Tech behemoths are running our lives, now more than ever. Now about 2/3 of internet users are using Google's Chrome browser. This number is sure to grow as Google exerts its influence in web services to shut out other browsers from people's minds. To prevent this, I suggest that Google (or Alphabet) should be broken up into 2 or 3 companies.
- Services
- Web Services provided by the company (docs/drive, YouTube, Stadia) and the related apps they operate directly
- Separating them from the systems should force them to provide the best services to the most people to ensure that their service would be as widely used as they would want
- Systems
- Systems that services would run on (Android, ChromeOS, Chrome/Chromium)
- Separating them from services should force them to have the best compatibility with the most apps and web services as possible, not just their own.
- Advertisements
- It's just an advertising agency now. No special integrations with any services or systems.
- Would rely on purchasing user data from Services to tailor advertisements (as opposed to just getting it for free, like it is now)
- The above would be less efficient than the current system, making it costlier. If the advertising paradigm shifts to be much more cost-intensive, advertisers would be less willing to sink more money into the system for the same effectiveness (the value-for-dollar-effectiveness ratio would decrease). The less money that gets sunk into the advertising industry, the less impact the advertising industry has on us (content consumers), meaning we are more independent as individuals.
Facebook has almost 2.5 Billion users, Instagram hit roughly a billion users over 1 year ago, and has been growing since, WhatsApp hit 1.5 Billion users over a year and a half ago, and Calibra... exists. How should we split this up? I would like it to be a little something like this:
- Facebook
- It's just Facebook and FB Messenger
- Still displays ads, but doesn't own the advertising company.
- Still sells off data, but won't use much of that data for itself (other than to tailor adverts to users (tailoring adverts to users would allow them to sell their ad space at higher cost to advertisers))
- Instagram
- It's just Instant Grandmother as we know today (and the DMs, wink wink)
- Displays ads, sells data, same old schtick
- Not owned by Facebook anymore. This means that it can operate independently and Facebook would have less influence on people's minds
- Whatsapp
- It's still Whatsapp, doing what Whatsapp does
- Not owned by Facebook anymore; independent operations and less Facebook influence on people's brains
- Calibra
- Regulated like a bank, I guess (not exactly certain about how to handle Calibra here)
- It's a payment processor and "cryptocurrency" handler, so let's pretend it's a good idea to let it live for the time being
- Not even close to Facebook (except for the fact that FB will still have a seat at the executive table for the Libra steering committee or whatever it's called). Allowed to have the same integrations as Stripe, Paypal, etc. for payment processing.
I'm not sure exactly what to say to end this piece, so... thanks for reading and upvote pl0x