Slightly tangential thought:
My belief is: legislation needs to either make it just as hard to merge two companies as it is to unmerge them, or make it just as easy to unmerge two companies as it is to merge them.
It's insane to me that for how often companies merge and cause competition issues, we effectively never see the opposite happen. I know there's a ceremonial approval for merging two companies (at least in the US), but it's just impossible to undo or prevent the damage.
> Google’s ad tech business brought in $30 billion last year, or about 8 percent of the revenue for its parent company, Alphabet. Its ad tech revenue has declined for 16 straight quarters, and analysts estimate it accounts for less than 1 percent of the company’s profit... “This is a business no one cares about"
Can someone closer to GOOG explain this? The phrase "ad tech" seems to have a very specific meaning here. Does this 1% include all advertising around the Web? Basically all ad revenue outside of Google's own properties? The number is surprisingly low.
Google owns Google Ad Manager (the tool third-party website and app publishers like NyTimes use to show ads on their properties), Google Ads (the place advertisers like Nike go to run ad campaigns across both Google properties and also these third party sites), and AdX the ad exchange that runs the auction that sits between Ad Manager and Google Ads.
The lawsuit is specifically about googles ownership of the auction and the ownership of the relationship on either side of the auction. The AdX auction also contains demand (ads from places besides google ads) and inventory (ad slots outside of ad manager). Website publishers allege that Google uses this ownership to artificially deflate the value of ads on third party websites.
If it is a business no one cares about, then why has Google been fighting this?
The money is nbd, but it's much more important to Google (same as it would be for any of the other tech giants) to keep a certain streak going - 42 years now and counting since the government forced a large or important company to do anything even resembling breaking up. A loss here would serve as precedent (either legally, or at minimum in people's emotions) that you CAN force a divestiture. If Google can be forced to divest this business, why not Chrome, YouTube, or Android? Why can't Apple be forced to divest the App Store business, or Amazon be forced to divest AWS?
Great question. The adtech is what rigs the auctions for their moneymaker, the ads.
If they no longer own the adtech then their ad revenue suffers greatly.
Classic capitalism move. It’s not directly making much profit therefore it’s not important! When something that gives you outsized influence or control.. sometimes you would lose money just to control.
Something can be unprofitable but still extremely valuable. These companies are playing strategy games at the geopolitical level and money is not the only resource they want to accumulate to win the game…
I haven't been in ads there in, like, over a decade and some but I believe what was under threat here was specifically Google's ad exchange network. Basically third party bidding for space in Google's display ad network. Basically a part of the business which sells excess "inventory" and which is a much smaller part of their ad business than AdWords and AdSense. Or whatever they call these things now.
I used to work in AdX (and AdMeld that Google acquired) but not since 2014 or so. I believe the AdMeld acquisition itself was one of the things under the microscope here.
We should just progressively tax monopolies. Companies will break themselves up to compete, no decade long DOJ case needed.
Yes, this, and we need to have this progressive tax be over the company's total assets, including subsidiaries.
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The United States government is fractured and can't get its act together. No one has a credible plan to solve this. Electing your preferred president doesn't solve a broken Senate and other structural problems. The presidency is likely to keep bouncing between parties that care as much (if not more) about undoing the previous four years as they do sketching out a coherent plan for the future four.
How is wielding this weapon against our most innovative companies going to help the United States compete at scale against China? Scale is sort of required to do so.
So if the government isn't going to be in the business of massive capex investment (the kind China subsidizes) well then you need massive private companies.
The American peoples response to a future dictated by the terms of Chinese hegemony is break up the centers of American innovation? What do you think is keeping the capex cost manageable if it's not the government? How does Google work if you take away its cash cow?
