• interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      This could affect you in several ways:

      Search Experience: If Google is broken up or forced to share data, you might notice changes in how search engines operate. Competitors like DuckDuckGo or Bing could become more competitive, offering better privacy, search results, or features, potentially giving you more choices.
      
      Privacy and Data: If Google is required to share data, there might be concerns about how your data is handled across different platforms. On the flip side, increased competition could lead to better privacy practices as companies vie for users.
      
      Technology and Services: Google’s services are deeply integrated into many products and platforms. A breakup could impact the availability, integration, or performance of these services, which might affect how you use technology in your daily life.
      
      Economic Impact: Google’s size and influence mean that any major changes could have broader economic impacts, potentially affecting industries related to technology, advertising, and beyond. This could indirectly influence job markets, investment trends, or even consumer prices.
      

      Overall, these changes could alter how you interact with the internet, your privacy, and the services you rely on daily.

    • jdeath@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      did somebody specifically ask you to look at this and comment? just wondering why are you asking such a weird question

      • imaginepayingforred@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Didn’t know there were stipulations to me commenting here. My, my. What an extremely hospitable user you are to this new, welcoming website. User since last year.

        • jdeath@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          well howdy and welcome, stranger! i was just wondering why anyone would leave such a comment. i didn’t intend too imply that you couldn’t comment, of course.

          I’m hazarding a guess that since you immediately went and looked up statistics about my user account and included them in your reply, you’ve come here with a lot of habits from… the other place.

          i don’t run this place or anything, and this is just my observation, so don’t take it as gospel. i would say that the tone here is generally a bit friendlier, so (imho) there is no need to assume hostility on the part of other commenters. i was just curious!

  • figaro@lemdro.id
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    3 months ago

    The people here who 1) think a breakup of Google will actually happen, and 2) think that a paid subscription model for a search engine have all been spending too much time in their Linux bubble.

    If Google did this, everyone would just switch to Bing, or open AI’s new thing they are making. The general public will not be on board with that.

  • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Cool. Take their search stuff, open source all the software, spin out an account service and 6 baby search engine companies.

    Do the same with each of their massive properties.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This… Isn’t how large scale technologies work. Not even close, not even “same planet” close.

      You could open source all ~15,000+ repos from my company, and be entirely incapable of actually operating the grand majority of it.

      And we’re, maybe, 1/10,000th the size of Google on the tech side.

      You also can’t just “split” a single technology apart, that’s gloriously, ignorantly, simplistic.

      It’s going to be a nightmare to just rip seemingly unrelated, but interdependent, verticals of Google apart. Your request here is wholely unrealistic.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Woah woah woah hold on.

        These are judges and lawyers, not software engineers.

        Personally it sounds like the lawyers and whatnot can do the whole splitting up the business. It will simultaneously create a HUGE demand in software engineers as all this stuff just sort of stops working.

        I think it’s a brilliant way to handle this.

        Plus the effect it would have on software engineer salaries in general. Not that I have any potential conflict of interest in stating this opinion, not at all.

  • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    How about we start restricting how many businesses a company is allowed to buy out in a year. Maybe allow like 1-2 mergers a year. There no reason we should allow one company to buy everyone and then kill their products and services leaving the consumers holding the bag that will no longer function because the server is gone.

    • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      One thing that I’ve always found interesting is that silicon valley has a common start up strategy that is basically: do well enough to get bought buy your bigger competition. Basically, be a threat so your VCs can cash in when a Google, Facebook, etc buys you.

      I’m other words, Silicon Valley has a start up culture that feeds an anticompetitive/anti-trust ecosystem. No one complains because they are all making money. It’s the users who slowly suffer and we end up were we are not with 5 companies running the modern web and Internet infrastructure.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Ah yes, but you see, the US government only cares about faceless corporations, business owners and other rich people, and not about the average citizen, sorry. In fact, I would argue most governments are like this.

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      I would say even one a year would be too much.

      That unless the business has failed and is no longer operating, for a merger and acquisition to occur they would have to petition the courts for permission first.

      Imagine the shit that Microsoft and Google and Adobe and Amazon would be doing if they had to start their companies from scratch and compete against the already extant players in the field?

      It would create so many jobs, and create an excess of consumer choice opportunity, lowering prices and fighting against inflation far more than a couple of percentage points on the interest rate index ever would.

