by his predecessors really puts a damper on any good deed and make it hard to buy into any narrative of authenticity when it comes to politics that benefit human beings. I also generally think Bernie would have played hardball on antitrust and given what we got with Biden, I'd prefer to have seen what Bernie could have done with the time.
- SR2Z 16d ago
  Terrible narrative. Lina Khan under Biden was more than willing to go after big companies. She was forced out because the American people voted Trump into office. Eight years of Sanders would have left us with a far more gridlocked country. The man has virtually no political talent.
  - Computer0 16d ago
    >The man has virtually no political talent. More unique individual people donated to his primary efforts than any other candidate in history. Wouldn't this be indicative of some large amount of political talent?
noosphr 16d ago
We wouldn't be in this mess is Obama wasn't sleep at the wheel. When it's been 20 years with a 10 to 10 split its not a democrat vs republican issue.
glenstein 16d ago
I couldn't agree more with your point. But also, precisely because I agree with you, I'm flashing back to Proton CEO Andy Yen claiming that Trump would be great on tech anti trust and an improvement on what came before, which was ridiculous from the moment he said it but symptomatic of a certain kind of tech bro mindset.

slg 16d ago

This type of populist message seems like such an easy path to popularity for an aspiring politician. You don't have to be a leftist like Bernie Sanders to be a trust buster. Just acknowledge that almost every large corporation has seemingly made it their mission to make life worse for the citizenry in the name of profit and vow to fight it.

dylan604 16d ago
Anyone running with that type of message will be squashed by said "every large corporation". They will finance their opponent(s). They will run deep fakes against them. Until "every large corporation" is prevented from spending unlimited money, things will not change. What would limiting corporations from contributing more than the total of max donation per employee? I've never seen numbers from that, but I've heard people discuss it.
- godshatter 15d ago
  So next time around they point to every instance of this, post it all somewhere and link to it everywhere, and make a big point about how they are actually scaring them enough that maybe they can make a difference this time. I do agree that we need to limit spending, but I don't know how to get there without a candidate like this getting traction. Sort of a chicken and egg thing.

Octoth0rpe 16d ago

> Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android need to be separate companies. As well as youtube, and the combination of google drive/docs.

redorb 16d ago
I'd like to nominate, Amazon marketplace, Amazon Ads and AWS to be separate as well please. ;)
Gigachad 16d ago
YouTube really could hold up as its own company these days.
- deleted 16d ago
  [deleted]
- hirvi74 16d ago
  It was a better platform when it was its own company back in the day.
  - jolmg 16d ago
    Really? I don't remember it from back then, but right now must be better in terms of the content available, the player (not the shorts one; that's awful), automatically generated subtitles with transcripts that can be searched, automated translation, dubbing, etc.
    - hirvi74 16d ago
      I would enjoy automatically generated subtitles more if they weren't wrong about 10% of the time. I constantly get something like "Today, we are going to discuss which model is better at programming. Is it an tropic's latest model, Cloud Fable? Or is it, Open AI's Chat G pity?" It's as though Google hired my dyslexic ass to write the subtitles. It trips me up even more because I can't tell if I misread something or the chat messed up sometimes. I cannot comment on translation or dubbing. English is the only language I can somewhat understand.

brazukadev 16d ago

This won't ever happen, the US and the US government can't afford to weaken its corporations and risk impact their data collection, social control, influence and profitability world-wide.

shevy-java 16d ago
Sadly you are right, but the people can still learn. There is a reason more and more folks move towards De-Googling. This is also a world-wide movement - it is not just the US government. Tons of lobbyists in other countries support mega-corporations dictating terms to us. Just look at EU legislation recently in the news again - constant betrayal of EU citizens here. All paid for EU taxpayers. The EU commission works for these mega-corporations.

whatsThisBtn4 16d ago

I'm quite torn on this. The United States needs a strong economy to counter China and keep Europe safe. In the short term, this might be nice, but in the medium term these moves might cause significant disruption to what makes the United States the highest gdp in the world. I'm unsure what the polymarket on this post is will be flagged. It's kind of surprising for HN to be so educated but not know (academic) international relations Realism.