So many of you (I assume despite the complaining that > 99% of HN readers can afford it) need to just pay the $20 or whatever for YouTube premium if it's so terrible and get over yourselves. The tax your children will have to pay if the United States is reduced to a second rate power will be far greater. What's with people wanting free access to services and simultaneously offended by ads? I don't like them either but I understand it would be silly to think they should be free. They can be regulated or reformed in many ways, but the government should be highly restrained about cleaving apart companies. Just remember the powers you give the government today the next government will inherit, and it is not so easy for a party to maintain power for more than eight years. Meanwhile China is operating on government initiatives and sustained strategy on a timeline that spans decades. Companies need to be able to match this horizon without fear of whatever the new normal in Washington is every four years. The trend for the United States is not looking good.
That "Lake America" is doing a hell of a lot of work for Google
The judge was appointed by Clinton, so they've been in their role for decades now. It seems unlikely that someone who has served that long in her position would rule based on making the child in the White House happy.
> It seems unlikely that someone who has served that long in her position would rule based on making the child in the White House happy.
The US is a corporatocracy. It's apparently a lot easier for Americans to convince themselves that the current administration is corrupt and end there than it is to acknowledge that the entire system has been corrupted and it won't change once the administration changes.
Two things can be true at once, the entire system is corrupt and the current administration is much more corrupt than any prior administration.
The current administration is in a class of its own regarding corruption -- it is the principle driver of everything they do. The nazi stuff is just bonus for them.
At the turn of the century (yikes!) Clinton reconfigured the DNC to serve the corporations rather than labor. I left the party after that but am compelled to vote blue as the least worst option. Partisan politics allows capture of the government by creating a duopoly of power.
Washington warned us of this threat.
we got rick grimes over here walking into atlanta
To the contrary, the entire DOJ understands that FAANG and the three-letter-agencies are one revolving door. Any judge that attempts to defang Google's data collection may well run afoul of the American surveillance system, which this administration will fight tooth and nail to defend.
Not very different from how federal protectionism keeps Apple's App Store centralized despite trillions of dollars in ostensible market damage. Anyone trying to loosen America's grip on software distribution is crossing an ugly national security line that we're all too ashamed to admit exists.
100% glad someone states the obvious. Sometimes here people think these tech companies are on truly altruistic missions on making “the world a better place!!1” or truly making an impact by being an IC in their role and having access to perks which, have largely been taken away as the market matures to data collection and surveillance.
If you want to have some fun, go on LinkedIn and see how many former military people, proud of their service, boast how they are at x or y tech company in director esque roles.
Then bookmark them and see the pages disappear in the future. Boy I’m glad it’s legally 100% ok to scrap LinkedIn data because it truly is a revolving door.
> an ugly national security line that we're all too ashamed to admit exists
We're all ashamed, apparently?? What do they call this, projections of a guilty conscience?
RCS is google's foothold. It forces everyone to share with google and currently, there is no carrier option for RCS. You have to pick google or apple or go without.
agree with you but including netflix is becoming hilarious
Or that N could be Nvidia now.
I thought we were using "Mag7" these days.
Understandable, but how is that fair to other competitors?
The whole system is now easily abused by huge mega-corporations. That goes against capitalism. Why did the USA suddenly abandon capitalism?
Since you are getting no replies but getting downvoted I'm adding source from 2016 corroborating what you mention: https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-rev...
251 individuals in such detected instances just in google. And that report is 10 years old, I'd bet it's 10x that by now.
What conspiracy mate? It's not so deep, I was curious if what he said was a lie due to the downvotes and found nice evidence for it. You don't find it convincing it's your choice, but the dude didn't pull it out of his ass.
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The DOJ isn't part of the Judiciary branch, it's part of the Executive.
> FAANG and the three-letter-agencies are one revolving door
Most of the NSA is active duty service members and former military. Did you mean other three letter agencies, excluding the most powerful one dealing with surveillance?
> Any judge that attempts to interfere with Google's data collection may well run afoul of the American surveillance system
The judge in this case put the final nail into Trumps slush fund. But now she's doing his bidding. Is that what you're claiming?
