<story><title>U.S. states lean toward breaking up Google&apos;s ad tech business</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/states-lean-toward-pushing-to-break-up-googles-ad-tech-business.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>Good decision. Then do the same thing to AWS and Amazon&amp;#x27;s media branch, and then go undo the whatsapp acquisition. Then stop platforms from subsidizing competing products while they charge competitors high fees like Spotify vs Apple Music.&lt;p&gt;The increasing trend of large tech conglomerates to use one money printing product like AWS or search or the Apple Store to tactically snipe competitors to destroy or acquire them is absolutely abysmal in the long run. I don&amp;#x27;t care if it increases consumer prices by 10 cents or whatever, it&amp;#x27;s time to look at the long term health of the ecosystem overall. It&amp;#x27;s really the private analog to a state capitalist country subsidizing its own firms while foreigners have to compete on a one-by-one basis. Everyone considers that to be detrimental when it happens between two nations, I don&amp;#x27;t see why it&amp;#x27;s not detrimental when it happens in the tech industry.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>glenstein</author><text>&amp;gt;Good decision. Then do the same thing to AWS and Amazon&amp;#x27;s media branch, and then go undo the whatsapp acquisition&lt;p&gt;Exactly. My concern is that Google is being uniquely targeted, and that breaking them up and calling it a day just exposes us to further abuses from the rest of the tech industry. At least with Google, evil is divided across &lt;i&gt;five&lt;/i&gt; tech giants that can serve as checks against one another, instead of merely four.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I feel that the tech industry as a whole, while far from not evil, has emerged with a set of interests distinct from those of other monopolies, and helped protect the internet from being subordinated to the interests of telecoms. Which isn&amp;#x27;t to say that I enjoy monopolies, far from it. I just want to see similar willpower to break up the giants of other industries.&lt;p&gt;For that matter, if we really have to go the route of the uniquely targeting a specific tech company, I would at least start with Amazon and then Facebook. Or if we thought more broadly than just tech, I would start with the oil industry giants, finance industry giants, and then telecoms, and then health insurance companies, and then Amazon and Facebook.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. states lean toward breaking up Google&apos;s ad tech business</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/states-lean-toward-pushing-to-break-up-googles-ad-tech-business.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>Good decision. Then do the same thing to AWS and Amazon&amp;#x27;s media branch, and then go undo the whatsapp acquisition. Then stop platforms from subsidizing competing products while they charge competitors high fees like Spotify vs Apple Music.&lt;p&gt;The increasing trend of large tech conglomerates to use one money printing product like AWS or search or the Apple Store to tactically snipe competitors to destroy or acquire them is absolutely abysmal in the long run. I don&amp;#x27;t care if it increases consumer prices by 10 cents or whatever, it&amp;#x27;s time to look at the long term health of the ecosystem overall. It&amp;#x27;s really the private analog to a state capitalist country subsidizing its own firms while foreigners have to compete on a one-by-one basis. Everyone considers that to be detrimental when it happens between two nations, I don&amp;#x27;t see why it&amp;#x27;s not detrimental when it happens in the tech industry.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Sevaris</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s incredibly anti-competitive behaviour and it&amp;#x27;s baffling that governments are allowing it to go unchecked. Even the WhatsApp purchase was greenlit with &lt;i&gt;caveats&lt;/i&gt; (not combining FB and WhatsApp user data) ... which were promptly ignored by Facebook. I seriously want to know who they paid off to get that acquisition. There&amp;#x27;s no way that was above board.</text></comment>