Whether or not this specific author’s blog was de-indexed or de-prioritized, the issue this surfaces is real and genuine.

The real issue at hand here is that it’s difficult to impossible to discover why, or raise an effective appeal, when one runs afoul of Google, or suspects they have.

I shudder to use this word as I do think in some contexts it’s being overused, I think it’s the best word to use here though: the issue is really that Google is a Gatekeeper.

As the search engine with the largest global market share, whether or not Google has a commercial relationship with a site is irrelevant. Google has decided to let their product become a Utility. As a Utility, Google has a responsibility to provide effective tools and effective support for situations like this. Yes it will absolutely add cost for Google. It’s a cost of doing business as a Gatekeeper, as a Utility.

My second shudder in this comment - regulation is not always the answer. Maybe even it’s rarely the answer. But I do think when it comes to enterprises that have products that intentionally or unintentionally become Gatekeepers and/or Utilities, there should be a regulated mandate that they provide an acceptable level of support and access to the marketplaces they serve. The absence of that is what enables and causes this to perpetuate, and it will continue to do so until an entity with leverage over them can put them in check.

The situation reads more like a monopoly issue rather than a gatekeeper issue. Because google owns the indexer and the search tool most used, they're really only gate keeping their own sandbox.

It's entirely possible to have utility-importance non-monopoly gatekeepers, which is part of the legal issue.

The US regulates monopolies.

The US regulates utilities, defined by ~1910 industries.

It doesn't generally regulate non-monopoly companies that are gatekeepers.

Hence, Apple/Google/Facebook et al. have been able to avoid regulation by avoiding being classed as monopolies.

Imho, the EU is taking the right approach: also classify sub-monopoly entities with large market shares, and apply regulatory requirements on them.

I'd expect the US to use a lighter touch, and I'm fine with that, but regulations need to more than 'no touch'. It'd also be nice if they were bucketed and scaled (e.g. minimal requirements for 10-20%, more for 21-50%, max for 50%+).

Sure, we agree there though I'd add that while the US regulates monopolies we don't always enforce that, we also allow state-sponsored monopolies for many regional utilities.

With Google and SEO I see it more in the monopoly camp though. The existence of other big tech companies doesn't break the monopoly Google has by owning search, ads, analytics, et al under the same umbrella.

The nice thing about regulatory bucketing by market share is that it's harder to evade.

We've seen the legal gymnastics around market definition for monopoly purposes.

But it's harder for Google to make the case that it doesn't own at least a big chunk of {mobile OS} or {mobile app store} market share.

They can argue +/- a few percent over methods, but "We don't have a substantial market share" won't fly.

No argument there either, I do agree sometimes market monopolies need to be felt with though the bar is high in my opinion. If it were me I'd want to see proof of collusion, its easy for a market with only a few actors to independently make similar choices based on similar market incentives and data.

In this case though, it still seems like a more simple monopoly only with google. You don't need to consider other companies when the issue is related to the black box of search rankings.

That's part of my preference though: I'd rather government regulation of larger market share companies be a gradient rather than a binary.

If a few actors control the bulk of a market... wouldn't the same redresses be appropriate whether or not they're colluding?

We should make companies want to stay at a competitive market share instead of taking over their markets.

I wouldn't personally want companies to be punished without evidence of collusion. A company isn't doing anything wrong by earning market share, and companies aren't doing anything wrong if they happen to move in a similar direction based on market incentives.

If we think free markets are generally going to move in the right direction, we should just want companies to want to fill market gap and outcompete. I don't agree we should make companies do anything though, at most governments should be tweaking incentives to attempt to push companies down a path without directly making them go there (even them I'm not sold that approach is worth it).

So there's no collusion or misbehavior, and the market ends up as a duopoly: one participant has 70% and another has 25%.

You don't think that alone distorts the market enough to merit intervention to encourage more competitors?

If you tie intervention to proven malfeasance, you allow abusers to skirt the rules for decades, entrench their positions with obscene profits, and then maybe eventually face consequences if they lose a legal case.