Not everything is a conspiracy. You don't have some special insight into this.
Given the sentence immediately following the revolving door metaphor, I think it was clumsily being used for data, not personnel. Especially because it's true for obvious reasons.
> The judge in this case put the final nail into Trumps slush fund. But now she's doing his bidding. Is that what you're claiming?
No, they're clearly claiming it's a non-partisan thing and the sitting president is irrelevant, as are the specifics of the virtue signalling happening. Yes, even though they qualified themselves with "this administration". Do you think that the Clintons aren't friends with the state department surveillance abomination or the nastiest parts of government writ large? That Bill or Hillary wouldn't fight tooth and nail to protect this terrible thing that's been wrought? Replace the context with some virtue signal about NATO intervention in Serbia 27 years ago, nothing changes. Partisan politics is for yokels.
> You can't meaningfully prove that the NSA sat on their hands in the 13 interceding years since Snowden.
I mean, you're correct? It's impossible to prove a negative.
> There's no evidence that US interventionism is on the straight-and-narrow now, you're wishcasting and calling it truth.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that. You're the ones making the extraordinary claims. The burden of proof is on you, not the people pointing out the flaws in these claims.
This started under Biden? Crazy.
> These days all three branches march lock step in their jackboots
Which is why the Judicial branch has been ruling against the Executive branch again and again? I don't understand what evidence you think you have to the contrary, other than vibes?
> Apple's App Store centralized despite trillions of dollars in ostensible market damage
Please. The Androidfication of iOS with malware/scamware would cost quadrillions in market damage.
So the market damage would be more than the entire planet's GDP?
Citation needed. The idea that somehow my mum can't even find the space bar on her keyboard and yet is competent enough to go through several warning screens to install a custom .apk is just laughable.
Isnt that updated by some national database and google just pulls that data? Apparently Apple Maps will also get it in a few days, since they get the data from them as well.
Yes. We had the same comments about Gulf of America.
Edit: I don't know that there's an actual database served up by the US Gov, but governments control the naming of these things within their own jurisdictions. All of the big mapping products have the ability to serve up different names based on where you're viewing from.
And Apple just renamed: https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-google...
https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc...
GNIS, Geographic Names Information System
(Which still shows Lake Ontario for me as I write this. The body of water along the US's southern coast is Gulf of America however.)
The database entry was updated to "Lake America" on August 27:
https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc...
GNIS renders their own static map tiles, so it may take a while for the update to be reflected on the map itself.
> Per Secretarial Order 3453, Lake Ontario has been renamed to Lake America. The basemaps for GNIS are in the process of being updated to reflect this name change.
I see this on the top bar
The government does not control the words you or I use to refer to things.
It would be nice if Maps would prefer data from government DBs that have localized versions of foreign place name data (e.g., Germany's BKG) when available.
It makes perfect sense that govs control names within their jurisdiction - I am eyerolling at both the name change and the reaction.
I am curious though - is it convention to leave the data as is, or is it illegal to modify it?
Regardless, itll just be changed back in 2 years; as long as I can type "lake ontario" and get directed to Lake Ontario, I do not care at all what the gov database calls it currently.
I wouldn't exactly describe one person as "the government".
> I am eyerolling at both the name change and the reaction.
Why do you expect meek reaction in a rename like this? What is eye rolling over reacting to this particular rename?
I too remember last year when everyone really cared about that and it was the end of the world and then we got on with our lives because at the end of the day it not only doesn't matter, the naming of these things is arbitrary, and anything that a president can change the name of a subsequent president can modify yet again.
What do they call the South China Sea, is it the East Sea or is it the West Philippine Sea? What do the French call the English Channel? Is it Le Manche d'anglaise?
It’s so unimportant folks are commenting on my comment about how unimportant it is!
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/apple-maps-changes-name-lak...
