It boggles my mind that Apple’s market position allows it to pocket $18 billion a year in pure rent for this real estate on its platform and the company paying is the one that gets an antitrust suit.
Google is the offender because they control both the search and the browser market. Imagine having to pay $18 billion and still coming on top.
Folks hooked to Chrome seem to forget that whatever they do online is used to refine their ad profile and generate even more ad money for Google and you can't opt out.
We don't forget. We just don't care. I am in no way upset that Google is refining my ad profile and making money. Many billions of other people are also not upset by that.
Of course they were being hyperbolic with the use of the word "billions". The point still stands though. The vast majority of people using Google's services do know about adtech surveillance, and just don't care.
Do you have a source for that claim? I think laypeople know google serves them custom ads, but don’t understand how or the extent to which adtech is tracking and profiling them to select those ads.
In fact, because it’s a common trope to say “they must have been listening to our conversation” when served an eerily specific ad, I’d wager people do not know about adtech at all.
In support of your claim, look at how much effort companies like Google or Facebook have put into avoiding disclosure. If the general public was knowledgeable they wouldn’t have fought things like privacy labels so strenuously.
> In fact, because it’s a common trope to say “they must have been listening to our conversation” when served an eerily specific ad, I’d wager people do not know about adtech at all.
That meme is evidence you are wrong, so not sure why you brought it up. If people didn't believe they were being tracked they wouldn't have thought it listened on them. Listening on them is tracking.
Now of course the device probably wasn't listening and it just suggested the ad for other tracking reasons, so they are wrong about the specifics but they do understand that they are being tracked.
No. The joke’s humor is in the fact that it’s such a strange coincidence that they were served the ad that something totally absurd, like their phone listening to a private conversation, is a possibility.
Someone making a joke says nothing about what they believe to be true. Like the birds not being real.
> The joke’s humor is in the fact that it’s such a strange coincidence
No it isn't a joke, people know their phone is listening to them, smart assistants has made the world perfectly aware of how much they are monitored. So since they know the phone is listening, they think the phone showed them the ad since it listened to them. It isn't a joke, people think this, memes aren't always jokes they are just ideas that spread easily.
Look at this thread for example, does this look like a joke to you? People think it is listening to everything and just give up and go on with their life, that is what typical people believe.
"This has happened to me several times. Sadly, there is not much you can do about it. If your phone has a mic, it is listening to everything you say 24/7."
Since before the age of the smartphone, people have thought their phone conversations are being recorded. And there’s absolutely evidence that it’s true. So too is evidence of UFOs and aliens.
But that’s a tangent. The claim I was seeking evidence for was:
“The vast majority of people using Google's services do know about adtech surveillance, and just don't care.”
People who read HN are not the vast majority (thankfully).
I still don’t think the vast majority of people are aware of the depths of adtech because Google and Meta go to great lengths to control the narrative and keep people in the dark. They make people believe they’re “in-control” of their privacy. If people were made aware of how much tracking still goes on then they would care.
> People who read HN are not the vast majority (thankfully).
I meant the reddit thread I linked. In all such threads I've seen people think that their phone is recording everything they say to show ads, no jokes about it.
Here on HN people know that the phone doesn't do that, since we have people who looked at what code is activated on the phone and what it sends. But regular people doesn't know that, they think they are constantly being monitored and there is nothing to do about it, so all they can do is either stop caring or fall into despair, and most just choose to stop caring.
Smart assistants were a great trick to get people used to the idea that they are constantly being monitored. Makes them less likely to put up a fight when you start monitoring everything for real.
It's also just a vastly inferior browser at least on Android compared to Firefox.
Videos stop playing when you leave the tab, no AdBlockers.
Don't know why anyone would use this voluntarily, if it wouldn't be preinstalled
I use DNS level blocking, it syncs with everything I use, and has better compatibility and faster rendering performance (battery life). Don't want to use FF on Windows either due to the mentioned issues. On windows I have also found FF RAM usage is significantly higher.
