Google's Market Cap Gap

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Alphabet, as I understand it, spends about 27 billion a year in R&D. That includes a bunch of stuff that is not new products. It's just refining ad tech. And the adjacent stuff like server management and whatnot. So they're a company that doesn't do R&D seriously or is very bad at it,. one of the other.

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What is interoperability? What counts as "unauthorized" access to computers or parts of computers? If the rendered design of a web page is copyrighted, then does blocking ads on that page count as copyright infringement by creating a derivative product? Does Facebook really want what's best for its users? Is Google evil? Could blockchain-based solutions provide much-needed privacy or interoperability? Why doesn't the U.S. government (for example) fight harder to prevent vendor lock-in when buying goods and services? Which tech companies, if any, should be broken up?

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction for adults; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. His latest novel is Attack Surface, a standalone adult sequel to Little Brother. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

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