It wouldn’t be a post-Google world, it would be a world of “baby Googles” all trying to find a path to profitability, most likely by invading your privacy even more or doing other unsavory things. Google’s bad for privacy, but if broken up into a long tail of tiny businesses, it could actually be much worse.
The far, far more likely outcome if they can’t sustain a profit is that they’d be acquired.
Take for example Google Photos. I find it very unlikely that Google is making money off of it. What revenue they do have comes from storage, which is subsidized by the scale of the rest of the company.
On its own, though, Google Photos has a lot of data: who you were with, what products are in your home, where you were when you took those photos. Right now, Google doesn’t do anything to monetize the content of those images; it would be too much reputational damage and they already know enough about you from other signals.
But what if Google Photos were a stand-alone business? What if they were acquired by Epsilon or Oracle America? There are companies that are way worse on privacy than Google. They would have no qualms at all about taking your entire photo archive and adding to the profiles they sell.
Google has to follow European laws to sell anything or provide any services in Europe, even if it has no European entity. The EU would block payments otherwise.
Americans, Canadians and everyone else should get better laws enacted. EU legislation is to protect EU citizens, and the wellbeing and privacy of citizens that are not from a Member State are not a concern beyond sanctioning crimes against humanity. Case in point, it is perfectly legal for US government agencies to pay EU companies to spy on US citizens in ways it would be illegal for the US government to do, while it would not be legal in the inverse.
Good, the internet and android are an ad infested data mining hell scape. I’d love to see a post google tech world.
It wouldn’t be a post-Google world, it would be a world of “baby Googles” all trying to find a path to profitability, most likely by invading your privacy even more or doing other unsavory things. Google’s bad for privacy, but if broken up into a long tail of tiny businesses, it could actually be much worse.
Keyword could. Monopolies do no one any good. See Twitter and Reddit. I would rather roll the dice, then stick with Monopolies
Those businesses would quickly die and be outcompeted, as competition mostly doesn’t exist now in those spaces because of Google.
We’d all be better if the internet was not owned by an ad company.
The far, far more likely outcome if they can’t sustain a profit is that they’d be acquired.
Take for example Google Photos. I find it very unlikely that Google is making money off of it. What revenue they do have comes from storage, which is subsidized by the scale of the rest of the company.
On its own, though, Google Photos has a lot of data: who you were with, what products are in your home, where you were when you took those photos. Right now, Google doesn’t do anything to monetize the content of those images; it would be too much reputational damage and they already know enough about you from other signals.
But what if Google Photos were a stand-alone business? What if they were acquired by Epsilon or Oracle America? There are companies that are way worse on privacy than Google. They would have no qualms at all about taking your entire photo archive and adding to the profiles they sell.
And the same authority that would have broke up Google has to approve the acquisition. They most likely wouldn’t.
That’s not something that they can do under EU law.
Why not? It wouldn’t create a monopoly.
And EU law applies only with regard to Europeans. And European companies.
That AND in there is an OR. It definitely applies to American companies selling to EU customers.
And well to be honest, it’s not the EU’s fault other countries are not enacting reasonable privacy or market regulations.
Google is big enough to have a nexus in Europe. I wouldn’t assume that for its long tail of products.
Either way, Americans, Canadians, etc could be concerned with their privacy issues.
Google has to follow European laws to sell anything or provide any services in Europe, even if it has no European entity. The EU would block payments otherwise.
Americans, Canadians and everyone else should get better laws enacted. EU legislation is to protect EU citizens, and the wellbeing and privacy of citizens that are not from a Member State are not a concern beyond sanctioning crimes against humanity. Case in point, it is perfectly legal for US government agencies to pay EU companies to spy on US citizens in ways it would be illegal for the US government to do, while it would not be legal in the inverse.