> Apple’s market position allows it to pocket $18 billion a year in pure rent
Google's market position both allows and makes it financially beneficial to pay $18 billion to suppress one single source of competition. Nobody forces google to buy the default search spot.
> Nobody forces google to buy the default search spot.
Someone would pay Apple to be the default search, if Google didn't pay billions Microsoft would pay billions to make Bing the default search. Would you prefer that?
Apple is auctioning it out to the highest bidder, I don't see how bidding in an auction is wrong.
The way Mozilla did it with Yahoo seemed very palatable, honestly. They asked Yahoo to make a special search page, that had most crap removed and if I remember correctly they also had demands on response time.
Tell that to Apple, Google doesn't have the power to give you that.
Edit: Also Google would love a law enforcing that, since now they don't have to pay all of these billions of dollars and most people would pick Google in that choice anyway. The main players that doesn't want that are Apple and the others that auctions out default search.
So Google convincing the judges to stop Apple from auctioning out default search would be a Google win.
Google might not have the power to give you that, but they certainly have the power to prevent Apple from giving you that
Or do you really think Google is paying billions without stipulating that Apple can't offer a choice during setup?
> Also Google would love a law enforcing that, since now they don't have to pay all of these billions of dollars and most people would pick Google in that choice anyway
I need you to square this circle for me. If Google were so confident that people would pick Google of their own volition, why would they bother spending billions?
> Or do you really think Google is paying billions without stipulating that Apple can't offer a choice during setup?
If you do get a choice at startup then there is nothing to sell since there is no default. So yes, if Apple isn't selling the product then they don't get any money.
But Google paying Apple has nothing to do with it, Apple would make billions selling the default to Microsoft otherwise, they wouldn't give you a choice at startup. The only thing that would give you that choice is if laws ban Apple from selling the default search provider spot.
> I need you to square this circle for me. If Google were so confident that people would pick Google of their own volition, why would they bother spending billions?
Because otherwise Microsoft would spend those billions and now Bing would be the default. Defaults matters, but if you force the user to make a choice they would pick Google due to brand recognition.
The phone manufacturers don't have much of a choice unless they are willing to ditch support for all the proprietary Google parts of Android. People probably won't buy android phones without play store access.
I just bought an android, there was no default search on it and playstore works. As I booted it up it asked me what search engine I wanted, Google wasn't on top or preselected.
So yes, phone manufacturers have a choice here, they don't have to make Google the default.
It's likely not about the brand, but about the location. As a result of the Android anti-trust lawsuit in EU, Google has shown a search engine choice screen at initial setup since (I think) 2018. They also unbundled Chrome and Search from the other proprietary apps.
Pixel or maybe Nokia / Fairphone / Motorola (Stockish Android) if you are a regular user, but you will have to change a few options for sure, modded Pixel if Privacy Nut.
This is the same as any laptop discussion. If you mention any brand someone is bound to say how negative their experience was. Probably there were a few bad models, but Im not aware of any common issues with moto phones.
If Google didn't pay Microsoft would, we know this since Microsoft has already talked about it with Apple. Apple is the one selling this, if Google didn't buy someone else would, so stopping Google from buying wouldn't change anything except now default search would be Bing on iphones.
The argument is that you can't ban market leaders from participating in fair auctions. Google isn't using its market dominance to force Apple to make them the default search engine, they are just paying money and aren't applying any other sort of pressure.
So my argument is that there isn't an antitrust issue here, not that Microsoft paying would lead to antitrust issues. Winning fair auctions isn't an antitrust issue. Antitrust is when you issue abusive contracts such as "You get a discount if you only sell our products and no products from out competitors", but that isn't a fair auction since you use your dominance to change the deal and pressure the vendor to stop selling others products. In this case Google just bid higher than the competitors, there is no other reason for Apple to use them as the default.
You would need to show that Google pays more than they earn for the default search engine spot, or that they used some other means to force Apple to accept the deal. But I have seen no evidence of that.
