Google to small businesses: antitrust limits could "impact your business."

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Google is quietly enlisting the help of small businesses to protect the nearly $2 trillion company from antitrust regulations. In response to congressional bills like the "Ending Platform Monopolies Act," which would ban platform owners from favoring their own services over the competition, Google is telling small business owners that these bills would hurt their ability to find customers online and that they should contact their congressperson about the issue.

Caption: Let's see, you landed on my "Google Ads" space, and with three houses... that will be $1,400.

Quotes

Quote

We've seen Google do political action before, usually in the form of headline-grabbing blog posts from CEO Sundar Pichai defending the latest product-bundling scheme. The strategy here seems new, though; rather than writing a public blog post, Google is quietly targeting users who have registered business listings on Google Maps. These users report receiving unsolicited emails and an "action item" in the Google Business Profile UI that both link to Google's new anti-antitrust site.

Both the email and Google Business action item beg for a click, saying, "New laws may impact businesses. Proposed legislation could make it harder to find your business online." Both items link to this site, which is full of scary language imploring users to "stay up-to-date on proposed legislation that could impact your business." The site recommends concerned users sign up for Google's new political action mailing list, with the sign-up form saying, "By clicking this button, I consent that Google can contact me about legislative and regulatory issues, events, and advocacy opportunities related to my business."

The site never mentions bills like the "Ending Platform Monopolies Act" by name, and as a result, the arguments can be pretty hard to follow for normal people. The site talks around nondescript "legislation" that will hurt businesses and repeatedly refers to "these bills" without ever naming which bills it's talking about. It's only after clicking through some "more information" links at the bottom that you'll finally discover the subject of the page by reading through the linked press releases talking about the specific bits of proposed laws for search engines, ad platforms, and app stores.

Quote

If passed, these bills could cost your business time and money by:

• Making it harder for customers to find you because your business listing (including your phone number, address, and business hours) may no longer appear on Google Search and Maps.
• Making your digital marketing less effective if Google Ads products are disconnected from each other and from Google Analytics.
• Hurting your productivity if Gmail, Docs, and Calendar are split up and they no longer work together seamlessly.

-Google

 

My thoughts

Oh well. Google's being google I suppose. By obfuscating the information and employing scare tactics, Google is apparently try to coerce the very people who might be benefitted by the law to vote against it. Who would've thunk that Google would want to protect their bottoms by hurting others. Well, reading through google's arguments basically make me want that law to pass even more.

"Don't be evil" -Google of the past

Edit: It does seem to me that the law that is being discussed here is a bit over the top, however, the way google's acting is still not great for their cause

Sources

ArsTechnica

Twitter - MattNavarra

NearMedia

Google

[Gork]

What are the in trouble for this time?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

14 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

"Don't be evil" -Google of the past

Google now

 

s u p e r v i l l a n   m o d e

 

w e   n o w   c o n t r o l   y o u   a n d   l i t t e r a l l y          e v e r y o n e   o n   e a r t h

 

o b e y   o r   D I E

[Jaesop]

Break up Google.

[Kisai]

43 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Summary

Google is quietly enlisting the help of small businesses to protect the nearly $2 trillion company from antitrust regulations. In response to congressional bills like the "Ending Platform Monopolies Act," which would ban platform owners from favoring their own services over the competition,

Just business being business.

 

43 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

 

Google is telling small business owners that these bills would hurt their ability to find customers online and that they should contact their congressperson about the issue.

 

Just remember that:

- The Tobbacco industry lobbied and succeeded in not having their products marked as dangerous for decades, until finally in the 90's countries started banning their advertisements entirely. Here in Canada it's been widdled down over time to where you might not know a store sells it, however when Vaping became big, it came back and we had to do the song and dance again.

- The Oil industry lobbied against energy efficiency and global warming, despite knowing it's own research showed how harmful burning oil and gas is.

 

Both FaceBook and Google know they are harmful companies and are lobbying to maintain their interests. EA, Ubisoft, Activision, also know they are going to be caught in the cross-hairs as more anti-gambling/loot-boxes-are-gambling policy is written.