Apple updated it yesterday. If I were Google I'd turn down that refresh rate and let someone else take the bad PR next time
There is no bad PR, 99% of people don’t care.
Seems like something that should be user-configurable (like DNS servers). While the recent annoying renamings have drawn attention to the issue, landmark names have basically always been political.
I have been wondering this as well. I cannot imagine having this be autoupdated without review from a centralized database is a good idea. This is a process that needs to be frangible and have some friction in it.
In this day and age, GPS mapping tools have major implications for societal function, safety, economics, national security, healthcare, etc. I'm struggling to think of an industry where a sudden absence/subtle changes of named GPS mapping data would not have an effect.
If everyone relied on the same data base which could push changes to the map in the pocket of every resident of a nation that would be the first thing I would think to hack. Probably easier than actually jamming or spoofing GPS/GNSS over a huge area.
There are thousands of small street changes across the country each day. New subdivisions, road expansions, lane changes, new traffic lights. Of course the vast majority should be auto-updated without manual review, what would a person add to the process? The public database is the system of record in the first place.
To all the people pissed about the "Lake America" stuff: why in the actual fuck do you want Google of all organizations to be arbiter of geographical info, instead of federal institutions that are (at least nominally) operated under democratic principles?
Don't you understand the horror of what you're suggesting: "I want Google to impose it's own personal value judgments over the government's."
Yes, I think it's incredibly stupid, 3rd grader childlike to call this "Lake America". But the problem is not Google, the problem is the ass hats we (collectively, even if not you/me personally) voted for. The problem is especially with our Congressional reps who have just neutered themselves in service to this stupidity. And I get it, our federal institutions have definitely showed their frailty lately, but I can't fathom then why people think the proper solution is to give more decision-making authority to Google.
Democracy works best as a diffuse institution and is more than just voting. People are supposed to have rights and power themselves and I want them to try to make things better (whether I agree with them or not) and "corporations" are just groups of people. Needing to just go with the government, especially on something so clearly within their rights, is counter to the ideals of the system.
I can understand Google somewhat here (if I was running a business I wouldn't be happy wading into a political issue like this) but the idea that they are above criticism for just falling in line still doesn't resonate with me.
>Democracy works best as a diffuse institution and is more than just voting. People are supposed to have rights and power themselves
People holding power themselves is called self-governance (in the Jeffersonian way).
People voting for representation is called a republic.
People voting away their own power to another is called democracy.
Corporations being only "groups of people" is kind of wishful thinking. They are one cog in a large machinery that is steered by a few very rich people.
Corporations should not be absolved of criticism. But at the same time it makes little sense to put a hamster in hamster wheel and then blame him for running.
I do wonder how many people that criticize the renaming, were criticizing Obama when he rename Mt McKinley. What are the principles here? Or is it just names I like vs names I don't like.
Tons of people complained about the renaming of Mt McKinley for the same reason people complain about "Lake America" now. It has nothing to do with the names and everything to do with the reasons for the renaming.
Yeah it's meaningless to fight. Except not really. If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario across the board, and use the difference to find who is or isn't on my side on that issue.
The only people calling it Gulf of America or Lake America are hardcore MAGATs in my social circle. Even former Trump voters in my social circle are annoyed and not using the new names. So it's an effective way to figure out who is or isn't going along with the Administration today.
> If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario
This is the same logic that the right wing used when they disagreed with Obama on some issues, so they blocked his Supreme Court nominations just because anything Obama does must be bad.
Sounds like your social circle is in denial. There are certainly plenty of things Trump, buffoon and graft-a-holic he is, has done that are corrupt. Renaming bodies of water doesn't look like one of them. (Obviously, because he would have renamed it after a donor, or at least after himself.)