Instead of labeling some things illegal after the fact, monopoly and market law should be based around identifying some high market sharr situations as potentially dangerous and requiring compliance with additional regulations that make it harder for that dominant company to prevent competitors from starting and growing.

Otherwise, it invariably slides into state-aligned and -supported chaebols, because the government has incentive to ask large companies for help and they have incentive to cooperate with the government.

Yes, when crimes are committed it is often hard to prove and you won't catch them all. That's by design and a fundamental part of how our legal system was designed in the first place.

Having a duopoly as you described isn't in itself a crime, nor should it be. If they are skirting the rules such that they are breaking the rules, enforcement should step in as there is actually something to enforce. If the only "crime" is winning market share, what's the problem?

I’m really hoping the pendulum swings back to sanity in the US rather than becoming a Russia-like mafia business state.

It’s possible the only hope is a painful one: a major market crash caused by greed and excessive consolidation, the kind of crash that would trigger a 21st century new deal.

I wouldn't personally put much hope in a new deal approach.

The consolidation of power in the US government is the root of many of our problems, I don't expect that same government to solve it by grabbing even more power a la the new deal.

I think the standard hyperbole is supposed to imply the US is fascist, not is becoming. Mention of mafias and post-soviet Russia is also non-standard.

If they considered having some ethical responsibility they would at least tame the bidding war that turned a well paid ads for an existing, unrelated business show before the legitimate link, or limit it so that the search result to show the legitimate link on the first page.

For certain popular sites, it doesn't. Those businesses got to pay the shelf tax if they want their published piece to ever be - not just seen, but reasonably - found when looking specifically for it.

crime finds a way. any means of semi anonymous and/or non recourse value storage and exchange will suit. iTunes/play store/steam prepaid cards and accounts, money orders, western union, etc.

Agree with you it would be different, crypto is global, most of the accessible alternative methods are localized to varying degrees.

having been to VNP watching Kilauea burp lava, as well as to Iceland and watching one of the fissures burp lava near Grindavik - each experience had a lot of similarity, but also each uniquely different.

You could be dropped in either island near the active eruption areas on some roads and if you didn’t have anything other than landscape clues you’d be hard pressed to tell which one you were on. The fresh-ish lava fields (less than 100 years old) look the same, big black rocky expanses of volcanic rock with little or no vegetation. Iceland’s mosses and grass would be a tell, whereas in Hawaii when life starts to take hold it has a much more jungle look to it. But otherwise, the sulfur smells, steam vents in the active areas, etc are very similar.

I have to say the big island of Hawaii and Iceland are two of my most favorite places on the planet, alongside Alaska. All very rural, not over developed, and an immersion in a raw version of the natural world that is largely abstracted away from us where most of us live.

Vhs came out in 76, blockbuster started in 85 (we went to video stores well before that when I was a kid), dvd in 95. I remember the sopranos making a joke about how dvd was barely taking off, they started in 99. Lets call it VHS had a run from 80 to 99, that's 19 years. The iphone launched in 2007, when did mobile become huge or inseprable from doing life (by force by so many apps), probbably in the pandemic.

I wouldn't say VHS was a blip. It was the recorded half video of media for almost 20 years.

I agree with the rest of what you said.

I'll say that the differences in the AI you're talking about today might be like the differences between VAX, PC JR, and the Lisa. All things before computing went main stream. I do think things go mainstream from tech a lot faster these days, people don't want to miss out.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm reading and replying to HN while watching the late night NFL game in an airport lounge.

agree the capital could be put to better use, however I believe the alternative is this capital wouldn't have otherwise been put to work in ways that allow it to leak to the populace at large. for some of the big investors in AI infrastructure, this is cash that was previously and likely would have otherwise been put toward stock buybacks. for many of the big investors pumping cash in, these are funds deploying the wealth of the mega rich, that again, otherwise would have been deployed in other ways that wouldn't leach down to the many that are yielding it via this AI infrastructure boom (datacenter materials, land acquisition, energy infrastructure, building trades, etc, etc)

It could have, though. Higher taxes on the rich, spend it on social programs.