 

Then there is the right-to-repair movement.

 

Business will do everything it can to protect its interests. That is not a surprise. If you want to see these companies lose, make sure you and everyone you know phone, email, fax, snail-mail, support or opposition about what these big companies are doing.

 

You should assume that a big company does not have your interests in mind, only it's own interests, and it's likely opposition to a big company's lobbying is the correct course of action, but of course only do that if you know what you're getting into.  Many people get suckered into astroturfing campaigns because they have some brand-loyalty.

 

 

[Quackers101]

when google already has paid ads for malware clone of the original search and fake businesses that abuse the google system? good riddance.

[wanderingfool2]

52 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Who would've thunk that Google would want to protect their bottoms by hurting others. Well, reading through google's arguments basically make me want that law to pass even more.

"Don't be evil" -Google of the past

That is based on the assumption that "hurting others" would occur.  Skimming through the bills, I could see how this could become an issue overall.

 

Like I've said before, if you were to eliminate ad revenue from Google, you would start to get a few different options.  More paid services, instead of free, or diminished quality.  An example being, Google prior to tracking ads started losing money.  Breaking up a company (based on revenue sources), could make it so that you get more ads just because they need to make up the difference (there is cost overhead in having 2 separate companies).

 

Let us not forget as well, the way this is written, it could affect a decent amount of services.  An example being bestbuy market place.  Imagine if they were forced to no longer show best buy products (no way to filter)

[Sauron]

Corporations lying about the impact of regulations to make money they don't even need? Classic.

[thekingofmonks]

8 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Corporations lying about the impact of regulations to make money they don't even need? Classic.

Google already having monopolized several services and making Google Photos a paid service all of a sudden shows exactly how they're trying to dominate. This "friendly warning" isn't going to save their reputation by a bit.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, thekingofmonks said:

Google already having monopolized several services and making Google Photos a paid service all of a sudden shows exactly how they're trying to dominate. This "friendly warning" isn't going to save their reputation by a bit.

My guess is that they are realizing that ad revenue, if the politicians have their way, will be dropping...skimming over the financials if ad revenues drop by 30% they are in a losing position.  The thing is Alphabet as a collective is what is able to drive and generate that much ad revenue...if they were to be split or seperate then I could easily see them going into a position where they are "losing" money...or start trying to push more paid services.

 

To be fair as well, Google does allow for 15GB of Google Photos for free...which is more than things like iCloud.

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Corporations lying about the impact of regulations to make money they don't even need? Classic.

Here is the hypothetical scenario (which I think is very likely plausible).  Bill gets passed, Alphabet is forced to separate Ad from Google.  Ad revenue drops, Google shifts more focus on subscriptions.  Less ad revenue means "free" app developers get less income, the non-integration with Google means less tempting to click ads are shown, so even all this adds up to free services (not by Google) making less money and needing to either resort to more scummy ads (remember back in the day when sites were riddled with sketchy ads...even more so than the current ones), start charging for apps or downsize/give up. 

 

Do I agree with what Alphabet is currently doing?  No, but having a bill introduced that could have the power to break up companies or dictate what they can or cannot do with their service is over the top (In the sense that they can't favor their own products over others).

 

It's all akin to the "tax the billionaires" that has been running through media...while on paper it's good, when you actually look at things practically things break down (like the concept that unrealized gains doesn't properly represent wealth...an example being if the gamestop short squeeze happened on the last trading day of december...the owners would effectively be on the hook for billions in taxes, so they would have to sell enough stock to cover the costs...except that means they no longer control the company, also the fact that it proceeded to drop...so they effectively would have had to liquidate all their stock to cover the tax bill...tl;dr.  They would sell all their stock to cover the tax bill and likely still end up in debt).  That is why it's important to actually consider the domino effect that bills can have, when it is proposing things so drastic.