Firaxus 16d ago
One could argue that it’s all the centralization and monopolistic behavior which hinders tech development in the usa. So a breakup might have short term stutters but long term gains.
- skinfaxi 16d ago
  Tech development is hindered in the USA?
  - brigandish 16d ago
    By monopolies, yes. Know what an acquihire is? Heard of a buyout leading to a shut down? That hinders development.
    - skinfaxi 15d ago
      The creator of a specific technology getting acquihired doesn't stop others from competing with the original. If anything, acquihire is a validating signal and probably leads to more entries into the market.
      - brigandish 15d ago
        The reduction of competitors and no win for the investors is somehow a signal that entry to the market against an even stronger than before incumbent would be a good bet?

Sir_Twist 16d ago

Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? I’m for less consolidation in the tech industry, but I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money.

stuartd 16d ago
The latter two potentially yes, as they can sell a product. Chrome - not so much: sell the browser, embed ads… nothing palatable.
- cyberax 16d ago
  A $1 a year payment (like in WhatsUp) from all the current Chrome users can easily cover all the reasonable browser development.
  - eclipticplane 16d ago
    Bonus: they might not be able to fund the anti-user behavior like sunsetting MV2, all of the "anonymous audience tracking" that prevents any other advertiser from identifying you (but Google's scale still can), aggressively pushing 'sign in with Google', retracting their stance on blocking third party cookies, continually removing settings that drive user control, and more.
bogwog 16d ago
> Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Definitely. > I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money. I see you have an unconventional definition of the word "great". I'll take that to mean you're an outside-the-box thinker, so you're in a good position to understand that a break up of Google would radically change all the markets they're dominant in. If Android 'dies' post-breakup, that would leave a gaping hole in the economy. iOS might fill it, but regulators would need to break them up too. Say iOS 'dies' too, would we all collectively just stop using smartphones? Obviously not. Entrepreneurs who can see opportunity will raise money and hire the right people to build a new OS, foundations will apply for grants to maintain Android or iOS forks, industry standards will form to improve interop and reduce development costs, etc. The sky's the limit!

abighamb 16d ago

I look forward to a new era of trust busting. It's an old American Tradition in need of revival

deleted 16d ago

[deleted]

dylan604 16d ago

We've done this in the past. AT&T was broken up into the regional baby bells. Eventually, the baby bells started to get absorbed back into the monolith AT&T again. Nobody stopped it. I assume that the fact that few people use landlines and there are more than one provider of communication services where the AT&T voltron is no longer a monopoly. The point? Not really sure, but as much as I'm all for breaking up Alphabet, I'm not convinced it will work. I'm willing to give it a go though

kibwen 16d ago
Trustbusting is like weeding your garden. It's just a chore that must be done periodically to counteract the natural tendency of markets to degenerate into monopolies. It's not something you do once and then never again, it's something that you have to do regularly, forever, if you want a functioning market.
- dylan604 16d ago
  Your "do regularly" got me thinking. There's only been 2 companies in the US to have been busted up, Standard Oil (1911) and ATT (1984). Microsoft (2000) got close but cut a deal. So yeah, we haven't been tending garden very well

glenstein 16d ago

I think there's a remarkably clear precedent at least for browsers, which is having Android users pick from a list of browsers instead of having Chrome as the pre installed default. That's already been done previously with Microsoft and I believe with search on Apple, andI think it would reverse the Mozilla market share trend overnight. I don't think Chrome being spun off as a company leaves them with a realistic path to revenue unless, ironically, they do something like what Mozilla does, and strike a search licensing agreement albeit a much bigger one proportionate to their share of users. I also don't think it should just be Alphabet/Google because at full strength they are an important check against the power of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and arguably Facebook. Weakening Alphabet while leaving them unchecked could have the net effect of increasing monopoly power of the other giants. I think the order of operations would go something like (1) Amazon (online retail), (2) Google (search and web), (3) Facebook (social media). Microsoft and Apple are giants but I don't think they are strategically cornering any particular tech markets right now (though I could be wrong). And I think international competition is complicating the picture of how close to monopolies they really are, though Google at least is clearly abusing its position in the browser and web standards space.

kylepomykala 16d ago

I really wish we had an admin that would be willing to do this.