Why is this so horrible. Put more resources in the hands of the average person. They will get pumped right back into the economy. If people have money to spend, they can buy more things, including goods and services from gigantic tax-dodging mega-corporations.

Gigantic mega-corporations do enjoy increased growth and higher sales, don't they? Or am I mistaken?

The shift in the US to the idea of “job creators” being business owners is part of it. It was just a way to direct money to the already rich, as if they would hire more people with that money. When it is plainly obvious that consumers are job creators, in that if they buy more goods and services, businesses will hire more people to make or provide more of those things.

Or maybe it was trickle down economics. Trickle up economics still end up with the rich getting the money since we all buy things from companies they own, it just goes through everyone else first. Trickle down cuts out the middleman, which unfortunately is all of us.

The framing of X or Y are job creators is idiotic. Its literally the most basic fact of economics that you need producers and consumers, otherwise you don't have an economy.

The more economically correct way to express this would be that entrepreneurs and companies who innovated increase productivity and that makes the overall economy more efficient allowing your country to grow.

> Or maybe it was trickle down economics. Trickle up economics still end up with the rich getting the money since we all buy things from companies they own, it just goes through everyone else first. Trickle down cuts out the middleman, which unfortunately is all of us.

This just sounds like quarter baked economics ideas you have made up yourself. Neither 'trickle down' nor 'trickle up' are concepts economist use. And that you confidently assert anything about the social outcomes of these 'concepts' is ridiculous.

Because the entire western culture has shifted to instant gratification. Yes, what you suggest would most likely lead to increased business eventually. But they want better number this quarter, so they resort to the cheap tricks like financial engineering/layoffs to get an immediate boost.

I'm not saying you are wrong that some redistribution can be good, but your analysis is simplistic and ignores many factors. You can just redistribute and then say 'well people will spend the money'. That's literally the 'Broken Window' fallacy from economics. You are ignoring that if you don't redistribute it, money also gets spend, just differently. Also, the central bank is targeting AD, so you're not actually increasing nominal income by redistributing.

Take a million dollars, give 1,000 poor people $1,000 and every dollar will be spent on goods and services. The companies running those services and making those goods will need to have their employees work more hours, putting more money back in poor people’s pockets in addition to the money the companies make. Those employees have a few extra dollars to spend on goods and services, etc.

Give a rich person a million dollars, and they will put it in an offshore tax shelter. That’s not exactly driving economic activity.

You are simply disagreeing with 99% of economists.

Money in tax shelter doesn't go threw a portal in another universe. Its either invested or saved as some kind of asset and in that form is in circulation. And again, even if you assume it increases monetary demand (decreases velocity) the central bank targets AD and balances that out.

Based on your logic, a country that taxes 100% of all income and redistrubtes it would become infinity rich. Your logic is basically 'if nobody saves and everybody spends all income' everybody will be better off.

This is not how the economy works even if it feels good to think that. Its a fallacy.

Where you could have a point is that potentially the tax impact is slightly different, but that's hard to prove.

This feels like you intentionally gave this the least charitable reading. Obviously, I do not think that you could just scale to infinity. If I had said that eating a banana was healthier, I don't think it would be reasonable to say that assertion is ridiculous because that would mean eating 1,000 bananas would make someone the healthiest person. I was pointing out the difference in economic activity, where additional money to a wealthy individual mostly goes into savings/investing while additional money to low-income individuals mostly goes directly into consumption, and that the higher consumption generates more economic activity.

https://bsi-economics.org/rising-income-inequality-and-aggre...

> Take a million dollars, give 1,000 poor people $1,000 and every dollar will be spent on goods and services.

If we're being realistic a bunch of this will go to paying off existing debt. Still good, but not the economic stimulus you're imagining. There are also "services" like gambling apps that act as a sponge to soak up money from those foolish enough to use them and transfer that money back to the wealthy shareholders. I'm sure there is research on what percentage of that $1000 can be expected to stimulate the economy, but it's not 100%.

