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1. Embed this notice
   Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:06:46 JST Cory Doctorow

   Last August, a federal judge convicted Google of being "a monopolist" and acting "as one to maintain its monopoly." The judge concluded that key to Google's monopoly was the vast troves of data it collects and analyzes and asked the parties to come up with remedies to address this.

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   If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

   https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/19/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/#shiny-and-chrome

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   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:07:12 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Many trustbusters and Google competitors read this and concluded that Google should be forced to share its click and query data. The technical term for this is "apocalyptically stupid." Releasing Google's click and query data into the wild is a privacy Chernobyl in the waiting. The secrets that we whispeer to search engines have the power to destroy us a thousand times over.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:07:18 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Largely theoretical answers like "differential privacy" are promising, but remain theoretical at scale. The first large-scale live-fire exercise for these should not be something as high-stakes as Google's click and query data. If anything, we should *delete* that data:

     https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:07:25 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     The last thing we want to do is use antitrust to democratize surveillance so that everyone can spy as efficiently as Google does. In theory, we could sanitize the click and query data by limiting sharing to queries that were made by multiple, independent users (say, only sharing queries that at least 30 users have made), but it's unlikely that this will do much to improve the performance of rival firms' search engines.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:07:37 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Google only retains 18 months' worth of click and query data, thus once we cut off its capacity to collect more data, whatever advantage it has from surveillance will begin to decay immediately and fall to zero in 18 months.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:07:47 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     (However: the 18 months figure is deceptive, and deliberately so. Google may only retain your queries for 18 months, but it is silent on how long it retains the *inferences* from those queries. It may discard your "how do I get an abortion in my red state" query after a year and a half, but indefinitely retain the "sought an illegal abortion" label it added to your profile. The US *desperately* needs a federal consumer privacy law!)

     https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:07:54 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     And just to be clear, there's *other* Google data that would be very useful to rival search engines, like Google's search index - the trove of pages from the internet. Google already licenses this out, and search engines like Kagi use it to produce *substantially* superior search results:

     https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:08:02 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     The DOJ has just filed its proposal for a remedy, and it's a doozy: forcing Google to sell off Chrome, on the basis that both of these are the source of much of Google's data, and no rival search engine is likely to also have a widely used browser:

     https://9to5google.com/2024/11/18/us-doj-google-sell-chrome/

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   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:08:10 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     This represents something of a compromise position: the DOJ had initially signalled that it would also demand a selloff of Android, and that's been dropped. I think there's a good case for forcing the sale of Android as a source of data, too.

     In competition theory, these selloffs are referred to as "structural separation" - when a company that provides infrastructure to other firms is prohibited from competing with those firms:

     https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:08:18 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     For example, it used to be that banks were prohibited from competing with the companies they loaned money to. After all, if you borrow money from Chase to open a pizzeria, and then Chase opens a pizzeria of its own across the street, you can see how your business would be doomed. You have to make interest payments to Chase, and your rival doesn't, and if Chase wants to, it can subsidize that rival so it can sell pizzas below cost until you're out of business.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:08:24 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Likewise, rail companies were banned from owning freight companies, because otherwise they would destroy the businesses of every freight company that shipped on the railroad.

     In theory, you could create fair play rules that required the bank or the railroad to play nice with the business customers that used their platforms, but in practice, there are so many ways of cheating that this would be unenforceable.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:08:30 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     This principle is well established in all other areas of business, and we recoil in horror when it is violated. You wouldn't hire a lawyer who was also representing the person who's suing you. Judges (with the abominable exception of Supreme Court justices!) are required to recuse themselves when they have a personal connection with either of the parties in a case they preside over.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:08:47 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     One of the weirdest sights of the new Gilded Age is when lawyers for monopoly companies argue that they can play fair with their customers despite their conflicts of interest. Think of Google or Meta, with their ad-tech duopoly. These are companies that purport to represent sellers of ads *and* buyers of ads in marketplaces they own and control, and where they compete with sellers and/or buyers.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:08:57 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     These companies suck up 51% of the revenue generated by advertising, while historically, the share taken by ad intermediaries was more like 15%!

     https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

     Imagine if you and your partner discovered that the same lawyer was representing *both* of you in the divorce, while also serving as the judge, *and* trying to match with both of you on Tinder. Now imagine that when the divorce terms were finalized, lawyer got your family home.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:09:13 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     No Google lawyer would agree to argue on the company's behalf in a case where the judge was employed by the party that's suing them, but they will blithely argue that the reason they're getting 51% of the ad-rake is that they're providing 51% of the value.

     Structural separation - like judicial recusal - comprehensively and unarguably resolves all the perceptions and realities of conflict between parties.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:09:20 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     The fact that platform owners compete with platform users is the source bottomless corruption, from Google to Amazon:

     https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

     In other words, I think the DOJ is onto something here. That said, the devil is - as always - in the details. If Google is forced to sell off Chrome, rather than standing it up as its own competing business, things could go very wrong indeed.

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   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:09:28 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Any company that buys Chrome will know that it only has a certain number of years before Google will be permitted to spin up a new browser, and will be incentivized to extract as much value from Chrome over that short period. So a selloff could make Chrome exponentially worse than Google, which, whatever other failings it has, is oriented towards long-term dominance, not a quick buck.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:09:35 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     But if Google is forced to spin Chrome out as a standalone business, the incentives change. Anyone who buys Chrome will have to run it as a functional business that is designed to survive a future Google competitor - they won't have another business they can fall back on if Google bounces back in five years.

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   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:09:42 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     There's a good history of this in antitrust breakups: both Standard Oil and AT&T were forced to spin out, rather than sell off, parts of their empire, and those businesses stood alone and provided competitive pressure. That is, until we stopped enforcing antitrust law and allowed them to start merging again - womp womp.

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   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:09:49 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     This raises another question: does any of this matter, given this month's election results? Will Trump's DoJ follow through on whatever priorities the current DoJ sets? That's an open question, but - unlike so many other questions about the coming Trump regime - the answer here isn't necessarily a nightmare.

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   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:09:56 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     After all, the Google antitrust case *started* under Trump, and Trump's pick for Attorney General, the sexual predator Matt Gaetz, is a "Kahnservative" who breaks with his fellow Trumpians in professing great admiration for Biden's FTC chief Lina Khan, and her project of breaking up corporate monopolies:

     https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/trump-nominates-khanservative-matt

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:10:14 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     What's more, Trump is a landing strip for a stroke or coronary, which would make Vance president - and Vance has also expressed his approval of Kahn's work.
     
     Google bosses seem to be betting on Trump's "transactional" (that is, *corrupt*) style of governance, and his willingness to overrule his own appointees to protect the interests of anyone who flatters or bribes him sufficiently, or convinces the hosts of Fox and Friends to speak on their behalf:

     https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/comprehensive-review-revolving-door-between-fox-and-second-trump-administration

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 19:10:32 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     That would explain why Google capo Sundar Pichai ordered his employees not to speak out against Trump:

     https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-memes-poke-fun-company-rules-political-discussion-2024-11

     And why he followed up by publicly oscillating Trump's sphincter:

     https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1854207788290850888

     --

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     Cryteria (modified)
     https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

     CC BY 3.0
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