Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

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We shouldn't be fighting. We're powerless. The anti-trust regulators should be taking up this fight.

Google should be broken into several companies.

A breakup would be good for shareholders. Google would be worth more as separate companies, because currently they're giving away hundreds of billions of dollars in value for free.

They'd also have to be more nimble, which would increase fitness instead of being an overfed goldfish in a tiny pond.

A breakup would oxygenate the field for competition and innovation. Right now, Google is killing all the competition with their platform pricing power.

Engineers would be better compensated too, as more firms would have to compete for talent.

The hulking behemoth is bad for everyone, including Google itself.

> We shouldn't be fighting. We're powerless.

No we’re not. It’s okay for regulators to fix our mess in the meantime (though I wouldn’t get my hopes up), but we should teach others to see the imbalance and regain the power. This is the fight we should be fighting, and it’s the only sustainable way to go.

Let’s do both. Pressure your gov representatives to deal with the Googles/Apples of the world locking down computing, stifling competition. And also do what you can as an engineer. We have the knowledge about what technologies are democratizing. Support open source (the real kind)

When you’re building products, make sure you treat your users like real people, with respect.

At every level of the stack, from firmware to OS to application to cloud, let the user own their device, and their data.

Any amount of contribution, no matter how small, helps. Get your coworkers or classmates aware of the issue. It won’t be a monumental contribution, but it all counts.

I agree that a breakup would be better! I'm just hoping that Judge Brinkema doesn't get soft on Google. I'm thinking it's going to happen though. They're saying that a full breakup likely won't happen, and that Google will probably just have to sell off Chrome. Or at least they were, last time I checked. I know it was or is being considered in the search case.

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