Stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out
The Perfecting Equilibrium Digest, October 23-29, 2024
The place where I come from is a small town
They think so small, they use small words
But not me, I'm smarter than that
I worked it out
I've been stretching my mouth
To let those big words come right out
I've had enough, I'm getting out
To the city, the big, big city
I'll be a big noise with all the big boys
So much stuff I will own
And I will pray to a big god
As I kneel in the big church
(Big time) I'm on my way, I'm making it (Big time)
(Big time) I've got to make it show, yeah (Big time)
(Big time) So much larger than life
(Big time) I'm going to watch it growing (Big time)
Comment of the Week
Jack Baruth, Avoidable Contact Forever-Monday OT: Strom-gewehr, G-Shock And Bulova Go Fancier Away, Why Google Isn't Bell Labs
Christopher Feola, in yet another perceptive general-interest post, argues that FTC Commissioner Lina Khan won’t have to break up Google:
Take a look at Enron. The energy giant – at one point the fifth largest company in the world – had its former Chief Financial Officer, Andy Fastow, indicted on 78 charges of fraud on October 31, 2002. Which would have been a real blow to the company…
If it hadn’t gone bankrupt in 2001.
While the government spends a decade making a case that Google has a monopoly on search advertising, Google has been busy losing its grip on that market. The research firm eMarketing estimates that Google has slipped below 50 percent of the market in 2024, the first time it has been that low in a decade. That’s partly because of new search technologies such as AI, but a lot of it is simply better performance by competitors. TikTok is now offering search ads. Amazon, meanwhile, now has 22.3 percent of the search advertising market, up from 17.6 percent last year.
By the time the government gets around to proving Google’s monopoly, will there be any monopoly left to regulate? California outlaws its own regulations
He’s not wrong — but Lina should make the effort regardless, because the country is better off when monopolies like Google don’t exist, or are significantly weakened. If anyone in Mountain View, CA objects, then perhaps a deal can be made. Just deliver one Bell-Labs-caliber breakthrough a year, in the real world as opposed to the software world, and all will be forgiven. If Google can’t deliver that? They can join Harambe, Paul Walker, and Blake Z. Rong in the afterlife.² See ya, Sundar!
Perfecting Equilibrium Stories
Easter Eggs
My brain is a peculiar place; it likes to play word association, and then play back songs with those words. Here are the songs playing in my mind as I wrote these articles.
Next on Perfecting Equilibrium
Friday November 1st - Foto.Feola.Friday
Sunday, November 3rd — A Modest Proposal-The Virtual Editorial Assistant; Let’s build a new future for local news by training Large Language Models — AIs — on carefully curated news and information. AIs can be trained to reliably provide much of the support newspeople need, doing research, compiling background information, and then writing it up.