(1) This doesn't actually reduce market share, since each of these are basically different market categories.
(2) Almost all the revenue is from search. That company is the revenue generating arm for the other ones.
In contrast to most people here, I think breaking up Amazon is far more important to Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and many other tech companies. Only Google is as bad.
Before Google Maps we had a few online map services and they were terrible. Google Maps redefined what it means to have free access to web based interactive global maps, it changed how people find things and it was all payed by the ad business. Later on some monetizing efforts were made for it and competitors started to appear, mostly trying to catch up and copy what Google Maps did, but without the huge cash infusion of the ad business none of this would have happened.
A decade later, people take these things for granted and just want to split services up. I guess it makes sense from their point of view but to me it's not that clear what should happen while still allowing for the type of creativity and speed of development that allowed things like Google Maps to appear because I'm afraid "the next big" thing that could redefine our lives (and improve them) would be slowed down or simply made non-feasible.
This is not true. MapQuest revolutionized things almost 10 years earlier than Google Maps. Google search is what allowed Google Maps to overtake MapQuest. Also, Android providing real-time traffic data of all their users gave them the winning formula.
As was, like, an app that could reroute live instead of relying on pre-printed paper instructions.
Gmaps had both before MapQuest.
I've seen mid-roll ads on songs on YouTube.
Hosting costs & delivery costs (per byte) drop every year. Every year their compression gets better. Every year their ad revenues goes up. YouTube ad revenues have been growing at something like 30% a year for many years.
I think one reason Google doesn't break out YouTube profitability is because as soon as they show they are profitable they end up getting some of their biggest partners (like music labels) using those profits to readjust revshares.
Also if Google claims YouTube is not profitable they can be painted as the victim for extremist content or hate content they host, whereas if they show they were making a couple billion year a year in profits these narratives would be significantly less effective.
Core search ad prices haven't really been falling yet Google blended click prices keep falling about 20% a year while ad click volume is growing about 60% a year. This is driven primarily by increasing watch time on YouTube and increasing ad load on YouTube. Google blends video ad views in with their "clicks" count.
You are right though, it doesn't deal with the dominance of the search directly. My hope is a complimentary effect to the above also happens: Google no longer gets gobs of personal data from its other services, allowing other search engines to approach its efficacy.
As is clear I'm not really a fan of direct intervention in a single market, I see it as more of a problem when these giants muscle their way and control more and more markets, creating a vicious feedback loop.
I'm still not sure how this would work on Apple though, since their main differentiator is their design sensibilities and integration rather than their platform monopolies.
I guess iMessage and the App Store do rely on monopoly rents, but I can't think of any way to sever those links without making the iOS platform less secure.
I think it's instructive to look at the rest of the market. How is Mozilla funded? Basically a single gigantic contract with Google. Even Apple accepts payment from google to become the default, and it's not cheap: https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en... The same logic applies to pretty much anything Alphabet spins off -- there's little difference between ownership and those contract.
About the only competition this setup produces is the ability for Mozilla to walk away to a competitor bid, which they did for like a year before bailing out at the first opportunity. There's a huge incumbency bias in these contracts. The first parallel that comes to mind is employer provided health insurance. Everyone gets to bid, but the incumbent knows the claims history far better than the competition and we'd only expect them to lose bids to companies overly optimistic about that history. Google knows how valuable various traffic sources are, but their competitors have to guess, and only when their guess is higher than Google's does it pay off. Does anyone think Yahoo winning Firefox was a good deal? I haven't seen any analysis to support that.
> My hope is a complimentary effect to the above also happens: Google no longer gets gobs of personal data from its other services, allowing other search engines to approach its efficacy.
Wouldn't the most profitable thing for these broken up companies be to sell their slice of the personal data pie as many parties as possible? This seems like a net loss for privacy. How much extra would it be worth to set up an exclusive arrangement?