      I’m tired of only being offered incredibly overpriced very shitty low quality options in every single category.

      We don’t need $100,000 cars. We need $5,000 cars.

      We don’t need $1,000,000 homes, we need $25,000 homes that anyone in America who works a full-time job regardless of if they’re slinging fries at McDonald’s or digging ditches can afford.

      We don’t need $100 a week grocery bills. We need $5 a week grocery bills.

    • KittyCat@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’d go further, restrict the market cap for businesses so they have to spin off if they get too big. Add to that a value limit for the number of boards you can sit on so 30 companies can’t be controlled by the same people.

    • ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Buyouts shouldn’t be allowed by default. The only cases where it should be allowed are when the business being bought out is struggling to the point where a buyout is really the only way to prevent bankruptcy. It should never be a good deal for the selling company and only a last resort to stop closing doors completely.

  • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Maybe if all their shadiness hadn’t been allowed in the first place they wouldn’t have been able to become a monopoly.

    But please, I beg of you, do Adobe next.

    • ApollosArrow@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I worry what a broken up Adobe would do to workflows. One of the reasons I can do what I do is because Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere all work with each other.

      Now if we want to save Behance and Frame.io, substance, Mixamo, etc, I am all for that.

      • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        I don’t know how deeply their different programs integrate with each other (I don’t do video or illustration seriously) but one would hope that it might encourage them to adopt more open standards and formats. For example, in my photography workflow I can import and catalogue a RAW image with Shotwell, which passes it through to my RAW developer (Rawtherapee), which in turn passes it through to my raster editor (GIMP). These programs are all developed separately from each other by people with much less resources than Adobe, so I think it’s a matter of choice rather than a technical limitation.

        • ApollosArrow@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It would depend on the actual file formats. For example I can import a live after effects file into premiere and all the updates I make will apear on premiere’s timeline, without needing to render out. The same goes for bringing photoshop or illustrator files into After Effects. I guess we’d just have to rely more on third party plugins that connect these programs like Overlord

        • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          Instead of invading Africa to control people and steal resources, the usa could kick Nestle out of their plantations.

        • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          Any brands protected by American law must be independently-owned, with full transfer of all branding, patents, trade secrets, intellectual assets and physical assets.

          So, for example, for even a single bottle of Perrier to be sold in America, it needs to have been made by a company registered with the brand name of Perrier, with exclusive use of that name within the country, independently owned and under zero control by Nestle, being manufactured using the exact same process with the exact same ingredients, and having control of the exact same patents and American-side infrastructure.

          America is such a large marketplace that it would be impossible to split a company like this. Patents alone would prevent this, forcing Nestle to divest themselves of each individual subsidiary.

    • curry@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      I remember the days of google being a cool startup that had just made news releasing gmail with a whopping 1GB of storage making everyone go crazy for the invites. It’s a strange feeling.

      • FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Yeah, I thought Google was so cool around 2004. Now I can’t wait for them to become irrelevant. I need to stop using “googling” as a verb…

  • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Do it do it do it do it do it do it…

    Smash them with a hammer. Google should not exist as it is. Not for decades.

    Break up AdSense, chrome, search, android, shatter them all into separate companies that can stop selling out literally every waking aspect of life as their sole business model.

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      and then prosecute them for antitrust if those companies conspire together

    • Gsus4@mander.xyzOP
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      3 months ago

      Antitrust comes in waves in the US. First, it’s a free for all to let the tech develop freely…then you see the horrors and a time of antitrust kicks in. This would be the 4th wave since the Sherman Act. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

        • Gsus4@mander.xyzOP
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          3 months ago

          That’s all I had, I’m not an expert, but I hope they go after FB and microsoft too (in case that makes you feel randy like that other guy in the comments) :P

            • ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              My biggest fear about a Google breakup would be what that does to the mobile market, specifically in the US, given the iPhone’s popularity here.

            • Gsus4@mander.xyzOP
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              3 months ago

              A human can live their whole life without ever interacting with an Apple product by mistake. I’m not sure about that for android/google/adsense/maps/youtube. It takes a deliberate effort to avoid these guys and I’m still not completely free from it. Slightly easier but still a minefield with Microsoft and FB, especially in niche areas.