I mean, sure, we can all call anything whatever. I can call New Mexico "Best Mexico" or call Washington, DC "Bad Washington" and that's my right. But pretending that there aren't official names for things because we don't like the current guy seems immature. It's clearly within the authority of the government. Talk like this makes me think that people want to just live in a reality defined exclusively by party politics where we just pretend every law or policy made by The Bad Party doesn't exist, rather than try to win elections so we can shape the one actual reality.
> They have the ability to change name services in some database somewhere. But it's not actually an official name change.
Is it Congress who officially holds that power, then? And are you saying that if Congressional Republicans passed a bill renaming whatever, and Trump signed it, you'd then acknowlege it? Given how vanishingly little they accomplish in Congress already, I'm not sure we'd be better off distracting them from their semiannual debt ceiling/budget hostage situation in order to debate these inconsequential things.
You mean by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema who was appointed by Clinton and has ruled against Trump policies/agenda regularly?
... proving the point that protecting big tech is a bipartisan work.
As much as I love when people pretend Trump is the first government official to ever rename something, there is no evidence this had any impact on the court's decision.
More information on the specific remedies in the USDOJ announcement: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-wins-signi...
Sounds like it's not nothing, but also not much.
This is from last year (and a different trial).
> said Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
That must have been in drafts for a while.
Arguably tangential, but for how long more will Nvidia and CUDA avoid the US anti-trust?
Why would they be subjected to anti-trust? There's a robust competition from AMD and Intel, and NVidia is not using any obviously illegal competition tricks.
I have no proof, but this just figures. It's entirely plausible that google gave some heavy-duty major dark money campaign donations and have used the return on their investment to avoid being broken up. Maybe I'm just cynical and the corporations and ultra-wealthy wouldn't really do anything like that all the time. They are ultra-greedy, though.
> Google’s ad tech business brought in $30 billion last year, or about 8 percent of the revenue for its parent company, Alphabet. Its ad tech revenue has declined for 16 straight quarters, and analysts estimate it accounts for less than 1 percent of the company’s profit... “This is a business no one cares about"
Uhhh, what? What kind of colorful accounting is this that they're pulling off?
This isn't for the whole of Google's ad business. Just its ad exchange and I think parts of DFP; basically just mechanisms for auctioning off excess display ad inventory.
Thanks. I was trying to figure out exactly what's in scope here. I'd love to get a broad breakdown or a big pie chart that goes to this level of granularity so I can see where this sits within its other 'non-Google-property' ad businesses.
Ads market is terrifyingly complicated. Or was when I worked in it fifteen years ago. I stopped following it out of disgust
> Google used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in search and search advertising.
The US judges lack courage here. This means they help Google power through with its de-facto monopoly.
This is, interestingly, also against capitalism, since now you no longer have a truly free market; no real competition. It is just one giant blob contorlling (almost) everything. Every blind one sees how Google controls WAY too much. Youtube is part of Google too. It is a cash cow that excludes competitors.
Non-paywalled link
twenty billion walkin out the court buildin woo woo!
So, essentially, a nothing burger.
As usual.
what shocker . google has a long history of prevailing in court
The ACLU has a long history of prevailing in court, as does the NRA.
Courts should regularly issue rulings you don't like. Their job isn't to make people happy.
"long history of prevailing in court" is another way of saying "Google isn't being punished as much as they deserve"
> Their job isn't to make people happy.
Sure, but I think we can all agree the US legal system very, very, very rarely issues any ruling that materially punishes a corporation. Even the worst of the worst typically get off very easy.
Do you disagree with that?
Not GP, and I regularly lament as well the incredibly gentle treatment of certain companies that I'd argue should have been literally fined out of existence (e.g. Equifax, PG&E, etc.), but we should probably stop to reflect that if the US were a country which erred in the other direction, issuing crippling fines often, we would probably stop being the country where innovative companies choose to do business. I don't just mean that as a talking point, I actually think I probably would prefer to have the economy we have here today (with its injustice) compared to one where most innovative companies won't do business here because they can't afford the possible fines.