[Vishera]

A badly written bill that can ruin many industries,including but not limited to the video games industry:

 

Let's take Valve and Sony for example,

According to the bill if Steam and/or the Playstation Store were to be added to the list of platforms covered by this bill:

Valve won't be allowed to sell it's games on Steam according to section 2 a1

Sony won't be allowed to sell the games it publishes on the Playsation store according to section 2 a1

Quote

(a) Violation.—As of the date an online platform is designated as a covered platform under subsection 6(a), it shall be unlawful for a covered platform operator to own, control, or have a beneficial interest in a line of business other than the covered platform that—

(1) utilizes the covered platform for the sale or provision of products or services;

 

Quote

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Ending Platform Monopolies Act”.

SEC. 2. UNLAWFUL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

 

(a) Violation.—As of the date an online platform is designated as a covered platform under subsection 6(a), it shall be unlawful for a covered platform operator to own, control, or have a beneficial interest in a line of business other than the covered platform that—

(1) utilizes the covered platform for the sale or provision of products or services;

 

(2) offers a product or service that the covered platform requires a business user to purchase or utilize as a condition for access to the covered platform, or as a condition for preferred status or placement of a business user’s product or services on the covered platform; or

 

(3) gives rise to a conflict of interest.

 

 

(b) Conflict Of Interest.—For purposes of this section, the term “conflict of interest” includes the conflict of interest that arises when—

(1) a covered platform operator owns or controls a line of business, other than the covered platform; and

 

(2) the covered platform’s ownership or control of that line of business creates the incentive and ability for the covered platform to—

(A) advantage the covered platform operator’s own products, services, or lines of business on the covered platform over those of a competing business or a business that constitutes nascent or potential competition to the covered platform operator; or

 

(B) exclude from, or disadvantage, the products, services, or lines of business on the covered platform of a competing business or a business that constitutes nascent or potential competition to the covered platform operator.

 

 

Instead i recommend to amend:

The Sherman Antitrust Act for a clearer definition of a monopoly so that in cases like Epic Games VS Apple the courts won't say that  things like apple monopolizing payment processing on the Apple Store are not a monopoly.

 

The Clayton Antitrust Act to apply to all exclusivity deals.

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Here is the hypothetical scenario (which I think is very likely plausible).  Bill gets passed, Alphabet is forced to separate Ad from Google.  Ad revenue drops, Google shifts more focus on subscriptions.  Less ad revenue means "free" app developers get less income, the non-integration with Google means less tempting to click ads are shown, so even all this adds up to free services (not by Google) making less money and needing to either resort to more scummy ads (remember back in the day when sites were riddled with sketchy ads...even more so than the current ones), start charging for apps or downsize/give up. 

I don't care, the harm done to the industry by alphabet having a monopoly on this outweighs the convenience and minor savings you might get by allowing it. Why are "free market" types always the most opposed to actually having competition?

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's all akin to the "tax the billionaires" that has been running through media...while on paper it's good, when you actually look at things practically things break down (like the concept that unrealized gains doesn't properly represent wealth...an example being if the gamestop short squeeze happened on the last trading day of december...the owners would effectively be on the hook for billions in taxes, so they would have to sell enough stock to cover the costs...except that means they no longer control the company, also the fact that it proceeded to drop...so they effectively would have had to liquidate all their stock to cover the tax bill...tl;dr.  They would sell all their stock to cover the tax bill and likely still end up in debt).

It's actually incredible how much I don't care. You say people won't be able to pump and dump random stocks with no value? Good. Certainly, if something like the gamestop squeeze were to happen in that scenario then everyone involved would have to pay taxes on the stock they own at that time, meaning the tax load is fairly distributed among those looking for make a payday - and if it's artificially inflated by them, boo hoo, too bad, next time don't speculate on bullshit stock hoping to scam fools into pumping it for you.

 

If you can't convert stocks into cash well enough to pay taxes on your wealth that's your problem. These are all artificial issues created by billionaires to avoid paying taxes on money they'll never use. Forgive me if I can't be arsed to pity these assholes who buy private spaceships while others starve. Tell me if it makes sense to you that a multibillionaire should get tax refunds because they froze up some money into stocks and were able to declare fake losses.

[WolframaticAlpha]

6 hours ago, Jaesop said:

Break up Google.

