Sundar Pichai says DOJ demands are a “de facto” spin-off of Google search
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Yes, and so what ? Google needs to burn to learn. They clearly haven't learned any other way. They're arrogant monopolists, and they need to be taught a lesson the hard way, because the market clearly hasn't worked to keep them in check the normal ways.
Seems good for everyone except the execs and the googlers with fat stock options/shares and of course the associated adtech Ghouls. I don't cry for many of them. I even have some googler friends. Most have left at this point, or are planning on leaving. Google is soulless and dead inside mostly.
Seems good for everyone except the execs and the googlers with fat stock options/shares and of course the associated adtech Ghouls. I don't cry for many of them. I even have some googler friends. Most have left at this point, or are planning on leaving. Google is soulless and dead inside mostly.
Last edited:
Upvote
92
(108
/
-16)
Security issues, from having to divest in Chrome?
evidence nobody at google uses it then.
evidence nobody at google uses it then.
Upvote
16
(33
/
-17)
Upvote
70
(80
/
-10)
How can you be an evil monopolist, when you don't have the gumption to do anything for too long except for sell advertising – and show people email, maps, and search results so that you have someplace to put the advertising?
Ah. The question answers itself I suppose.
Ah. The question answers itself I suppose.
Upvote
11
(18
/
-7)
Saved this:
To say basically the same thing.
After all, the whole point to an antitrust penalty is to remake the company. The consequences, however, are largely intended, even if Google doesn't want them.
Upvote
93
(96
/
-3)
That’s an optimistic take on a business still dominated by ad revenue, in an economy already contracting and likely to be in full blown recession by the end of June.
Upvote
48
(49
/
-1)
What? Google took over the W3C, and standardizes whatever it wants to implement in Chrome. That doesn't make it a good steward.
Upvote
99
(103
/
-4)
I would love to see a single web crawler shared by everyone where each company can subscribe to a feed from it. This can be easily funded by charging for the feeds. It is crazy how thousands of companies are all trying to index the web to get AI training fodder. As part of the remedy Google could contribute it's current snapshot of the web and the crawler technology to keep updating it. More so, I'd like to force everyone to use this universal crawler and stop independent crawling.
Upvote
23
(31
/
-8)
What's weird, and thus has always confused me, is that shareholders are likely to end up RICHER. In all cases of monopoly breakups in the past, the separate companies end up being worth more than the original conglomerate. Why resist?! Rockefeller became the richest man in history after the breakup of Standard Oil.
Upvote
54
(55
/
-1)
To be honest given the size of Google, and the way they've managed to completely dominate search and web standards, there probably will be unintended consequences to whatever remedy they settle on.
What Pichai seems to be sidestepping, in my opinion at least, is that most reasonable people think any such risks are not only unavoidable at this point but worth taking to pry Google's cold, dead hands from the internet's throat.
Upvote
46
(47
/
-1)
"And at that point, Google would need to reevaluate how it approaches innovation."
Hahahahaha
Hahahahaha
Upvote
21
(23
/
-2)
First of all, once Google dropped "Do no evil"....yep, evil monopolist was born.
As to the quote, let's say Google was cool "back in the day", but at some point, maybe when internally they started dropping "do no evil" they were already a bureaucracy focused on one thing, greed. Greed is different then "let's make a lot o money". Greed is let's make an obscene amount of money for ME me being share holders and c-suites, fuck the rest.
So many companies, even before Greedoogle, have gone the same path from start up to solid success, to whoa we can make how much, to our customr4s are shareholders, consumers are products to sell (or con).
I am all for Break Um Up. Then, if we had something like a Congress with backbone, we'd start to get laws that trigger when corporations go from let's love capitalism to fuck'em, we got ours. At that point it's break up time or heavy taxation. Diversify or pay Uncle Sam to play.
Upvote
0
(9
/
-9)
that hinges on whatever company being broken up actually being a monopoly, because monopolies are sub-optimal institutions for maximum growth and consumer/shareholder value.
i'll remind folks that whatever the DOJ + courts decide doesn't necessarily mean it's actually true, in an economic sense. It may or may not be. edit: It could be true in a matter of law or public perception, but it could easily not be in terms of economic impact, as these are different things. IIRC the case against Google and other big tech relies on some novel interpretations of harm, which may or may not be valid in hindsight.
edit to add: that is to say, standard oil and bell are examples of antitrust delivering massive consumer AND shareholder value, but if you’re a shareholder a finding of law is not necessarily a finding of reality and so therefore they would resist because the case for their value is not crystal clear.