> "long history of prevailing in court" is another way of saying "Google isn't being punished as much as they deserve"
Those two things are completely different and have very different meanings. For the most part, the courts aren't the ones that fine businesses.
> There have been more than 180,000 corporate fines issued in the US between 2020 and 2024, totaling more than $345 billion
> 3M Company has been issued with the costliest fines, adding up to $18.6 billion
$345 billion over 4 years seems like a lot to me. Maybe it should be higher? I don't know.
“The system” by which I assume you mean the Government of the United States or America doesn’t need to, because “the system” is sovereign. Corporations are not. They get checked when they get checked, and this ruling only avoided a worse-case scenario for Google. It wasn’t a win for them either.
What an incredible miscarriage of justice. Make enough money and pay off enough politicians, and you can pretty much shoot people on the street in broad daylight.
Assuming you read the ruling, what do you disagree with the judge on?
What politicians were paid off to make a judge in a lifelong position who has served for decades rule in Google's favor?
What ruling? It isn't released yet. We have declining to breakup, based on behavioral remedies, and zero details.
Kind of my point. How does one know something is a miscarriage of justice if you haven't read the ruling? Because you don't like the outcome?
A separate discussion for sure, but simply seeing a headline and declaring it an "incredible miscarriage of justice" seems a little far fetched.
For example, many times the courts will point out that the laws need to be updated, which would be in the ruling. Or that a law as written is unconstitutional but it could be made so with some changes. That stuff doesn't make the headlines though, just the "Courts rules for/against X". Ideally we'd have a legislative branch that would look at these rulings and update our laws, but their disinterest in doing so isn't the courts' fault.
Accepting behavioural changes, is the same stink of the last five decades.
I would like to wait for my own judgement... But someone reacting to the same, "We're sorry", that has been so common it became a South Park meme? They have had no evidence, probably in their lifetime, that government has not simply sold out to private enterprise. There is zero reason to be mad at them.
People react to actions. The actions thus far... Do not encourage any of kind of trust. Taking time to redact the ruling, is not an encpuragement to trust.
Sure. Wait for a ruling. Re-evaluate when it releases, too.
But reacting to the exact same pile shit they've seen everytime... Why blame them?
It's the modern "Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel". I think it's why outdoor advertising is so rife. It's hard to fight something when you rely on it to keep your position.
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Just to make sure I'm understanding, you're saying that Google payed someone (presumably Trump), who then went and convinced a Clinton appointed judge who has ruled against Trump in the past to give the case to Google?
Is that actually what you think?
I do not no, I don’t have an opinion on the Google situation. I was responding to the following:
> Make enough money and pay off enough politicians, and you can pretty much shoot people on the street in broad daylight.
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I wonder if it would help to revoke patents that help google maintain its monopoly, assuming that's the case and it's doable by a judge/congress/someone?
What exactly is the nature of its monopoly that moots competition? I was of understanding that it's more than just ads on google search results, isn't it?
Destroying a great US institution is not in the national interest. Cases like these should never be permissible in the first place.
> a great US institution
So, too big to fail, but to small to be a monopoly that abuses it's power?
who is to say that it is great. what makes it so, why is that valuable. Is doing more good than harm. that there is even some inherent value in a "great institution". A bunch of smaller companies would probably be better economically and be more innovative.
I'm more on your side than most but surely you don't think zero antitrust enforcement is best for our country?
> colincowardly
Appropriate last name. So any institution that lies, cheats, and steals their way to top is absolved of all wrongdoing just because they got to the top?
I kinda somewhat reluctantly agree with you, and I think other commenters are missing the point that breaking up Google may allow non-US competitors to rise up and take Google's place on the world stage. Thus, breaking them up is not in the national interest of the US.
If Alphabet allows a non-US competitor to replace them, isn't it their fault for failing to compete? The threat of replacement is supposed to be what motivates Alphabet to innovate.