Shhhh! The overlords might jail you!

[wanderingfool2]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

It's actually incredible how much I don't care.

It shows, given that you missed the point completely.  It's not that the bill would have prevented a pump and dump...it's that the bill would have issued a "billionaires tax" that would have taxed the owners of a company more than the value that the stock was worth (if it had happened on the last trading day of December) [i.e. despite just trying to run a business the owners would be forced to sell and personally declare bankruptcy].  The point is that bills on surface might look like the right thing, but have massive consequences.

 

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

Why are "free market" types always the most opposed to actually having competition?

I'm not a free market type...I think that regulations properly used is a good thing.  Having skimmed over the proposal, I don't think it's a good thing.  Ability for a government to break up a company is never good.  Stopping self promotion of products isn't a good thing (or rather, to the extent the proposed bill would be)

 

I find it a very naive approach saying that it will just be a minor savings/convenience.  This affects more than just Alphabet, but even just considering Alphabet the potential ramifications are huge.  The fact is, if these rules were in place years ago the following would have existed:  Google maps (in it's entirety), YouTube (yes, Google made it worse but it also turned it into a profitable company...otherwise it likely wouldn't have stayed alive...it was losing billions a year), likely Android (we would have the brand specific other types of OSes that phone manufacturers would have implemented), I'd argue that we might not even have C# had this been in place before then.

 

Competition is a good thing, but "forcing" competition is not always a good choice either.  I'm merely exist in the middle ground from what you are implying I am, and what this bill currently is.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It shows, given that you missed the point completely.  It's not that the bill would have prevented a pump and dump...it's that the bill would have issued a "billionaires tax" that would have taxed the owners of a company more than the value that the stock was worth (if it had happened on the last trading day of December) [i.e. despite just trying to run a business the owners would be forced to sell and personally declare bankruptcy].  The point is that bills on surface might look like the right thing, but have massive consequences.

 

There are billionaires that are onboard with such taxes, the only ones freaking out about it are the ones that are setting money on fire on stupid things like Zuck, Bezos and Musk. Anyone who shills for crypto and NFT's deserves to have unrealized gains taxed for engaging in those scams. Selling your self million dollar NFT's to artificially the price? Selling crypto to yourself to boost the price? Scam.

 

Where I think things get poorly targeted is when regulations over taxes aren't assessed at the same levels as everyone. So the starting point should be that anyone who makes any money, in any amount must pay taxes on it, even if that money is made or held in a foreign country. In some cases the paperwork to collect taxes on a few dollars is greater than the money made. 

 

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

I'm not a free market type...I think that regulations properly used is a good thing.  Having skimmed over the proposal, I don't think it's a good thing.  Ability for a government to break up a company is never good.  Stopping self promotion of products isn't a good thing (or rather, to the extent the proposed bill would be)

What you want is to discourage "self promotion to the detriment of competing products", which who is to define what a "competing product" is. Are Android and iOS competing products, even though Apple doesn't make TV's only STB's, and all smartTV platforms are incompatible with each other. Would being forced to break up a company result in divisions in a company being separated, despite using the same software platform?

 

This is one of the risks in breaking up a company. Even merging with a company and then spinning off the parts you don't need (which is what Google did with Motorola) will ultimately result in less competition. 

 

 

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I find it a very naive approach saying that it will just be a minor savings/convenience.  This affects more than just Alphabet, but even just considering Alphabet the potential ramifications are huge.  The fact is, if these rules were in place years ago the following would have existed

C# came out of Sun/Oracle trying to license and control the Java language. Microsoft had it's own Java JVM which was incompatible with the Sun/Oracle one. 

 

Ultimately the entire managed runtimes "run anywhere" approach has been abandoned, back in favor of compiling everything for the target CPU, and the biggest uses of C# is Unity, which itself compiles to native code.

 

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Competition is a good thing, but "forcing" competition is not always a good choice either.  I'm merely exist in the middle ground from what you are implying I am, and what this bill currently is.