Last edited:
Upvote
-15
(8
/
-23)
We all feel pretty sure that their search is enshittified and we've all heard they're more worried about AI and investigation by the current us administration so I'm not sure why they feel so defense of search other than "you're not the boss of me"
Upvote
16
(17
/
-1)
Upvote
18
(19
/
-1)
Google should ask AT&T how it feels about being broken up. Seemed to work out fine for them
Upvote
0
(5
/
-5)
A de facto spin-off. Yep. It is good to see Pichai understanding the consequences of building a dominant search engine, distorting markets to maintain that dominance, and then using that dominance to affect competition in other markets.
He is perfectly capable and intelligent enough to realize this. He is far too venal to admit it out loud.
He is perfectly capable and intelligent enough to realize this. He is far too venal to admit it out loud.
Upvote
23
(25
/
-2)
Or more broadly, all of tech needs to learn. The past decade+ has seen very, very little actual useful innovation from the "tech sector", who seem to have filled the gap with a mixture of flimflam (LLMs, VR, "wearable tech", "healthtech", etc) and extremely anticonsumer business practices. The flimflam will always burn out on its own, but the anticonsumerism needs to be fought in the courts.
Upvote
32
(35
/
-3)
This is the first time in while I’ve heard an executive at Google sound self-aware. That’s right, that is the appropriate penalty for your monopoly, glad to see you’re on the same page as the rest of us. You abused your dominance in that business, and you can’t be trusted ever again to combine it with any other product where you can use that as leverage. You will need to find a whole new way to compete instead.
Upvote
3
(6
/
-3)
Google and Chrome along with it, can burn in hell for all that I care.
Upvote
0
(6
/
-6)
Google literally PAID the competition to not compete. They paid their competition to OBSTRUCT other competition.
Google has spent over a decade 'fucking around.' Time to 'Find out.'
Google has spent over a decade 'fucking around.' Time to 'Find out.'
Upvote
23
(23
/
0)
Depends on which AT&T you're talking about. For the Baby bells SBC (Southwestern Bell) and Bell Atlantic, who are the current day AT&T Inc and Verizon Corp, it worked out pretty well. For the Original American Telephone and Telegraph/AT&T Corp it ended pretty poorly, spinning off assets (Lucent, AT&T Wireless, NCR, AT&T Broadband) until they were bought by SBC who put on their skin. The original AT&T corp ceased to exist last year even as a subsidiary due to NY law not allowing conversion to an LLC
Upvote
16
(16
/
0)
Because it dilutes power in exchange for wealth and some want both, or like the execs their wealth is contingent on being in charge of the powerful entity not a smaller one
Upvote
3
(4
/
-1)
"And at that point, Google would need to reevaluate how it approaches innovation." - Sundar Pichai
Hmm, I think he's mispronouncing "enshittification".
Hmm, I think he's mispronouncing "enshittification".
Upvote
11
(14
/
-3)
Upvote
8
(9
/
-1)
Actually, history shows that after a big company is split, the baby companies end up worth more (and grow faster) than the prior beast
Last edited:
Upvote
7
(8
/
-1)
When I do a Google search in 2025, I get an inaccurate AI explanation followed by a bunch of advertisements instead of search results.
Your search is trash and you made it that way, "spinning it off" is the least of its problems, Sundar.
Your search is trash and you made it that way, "spinning it off" is the least of its problems, Sundar.
Upvote
31
(33
/
-2)
Something to do with how monopolies inherently stifle innovation from others and spend so much of their resources on maintaining that monopoly that they can't innovate even if they had cause to. Which, of course, they don't, because their customers have no choice but to pay them, so why spend money innovating to attract customers, when you already have a captive market?
Upvote
11
(11
/
0)
The Sheep Look Up
Ars Praetorian
Of course they will. They'll have to try to actually approach it.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)