Google needs to be broken up. The DOJ / FTC want to do it.
There's far too much value and scale in the company and they can't even focus their energies appropriately.
YouTube is the most valuable media property in the world. As a standalone company, it would still outperform Netflix on the basis of ads alone.
The monopolistic stuff Google is pulling off with Chrome/Android/Search is unfathomably market distorting, so those business units alone could/should be pulled apart. The tech sector would probably be better off if YouTube, Waymo, and GCP/AI efforts were similarly split up.
As a consumer I don't have any great desire to see it broken up. Youtube has worked well for me for years. If they spun it off it would probably get way more aggressive in trying to extract money and sell data.
Maybe, but IMO the DOJ's current proposal would be harmful for users and the web. Chrome is not worth as much to anyone else what it is to Google. And with Google barred from paying for default search engine placement, all browser investment everywhere will be severely cut back. Mozilla will probably finally fall, Safari will stagnate, and Chrome will rot.
Apple would no longer get $20 billion from Google for default search engine placement. Microsoft... and DDG or Yandex? might pay some, but nothing like that with the biggest bidder off the table. Safari funding would _definitely_ take a huge hit.
I don't think we know how much google pays for it right now. That 20B figure is from 2022. Also, that payment is mainly for iOS's Safari. Google would still pay Apple for search engine placement on iOS even if Apple stopped updating Safari today. What I'm poorly trying to say: I don't think safari development funding related to how much it brings in.
Also there is MS that wants to pay for search engine placement and it's fact.
There's far too much value and scale in the company and they can't even focus their energies appropriately.
YouTube is the most valuable media property in the world. As a standalone company, it would still outperform Netflix on the basis of ads alone.
The monopolistic stuff Google is pulling off with Chrome/Android/Search is unfathomably market distorting, so those business units alone could/should be pulled apart. The tech sector would probably be better off if YouTube, Waymo, and GCP/AI efforts were similarly split up.