 

The problem is that in a physical-product sense, sometimes having too many choices results in excessive waste (see how much food is thrown out when you have 30 brands of bread shipped from a central bakery.) Do we really need 30 varieties of bread when ultimately the only difference between any of them are things added to the top of the bread just before it goes into the oven? No. In the US there are plenty of products that are US-market only because the products are produced in the US and not exported. An example of this is "cherry coke", Coca-Cola could sell this year-round, but doesn't in Canada. Often it only appears for a month and then disappears, no notice. Meanwhile Pepsi has been selling Cherry Pepsi almost year round. These are bottled in whatever local bottling facility the company owns, and guess what, not all of them are owned by the parent company.

 

So where in the US, there are more product varieties because there are more bottling facilities with their own capacities. Then you have Canada where basically there only two bottling facilities, one for Western Canada and one for Central/Eastern Canada, and products produced for Western Canada never show up in Central Canada. Most of the time. (occasionally you see Central Canada's Pepsi products in BC, because the aluminum color is different.)

 

So if every bottler only made exactly one drink, whatever is most profitable. That's basically the Android situation. There is nothing making one Android product more appealing over another, and as such you have crappy high-margin products being sold at the same price as high-end products with low-margin.

 

If the government says "no manufacturer may have more than 40% of the market", and one has 50% of the market, how do you split it? If you were to try and split Apple up, you couldn't, because the hardware and software are tightly integrated, but they could demand that iOS and MacOS be licensed to others. But Android? the OS is already easily licensed, and there are competing devices, but not competing OS's (unless you count older versions of the same OS.)

 

And if you want stores to be able to sell on multiple devices that have incompatible cpu's? Well that's just banging your head against a concrete wall. That would be making unreasonable demands on developers. Just look at how many games are ported to MacOS and Linux. Almost nothing. All the Apple-store games are on iOS, not MacOS.

 

Breaking google up so that the ad systems are divorced from everything would be nothing but good, but it would also mean an end to pretty much all "free" services.

[wanderingfool2]

7 hours ago, Kisai said:

deserves to have unrealized gains taxed

Not going to say too much, as it's a bit out of topic (but I was using it as a way to show how a poorly written bill can have major consequences).  Because again, taxing unrealized gains really means someone could go bankrupt trying to pay taxes because others are pumping and dumping stocks (or someone loses control of their company).  The way the bill was formed literally meant, things like what happened to GME could literally bankrupt the GME owners (even though they had no intention of the short-squeeze and over evaluation that happened)

 

7 hours ago, Kisai said:

Breaking google up so that the ad systems are divorced from everything would be nothing but good, but it would also mean an end to pretty much all "free" services.

I think a lot of people would be surprised at how much they have relied on the "free" services.  Yes it's a trade-off in privacy but honestly I don't care as it's reasonably easy to not be tracked if you wanted to, and in the mean-time you get services that would likely have a subscription fee (and it would be death by a thousand cuts).

 

An example of what "competition" has to the streaming platform has done, looking at Netflix where now you have hbo+, disney+, prime etc...so if you wanted to just view something you end up having to subscribe to a lot more.

[mr moose]

32 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

 

I think a lot of people would be surprised at how much they have relied on the "free" services.  Yes it's a trade-off in privacy but honestly I don't care as it's reasonably easy to not be tracked if you wanted to, and in the mean-time you get services that would likely have a subscription fee (and it would be death by a thousand cuts).

 

 

I would happily pay $5-10 a month for a company to provide me with cloud backup of all my txt, email, calendar and contacts without the data collection, spying and inability to control what gets collected and what doesn't.

 

Hell, I would pay more for a phone that would allow me to select only which apps I want to share GPS with and that the OS or play services didn't stick it's fat nose in.

[Vishera]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Yes it's a trade-off in privacy

It doesn't have to be like that.

In the old days they did advertising without spying on you.

[mr moose]

Just now, Vishera said:

It doesn't have to be like that.

In the old days they did advertising without spying on you.

I remember when advertising on TV paid for half decent content and didn't make you want to eat a cyanide tree.

[Vishera]

17 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's not that the bill would have prevented a pump and dump...it's that the bill would have issued a "billionaires tax"

The bill doesn't tax anyone in any way shape or form.