There are many ways of spending money in the population that don't include just "distribution of money", as it's portrayed nowadays. Child care, free and high quality schools, free transportation, free or subsidized healthcare, investment is labor-intensive industries, these are all examples of expenditures that translate in better quality of life and also improve competitiveness for the country.

That has literally nothing to do with the point I have argued.

Stock buybacks don't build anything. They're just a way to take money from inside a company and give it to the shareholders.

I don't know what that has to do with the point discussed.

Do you think shareholder don't spend money, but employees do or something?

Because government is always a fight about resources. More resources in the hands of common people and to make their lives better is less money in the hands of powerful corporations and individuals, be it in the form of higher taxes for the rich or less direct money going to their enterprises.

One of the big issues is money in politics. Our congresspeople make a killing off of legal insider trading, they take huge donations from companies, and the supreme court has even said that it's cool to give "gratuities" in exchange for legislation or court rulings you like.

Corruption is killing this country.

Let's pay down the debt before increasing social programs. You know, save the country first. If a penny saved is a penny earned then everyone -rich or poor- is looking for a handout.

The only person who has come close to balancing the federal budget was Clinton. But Republicans still try to position themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility.

If the voters can't even figure out why the debt keeps going up, I think you are fighting a losing battle.

> likely would have otherwise been put toward stock buybacks

Stock buybacks from who? When stock gets bought the money doesn't disappear into thin air; the same cash is now in someone else's hands. Those people would then want to invest it in something and then we're back to square one.

You assert that if not for AI, wealth wouldn't have been spent on materials, land, trades, ect. But I don't think you have any reason to think this. Money is just an abstraction. People would have necessarily done something with their land, labor, and skills. It isn't like there isn't unmet demand for things like houses or train tunnels or new-fangled types of aircraft or countless other things. Instead it's being spent on GPUs.

Totally agree that the money doesn’t vanish. My point isn’t “buybacks literally destroy capital,” it’s about how that capital tends to get redeployed and by whom.

Buybacks concentrate cash in the hands of existing shareholders, which are already disproportionately wealthy and already heavily allocated to financial assets. A big chunk of that cash just gets recycled into more financial claims (index funds, private equity, secondary shares, etc), not into large, lumpy, real world capex that employs a bunch of electricians, heavy equipment operators, lineworkers, land surveyors, etc. AI infra does that. Even if the ultimate economic owner is the same class of people, the path the money takes is different: it has to go through chip fabs, power projects, network buildouts, construction crews, land acquisition, permitting, and so on. That’s the “leakage” I was pointing at.

To be more precise: I’m not claiming “no one would ever build anything else”, I’m saying given the current incentive structure, the realistic counterfactual for a lot of this megacap tech cash is more financialization (buybacks, M&A, sitting on balance sheets) rather than “let’s go fund housing, transit tunnels, or new aircraft.”

I really don't think any of that is true; it's just popular rhetoric.

For example: "Buybacks concentrate cash in the hands of existing shareholders" is obviously false: the shareholders (via the company) did have cash and now they don't. The cash is distributed to the market. The quoted statement is precisely backwards.

> A big chunk of that cash just gets recycled

That doesn't mean anything.

> more financial claims (index funds, private equity, secondary shares, etc)

And do they sit on it? No, of course not. They invest it in things. Real actual things.

> buybacks

Already discussed

> M&A

If they use cash to pay for a merger, then the former owners now have cash that they will reinvest.

> balance sheets

Money on a balance sheet is actually money sitting in J.P. Morgan or whoever. Via fractional reserve lending, J.P. Morgan lends that money to businesses and home owners and real actual houses (or whatever) get built with it.

The counterfactual for AI spending really is other real actual hard spending.

To further your point - I mean honestly if this all ends up being an actual bubble that doesn’t manifest a financial return for the liquidity injectors but instead a massive loss (for the .01% who are in large part putting the cash in), did humanity actually lose?

If it pops it might end up being looked at in the lens of history as one of the largest backdoor/proxy wealth redistributions ever. The capex being spent is in large part going to fund the labor of the unwashed masses, and society is getting the individual productivity and efficiency benefits from the end result models.

I’m particularly thankful for the plethora of open source models I have access to thanks to all this.