It could also be argued that allowing Alphabet to sustain anticompetitive damages is exactly what creates the opportunity for them to be replaced. Alternatives to AdSense and YouTube can only succeed in America if Alphabet rests on their laurels and is artificially defended from natural price competition.
As long as there are many competitors, that's better than a monopoly, even if some of the competitors are foreign. Powerful monopolists restricting our freedoms is not in the interest of Americans long-term.
> As long as there are many competitors, that's better than a monopoly, even if some of the competitors are foreign
How do you prevent another monopoly from forming from a different country than your own?
Same way you prevent monopolies based in your own country from forming. Anti-trust regulation. Your country's government controls how companies operate inside it
Ah yes, the great US institution of ad tech. Mass privacy intrusion in the service of selling clicks for a nickel.
Stalin wishes he had this much reach
Capitalism requires some level of regulation to avoid eating itself.
So because Google monopolizes on a big enough scale, suddenly they are too important to break up? I would argue that if any single company is big enough to where if it were to break up it would be "against the national interest," then it is too big and must be broken up.
Bring back Ma Bell and Standard Oil they were great US institutions!
Standard Oil was sued for keeping low prices thanks to vertical integration prompting the classic quip about antitrust litigation.
Companies like modern Google should not be permissible in the even firster place.
You're basically advocating for unscrambling the omelet to be easier. Should be obvious why it's harder to unmix than it is to mix.
Why skip this part ?
> legislation needs to either make it just as hard to merge two companies as it is to unmerge them
I’m advocating for controlling the damage. The way I said it is cutesy, not literal.
I intended it to point out that it’s too easy to merge companies together but it’s effectively impossible to stop someone from becoming anticompetitive without a real consequence.
If we can’t make it easier to rip them apart then we shouldn’t be so slap-happy about approving them in the first place.
I don't think it's particularly unusual for a company to spin off another company?
PE companies do it all the time.
> or make it just as easy to unmerge two companies as it is to merge them.
[Disclaimer: I work at Google, all words my own and not representative of anyone, etc.]
There's no such thing. Let's stick to software since it's what HN knows best, but it's a universal truth.
Merging two companies: you take the two sides and they keep running. You probably need some extra accounting work to make sure the mandatory reports from each side get combined, but that's all you have to do.
Splitting two companies: oof. If you split ChildCo out of ParentCo:
* You need to hire all the roles that weren't part of that organization before (HR, legal, compliance, etc.)
* You need to register this new entity in all the countries it operates and/or has employees in
* Technologically it's somewhere between messy and impossible. Now you no longer have Google's build stack or monorepo. You have to rewrite everything. You can't just move some VMs to a cloud provider of choice
I suspect a large majority of the issues you brought up with splitting can be addressed by legislation.
Off the top of my head, something along the lines of having a mandatory period of time where the company being acquired must be kept separate enough that the merger can be dissolved in a timely manner should it be deemed necessary. How long that window should be would be up for debate but personally I'd argue the window should scale somehow based on things like the valuations of each company involved, headcounts, and maybe even competitive landscape.
An example would be requiring both companies to perform a pre-merger assessment to determine positions/roles, technology use and regulatory requirements that must be maintained for a clean separation and creating a plan that gets filed with the relevant agencies to be used if/when the merger needs dissolving. If the time comes that they need to dissolve the merger but they don't maintain that separation, they still have to do it and you slap a fine on them equal to some percentage of that mergers cost to be paid by the parent company.
Hell, that idea alone would accomplish both making it harder to merge and easier to dissolve the merger.
What can’t be solved with legislation?
I disagree with your premise that I shouldn’t express concern/opinions or point out problems with things that affect me simply because I’m not a trained expert in that thing.
This is far from impossible, and happens all the time when, for example, a company spins off a subsidiary, or any number of other situations.
It's hard isn't really a blocker, it's just saying 'this isn't convenient for us', which is why it would have to be forced by legislation.