Matisyahu's Blog

Just reading though an Arstechnica article regarding the idea being floated around Google being broken up (link). When I hear proposals like this I can’t help but get the feeling that it is the old story of putting a proposal out there but secretly you have a lot more modest goals in place – a bit like a union negotiating where they’ll demand an increase to $20 per hour from the current $15 per hour but behind closed doors their real goal is $17. If you start at your goal of $17 then the only way to go is down from there where as if you start off at $20 then you can work down to your eventual goal.

I can’t help but get the feeling (based on nothing but gut instinct) that the DOJ know they’ll never get a break up through other than having a long drawn out process resulting in a compromise – meanwhile the impact of doing nothing may result in the market being distorted even further so sometimes it is better to take the good solution rather than holding out for the perfect but unrealistic solution.

The other thing to take into account is that many businesses of that size very much dependent on the size to make the business viable – that there is a certain degree of similarity with the idea of a ‘natural monopoly’. There are high barriers to entry for what Google does if one were to set up a competitor – high up front capital expenditure (data centre, bespoke software etc) long period of time losing money as you build up a user base and relationships with businesses to advertise on the platform not to mention spending money winning over high profile influencers to the platform so that their subscribers sign up to the new platform.

I’m having the weekend off – I tripped over on my way to the train station resulting in sprained wrists, sore fingers, a finger nail that is completely ripped off along with other injuries. Long story short, I’ve been resting for the last few days because I’ve been unable to type (this being typed using voice to text).