587: Surfing the WSL Wave

episode

Coder Radio 59 min 4 speakers transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chris 0:01

This is Coda Radio, episode 587, recorded on September 10th, 2024. Hey friend, welcome in to Jupyter Broadcasting's weekly talk show, taking a pragmatic look at the art and the business of software development and the world of technology. My name is Chris, and sharpening his claws, it's our host, Mr. Dominic. Hello, Mike. Huzzah! Happy debate day. Oh, yeah. You have to be excited for us. Yeah. But for people listening, it's just post debate day. So hope you had fun. Hope you had fun. Oh, yeah. You know, Google's not having too much fun. So the Biden administration has, you know, the DOJ part. So the DOJ has not publicly offered. A plan for what they're going to do with Google. We're going to have, you know, final judgment in August of next year, but they're already leaking what some of their considerations are. And it looks like they're considering the leaks is on the table. A forced sale of Android. Forced sale off of Chrome. But nothing in the leak about the ad business, which is what all the news was talking about this morning, was the ad business.

Chris 1:14

Because it turns out there's a separate antitrust that has just kicked off around just the ad business. And they're going to try to slice that off, too. This would be way beyond what they did for Microsoft back in the early 2000s, right? Because Microsoft didn't actually have to split out into a bunch of different companies. What do you think? So this we're going to get we're going to get strung along, strung along until August. So maybe we talk about it now and then we just watch. But I'm curious at the onset of this with the DOJ leaking this to publishers at Politico. Seemingly to try to specifically say Android Chrome. Off on their own, they have to be their own separate businesses. YouTube didn't come up.

Chris 2:01

Ad business didn't come up yet, but that may come up in the next trial.

Mike 2:04

Yeah, I mean, this will be in court for 10 years if they actually go for the breakup, right?

Chris 2:09

It seems a little too extreme, too. It was a 10-week trial, right? And then, boom, now we're talking about splitting up one of the largest tech companies in the world, who's, I don't know, like, I don't love Google. And I'm going to make it clear, I think people on this show know how I feel about Google. I've gone through a lot of efforts to de-Google my life. Not a big fan of theirs, and I think they are kind of a disappointment as a company these days. However, if you were to break up Google's ad business and you were to break up Chrome and you were to start splitting these things up, there may be some advantages to that. I'd be really curious to solicit the audience's thoughts on what those might be because what I can think of right now are the negatives.

Chris 2:58

And the reality, in my opinion, is that you can throw a lot of things at Google, but when you compare them to other advertising companies or other tech companies, Google has probably one of the most transparent, documented, and understood privacy policies out there. And Google is held to a very high standard. Now, I'm sure they're constantly secretly violating that trust. But they still, I think, probably are better in this area than any other tech company, let alone any other company in America, probably the rest of the world. And I'm not saying they're great. But as far as what they let you control, what you can delete, take your, you know, they have Google takeout and what and and they tell you what they're watching and what they monitor and they document it copiously. And. No other company is going to have those levels of protections. And the further down the food chain you go, the worse those protections are going to get.

Chris 3:53

And so in some bizarre way, a move that may be touted as great for consumer privacy, i.e. breaking away Android and Chrome from Google, may actually be worse for consumer privacy. Because it's not like these tracking behaviors go away, but now you just have companies that are held to lower standards that have lower standards of privacy policies making deals with each other.