I believe the argument counter to yours is that antitrust is more than just abusive contracts.
It also encompasses behavior facilitated by market dominance that makes it impossible or too difficult for new market entrants to compete, including behavior that, under different circumstances, would be completely fine.
A generic example of something that would be completely fine in many situations would be a merger & acquisition. It's the best example of what you describe as “winning a fair auction”.
Companies B, C, and D might all make an offer to buy company A, and since company B made the highest bid, they win, and all is fine.
If, however, company B is a huge conglomerate and the M&A of company A would consolidate even more power into Company B, perhaps even increase their monopoly position to the point that company B ends up being the sole company in multiple verticals, then this might prove to be an antitrust issue even though no abusive contract is in play.
Because this can have undesirable outcomes in terms of competition with unwanted effects downstream for consumers, we, as a society, have decided to put some guardrails in place in the form of antitrust legislation.
Circling back to the situation at hand, the argument at hand by the DOJ seems to be that Google has gained a significant market leader position and that deals such as the one made with Apple make it impossible for other competitors to compete effectively.
Even more so when it pertains to search engines because they seem to rely heavily on usage data to be able to improve.
At face value, that argument isn't much different than the argument behind preventing M&As that are deemed antitrust issues.
The DOJ’s arguments go further, however, in stating that it is the market leader position combined with the deep pockets funded by Google’s other divisions that make it possible for them to offer billions in the first place.
Which, within the antitrust context, adds a deeper dimension beyond just the “you're big, you shouldn't get bigger” argument I mentioned above.
You seem to touch upon this a little in this part of your comment:
> You would need to show that Google pays more than they earn for the default search engine spot […] But I have seen no evidence of that.
We will be unlikely to see evidence of that, assuming it exists, because the parties and the judge would discuss that under seal, and only they will get to see those numbers (unless someone does a whoopsie and forgets to redact it before uploading it to the docket).
Also, issuing servers and verifying servers don't even need to be part of the same organization, allowing you to outsource credential management (see Auth0, Firebase Authentication).
By downloading a shared key over TLS rather than the provider's public key?
No difference from the perspective of the token consumer. From the perspective of they token generator, it means rotating per-tenant keys rather than a single keypair.
I addressed this elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16072690) but to quickly recap: that's not the hard problem, and hardened SAML IdPs that have the option of exploiting this turn out to have per-tenant keys anyway so that they can get cryptographic binding instead of counting on audience restrictions being checked.
Additionally, your TLS terminating stack is much better hardened than median in-app crypto code.
Beats has a track record of producing consumer electronics that are accepted as fashionable. The iPhone already blurs the line between tool and accessory and it spends most of its time in a pocket or purse. A smart watch or head mounted display is more visible and needs to overcome a nerdy bias to appeal to the mass market.
Keep in mind the request count too - lots of small packets can be considerably slower than their net size would suggest, especially if one gets dropped.
Structural issues. Adds weight, in ways buildings aren't designed to take. Requires soil, and water in the soil, which is more weight. Water causes damage to building structure. Some plants will be impractical because they'll want to burrow into the structure. It's dangerous to collect the produce. There are insurance issues around stuff falling off onto people. It becomes difficult to clean or replace windows. Once plants are on it will be difficult to change damaged trellises. Change to fire risk profile of building. Security and insurance considerations from people climbing on the structures. Buildings not designed to supply water to the plants. Freehold issues from one person's plant growing into another's area. Allergies. Bees. Rats. Effect of plants growing into air-conditioning systems. Council complications over the change to the view profile of the building from sleek thing to tentacled thing.
Tons of upvotes for a comment that says hydroponic trellises require soil? What's going on here?
Hydroponics uses a fraction of the water that soil-based agriculture uses, and generally uses a very lightweight growing medium. (Vermiculite, hydroton balls, etc...)
True - but when we start comparing it to Windows - (disable crapware, install firefox, install anti-virus, install iTunes) vs Ubuntu (install restricted-extras) then a Ubuntu setup starts looking pretty good.
