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Youtube Businesses Google

In US v. Google, YouTube's CEO Defends the Google Way (theverge.com) 29

Google's acquisition strategy in online advertising has come under scrutiny in the U.S. antitrust trial against the tech giant. Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO and former Google ad executive, defended the company's purchases of DoubleClick and Admeld, saying they were aimed at competing, not neutralizing rivals.

The Justice Department alleges Google built an impenetrable ad empire by owning key parts of the ad tech stack, stifling competition. Prosecutors pointed to internal emails discussing "parking" acquired companies, which they argue shows intent to sideline competitors. Mohan countered that "parking" meant allowing acquired firms to operate independently while integrating with Google's technology.
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In US v. Google, YouTube's CEO Defends the Google Way

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  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @09:07AM (#64792647)

    The problem is, you can't escape it. That's why they're being sued.

    • Interesting FP, but I dare you to try to follow the money. You know what they say about every "great fortune" being based on a "great crime"... Then again, maybe the google isn't really a great fortune, but just some kind of virtual money pile?

      I was trying to joke with the Subject, but if you want a huge laugh, let me write about solution approaches. Or maybe you have something worthy of a ROFLMAO?

      Okay, so I can't resist the joke. YouTube could stop being such a criminal organization by using white lists. O

    • Lol - Person working for Youtube works for Google. Why the media pretense of the commander of a small ship somehow being independent of the entire navy's commander.

  • Weak and lame (Score:2, Insightful)

    Mohan countered that "parking" meant allowing acquired firms to operate independently while integrating with Google's technology.

    Sure thing Mohan - just like a "parked" car is "operating independently" while it's "integrating" with a patch of asphalt. Here's a clue you sad lying fuck - if it's parked, although it may still be operable, it ain't operating.

    • It is not good to compare a company to a car. They are obviously not going to park it somewhere, shut it down and leave. It just means there isn't a change process going on to modify it in some way. Parking it in a business sense means to just let it operate as is.
      • by zlives ( 2009072 )

        umm no this is objectively misrepresenting the internet use of the term parking.

      • From the article;
        another Google executive wrote that “one way to make sure we don’t get further behind in the market is picking up the [company] with the most traction and parking it somewhere.” Acquiring the company in that way “would let us solve the problems from a position of strength.”

        Clearly they are kneecapping competitors.

  • Because really, the problem isn't Google controlling the advertisement industry, it's the advertisement industry itself. It needs to die, and there's a special place in hell for people who work in that space.

    So when Google corners advertisement, it provides a single, easy target. Just like pregnant spiders: it's better to deal with one fat spider than hundreds of baby spiders.

    I dread the day Google gets "remedied" in the advertisement space because it's gonna become exponentially hard to kill off that particularly hateful activity. Not to mention, it's going to normalize corporate surveillance for the purpose of advertising as an acceptable business model - which it really, REALLY isn't.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by joe_frisch ( 1366229 )
      How should the costs of things like search engines, maps etc be covered? Consumers are very reluctant to pay even small amounts for those, but someone has to pay for the servers, support staff, developers etc. I can imagine a system where everything was done with micro-payments, but it might price a lot of people out of the ability to use online services .
      • How should the costs of things like search engines, maps etc be covered?

        And tell me: how is advertisement better? Do you realize the overwhelming majority of people hate ads and use ad blockers to such an extent that it literally constitutes the largest boycott in history [searls.com]?

        This sounds like a doomed business model to me. One day, companies will realize the advertisement industry is a huge scam, their sales don't pick up when they run advertisement campaigns - because, again, people fucking hate advertisement - and this entire pile of crap will collapse on itself.

        Anyway, even if a

        • Using services like web searches is free now: If you have internet access you can get to search. If you had to do micropayments you would need to set up an account, not easy for some people who don't have bank accounts or credit cards. You would need to worry about scams that triggered a huge number of micropayments when you visit their site. Checking the charges on your bill would be tough, a lot of people might not want to see a list of every web search they have done listed on their bill, but withou
      • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @11:06AM (#64792919) Homepage Journal

        The argument borders on a broken window fallacy. We don't have to do things a certain way in order to preserve the current economic status quo.

        There are likely many alternatives that the free market can explore. We can also establish a non-profit corporation that is funded by "viewers like you" but mostly by tax deductible donations from corporations. PBS seems to manage it. Another way would be for a collection of universities to take over search engine research and use grants to run a service for users. Perhaps charging businesses a nominal fee to have access to the service and/or the research. I'm not saying these are the best options, just trying to demonstrate that there are alternative ways to structure the funding of infrastructure.

      • How should the costs of things like search engines, maps etc be covered? Consumers are very reluctant to pay even small amounts for those

        I've done an accounting, and of the sites I am unwilling to pay for, I would not mind losing.

    • by Jack9 ( 11421 )

      > there's a special place in hell for people who work in that space.

      I've been working in that space since 2005. Yeah, I dipped my toe into Medical, Gaming, Production (commercials), Finance for awhile over the decades. It's common knowledge that every industry is greedy. Advertising gets cut last. I deal with the world as it is.

      Digital Advertising is the safest, simplest (despite large organizations trying to make it more complicated), reliable way to get a paycheck as far as I can tell.

      > it's going t

  • "We still wanted to compete with them so we bought them, which effectively made them go away, so we don't have to compete with them" - Google, apparently.
    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      no no we wanted bought them to park them which lets them compete with us.
      because once we buy them they can be independent of us. but if we don't buy them we control them.
      is it 1984 already? again

  • I think people like that consider themselves unassailable.

  • ...that the CEO of YouTube is not exactly neutral in this - YouTube has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google since 2006.

    • And this is the new CEO. The long-time CEO, who was famous for censoring true information inconvenient for the Regime, reportedly resigned to deal with a rapid-onset, rapid-progression cancer about a year ago, before dying recently.

      Some have speculated that these events are
      not unrelated.

    • Which is why YT is verging on functionally useless at this point with all the ads it pushes out. Even with scripblocking, the ad shows, but doesn't run, so it's still there.

      Trying to watch videos is like it was on tv. When an ad comes up you switch to another channel. In the case of YT, you have to have several channels in tabs, play one, when the ad comes up, even if it doesn't run, switch to a different tab and play that video. Rinse and repeat.

  • "We bought those companies not because they were competing with us, but to increase our ad revenue."

    Riiight....

  • Gaslighting works so well they donâ(TM)t even try to disguise it anymore.

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it. -- Franklin P. Jones

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