Hacker News Reader

Ever heard of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, etc.? Google just does it better than anyone else at the moment.

Now I'm not saying Google doesn't have a de facto monopoly, but I'm wary of anyone who says a private company should be forced to split. Should they be punished for being the most popular?

View on HN

Good thing google is public rather than private.

Do I need to explain how a publicly traded company is still private, or are you just being purposely obtuse?

Look at Googles multi class share structure and ask that Q again.

JHSheridan is using the term "private" to mean "not owned by the government."

Exactly. I understand there's a difference, I just thought the way I was using it was completely obvious.

I understand that Google is its own legal fiction. I don't see any inherent human rights issues in turning one piece of paper into two.

I think there could be some questions as to whether Google is engaging in anti-competitive behaviour in the way they use search revenues to undercut other competitors. Perhaps they are doing nothing wrong, perhaps they are doing something wrong, and perhaps an effective remedy to that is to split the company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com