Seems like people here completely missed my post explaining what the bill is and my take on it:

 

On 11/10/2021 at 10:38 AM, Vishera said:

A badly written bill that can ruin many industries,including but not limited to the video games industry:

 

Let's take Valve and Sony for example,

According to the bill if Steam and/or the Playstation Store were to be added to the list of platforms covered by this bill:

Valve won't be allowed to sell it's games on Steam according to section 2 a1

Sony won't be allowed to sell the games it publishes on the Playsation store according to section 2 a1

Quote

(a) Violation.—As of the date an online platform is designated as a covered platform under subsection 6(a), it shall be unlawful for a covered platform operator to own, control, or have a beneficial interest in a line of business other than the covered platform that—

(1) utilizes the covered platform for the sale or provision of products or services;

 

Quote

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Ending Platform Monopolies Act”.

SEC. 2. UNLAWFUL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

 

(a) Violation.—As of the date an online platform is designated as a covered platform under subsection 6(a), it shall be unlawful for a covered platform operator to own, control, or have a beneficial interest in a line of business other than the covered platform that—

(1) utilizes the covered platform for the sale or provision of products or services;

 

(2) offers a product or service that the covered platform requires a business user to purchase or utilize as a condition for access to the covered platform, or as a condition for preferred status or placement of a business user’s product or services on the covered platform; or

 

(3) gives rise to a conflict of interest.

 

 

(b) Conflict Of Interest.—For purposes of this section, the term “conflict of interest” includes the conflict of interest that arises when—

(1) a covered platform operator owns or controls a line of business, other than the covered platform; and

 

(2) the covered platform’s ownership or control of that line of business creates the incentive and ability for the covered platform to—

(A) advantage the covered platform operator’s own products, services, or lines of business on the covered platform over those of a competing business or a business that constitutes nascent or potential competition to the covered platform operator; or

 

(B) exclude from, or disadvantage, the products, services, or lines of business on the covered platform of a competing business or a business that constitutes nascent or potential competition to the covered platform operator.

Expand  

 

 

Instead i recommend to amend:

The Sherman Antitrust Act for a clearer definition of a monopoly so that in cases like Epic Games VS Apple the courts won't say that  things like apple monopolizing payment processing on the Apple Store are not a monopoly.

 

The Clayton Antitrust Act to apply to all exclusivity deals.

 

[wanderingfool2]

6 hours ago, Vishera said:

The bill doesn't tax anyone in any way shape or form.

Seems like people here completely missed my post explaining what the bill is and my take on it:

If you actually read my post where I originally brought it up...it's that I was comparing it to the billionaires tax bill (which was equally flawed in it's writing compared to this one).  It was the point I was making that people can't just react with emotions and say "we need this" without actually reading what is going to happen.

 

6 hours ago, Vishera said:

It doesn't have to be like that.

In the old days they did advertising without spying on you.

Yes, in the old days...you know, back when Google actually was losing money (because everyone seems to forget that at one stage when Google was doing advertising the "old fashion way", they actually began losing money.  The only thing that saved them as a company was targeted/tracked ads)

 

9 hours ago, mr moose said:

I would happily pay $5-10 a month for a company to provide me with cloud backup of all my txt, email, calendar and contacts without the data collection, spying and inability to control what gets collected and what doesn't.

 

Hell, I would pay more for a phone that would allow me to select only which apps I want to share GPS with and that the OS or play services didn't stick it's fat nose in.

It's called Apple if you want that...but you pay for it in different ways really as well, by giving up choice

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's called Apple if you want that...but you pay for it in different ways really as well, by giving up choice

The only thing stopping me buy from apple is repairability, their attitude toward customers and ecological practices.   I'm not blind to the fact most android batteries come from the same damned cobalt mines, but at least motrola and nokia don't pretend they are looking after the kids and are passing on the savings, I can at least donate that saving to a charity that will help 3rd world countries. 

 

And before people try to argue MS do the same with surface and Samsung with their phones, I know, that's why I don't buy those products either.