  • tabular@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Will the old method of breaking up a company work enough on modern tech companies? Will the 2nd best map software ever catch up in market share?

    • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Just spinning off Android would shake up map software. It’s how they get traffic and other data.

      • tabular@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Many apps for Android rely on Google Play Services which I don’t know exactly what it’s doing but collecting data is a good bet.

        Do we end up with worse maps then?

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          3 months ago

          By my understanding google play services is basically just shared libraries and APIs for doing stuff and not as tied into Google specifically as its name might suggest

    • Gsus4@mander.xyzOP
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      3 months ago

      If you swapped most people from google into DDG without telling, most would hardly notice, I venture. Mapping is different.

      • tabular@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Perhaps, though I am dubious (when it comes to things like searching for business open hours or street view).

        However it’s not like choosing which restaurant to go to. They just type their search in the Google browser textbox and use the same search engine they’ve always used, the default. They’d need to encounter a failed search and think to try another, only to find that probably doesn’t work either.

      • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Just apple maps and bing under the hood though.

        What we really need is some non-super monopoly competition like osm

    • ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      If they forced them to split Waze off and make it independent again it probably could, it’s probably the only non default app I see people use regularly

      • ripcord@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Unless Savannah is some girl he knows, not sure this lands. Savannah, GA wasn’t really ever ravaged in the Civil War or anything.

        Atlanta’s the one that got leveled.

        • expatriado@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Like that is what you point out, and not the fact they got the wrong Sherman pictured lol. John Sherman ≠ William Tecumseh Sherman

        • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Yeah. I just remembered from history class that he had given them a message saying basically “Surrender or I lay unholy seige apon the city and you either die by being blown up or starve to death.” and the name sounded good, lol. He did end up with the key to the city! Good old Sherman. Liked to laugh, sing, set fire to homes, sometimes with people in them, good old total war guy.

    • Gsus4@mander.xyzOP
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      3 months ago

      Google also cut 12000 jobs in Jan 2023, but it does not have an AMD or Nvidia to kick its ass in search when it fucks up.

      • LavenderDay3544@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Intel is a near monopoly and it controls the physical hardware that runs the entire universe with the exception of mobile devices and embedded.

        If you’re going to break anyone up that’s who I would go for first but because of the pipe dream of making computer chips in 'Murica these idiot politicians keep propping up Intel’s Wall Street investors while its employees get fucked over.

        At the very least the x86 duopoly has to end. It’s not only legal but kept the way it is because of legal contracts. The courts need to declare them void because their enforcement leads to to the violation of antitrust laws.

        • nic547@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 months ago

          IFS is struggling to compete against TSMC, Datacenter is bleeding and loosing Customers to AMD, Ampere. Microsoft, NVIDIA and Google are also working on ARM server CPUs. Client Computing Group is loosing marketshare to Apple and AMD, with Qualcomm also recently entering the ring. They had to kill Optane, sell their NAND business, they’re not really relevant in GPU, have to IPO Altera again to get some cash and Mobileye already had to be IPOd again.

          Clearly the CPU market didn’t need intervention to get competitive again, Intel didn’t have the power to prevent others from competing in the market and as soon as they got complacent others got ready.

          Relying on TSMC as the exclusive manufacturer for bleeding edge semiconductors would be insane. We need Intel and Samsung to remain competitive.

          At the very least the x86 duopoly has to end.

          AMD, Intel and Centaur/VIA have x86 licensees. ARM exists, RISC-V is gaining traction - No need to implement all the legacy baggage of x86 when you can start with something a little bit more current.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Fully support the action, don’t know how the timing works…

    Best case, you only start to basically outline what this looks like before the election. Worst case, you enliven the complacent, left-centrist billionaires to vigorously join in with the perpetually batshit right wing billionaires to get trump in to “live to fight another day” with the reasoning of, “we need to save ourselves first, then we’ll deal with trump when he goes full fascist” and then they either won’t be able to or won’t care to because they won’t want to upset their share price.

    • MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Well, something, but that action is only temporary because those companies that were the result of the division are reunited to form or are acquired by other large companies.

      Obviously they will no longer be what they were in the original company. But something is something.

  • Jackcooper@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    PBMs/healthcare conglomerating needs to be looked at as a top priority

    And this Kroger Albertsons thing needs to be stopped for good