I, individually, have realized indisputable substantial benefits from having these tools at my disposal every day. If the whole thing pops, these tools are safely in my possession and I’m better because I have them. Thanks .01%!!

(the reality is I don’t think it will pop in the classic sense, and these days it seems the .01 can never lose. either way, the $1tn can’t be labeled as a waste).

How much of it really is the 0.01% and how much of it is pension and retirement funds? It's very rare that the blast radius from one of these explosions of malinvestment only includes the very wealthy.

I get what you are saying. How much experience do you have with financial bubbles? I was working when the dot-com bubble burst. I also have firsthand experience with the real estate/bond market implosion. This current one has all the same signs. There is no way to charge enough to balance out the massive infrastructure investment going on.

Those models you speak of are great now, but they will degrade over time and become useless unless they get updated, right?

I look at the early days of the Internet when sites like Google and Youtube were unprofitable and looked like a great deal for us lowly users. That did not last.

It doesn’t have the same signs.

During the .com boom and bust, there was tons of fraud in Enron and the like, also when they were laying new fiber capital, little of it was being used which is why it’s still dark.

Today every transistor that is added is immediately 100% utilized.

Absolutely, me as well. I think the key here is that Apple is selling a platform that is used for a multitude of purposes, often including running software from third party developers. If you’re selling a platform device in large numbers you should have the choice codified by law of either continuing software support to some degree or releasing an unlock kit for it. You should not have the option of effectively abandoning and bricking it, if that’s the route you must go the buyer should get the option of a full purchase price refund at that point in time.

sadly apple silicon and Tahoe may have delivered a knockout punch to the future of oclp. the dortania team has said apple silicon support is more or less out of the question at this point. with Tahoe ushering in the first large batch of deprecated intel machines with the t2 chip, it’s tbd if dortania will be able to ship something to get them to Tahoe. sad days and may soon mean we’re having the same convo about older Mac’s as we are about old iPhones and iPads.

True. But there's also the plus side - Intel Macs allowed us to run multiple OSes and that was a very desirable feature that was part of its attraction. With ARM Macs, this attraction is truly gone (even if Apple fans taut its ability to run a crippled Linux). So, many will no longer buy any ARM Macs at all. That's Apple's loss. As soon as the battery of my old iPad also conks out, I plan to buy an Android tablet with an unlocked bootloader - I am never buying a locked device that infringes on my rights, ever.

Yep, that's the major problem with Apple hardware nowadays. It is very good in term of quality (at least if you don't need too much RAM of storage) but for the price you are entirely at the mercy of Apple for long term support. And recent Apple behavior has shown that they drop support on cue, regardless of the actual capacity of the device. I think they have actually become way more aggressive in that regard to boost sales, because the reality is that recent progress isn't really relevant to most people. Without forced deprecation, many would use their device almost indefinitely.

It cannot be a good deal to buy an expensive device that is guaranteed complete deprecation in a 7 year window (and very likely to suffer some major annoyance at the 5 years mark).

If you buy an equally expensive Android device (or Windows PC), because the model is different, you'll fare much better. And the reality is that at equal characteristics/performance the Android/PC version is generally quite cheaper.

Apple aficionados will rave about the build quality and ecosystem but I think they are irrelevant (most of the ecosystem advantages are to be found in the alternate world) and the devices feel more premium than they are actually qualitative (in fact they are very fragile in many ways).

They are surfing the Apple Silicon wave but as their efficiency lead is shrinking it will lose relevance/power.

I love the website. You’ll find some strong opinions here, I wouldn’t make changes based solely on the HN crowd’s curmudgeonly takes.

I have no opinion on the matter but wanted to thank you for teaching me "curmudgeonly".

That's in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html too!

Pretty sure that was the case. I heavily use Tailscale at work and have been working steady on multiple VNC connected clients over Tailscale Wireguard tunnels without issue. Just wrapped it up for the day and hit the ‘ol watering hole (hackernews) to see this. I didn’t connect/disconnect or have to use the portal during that time period, but my in place connections were fine.