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The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

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Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#51
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop OS and Office software markets. It’s impossible to come up with a reasonable definition of monopoly that doesn’t include them in those markets.

It isn't about market share, but about anti-competitive practices. Is Microsoft abusing their market position to keep competitors out of the market?

laughs in constant bing, onedrive, fucking edge, teams upsells on my paid version of windows.

Laughs in edge ignoring browser preferences screwing over firefox

laughs in constantly returning widgets, Microsoft reward currency on the start menu, forced telemetry.

Laughs in teams bundling.

Laughs in the coming super monopoly of cross domain AI finetuning in teams.

Lol, by the standards of the last century, they are worse than what did them in in the 90s

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#52

It is all the other search engines that are crap. Plenty exist, they just suck.

People who say this are never able to produce a single actual search query for which Google returns acceptable results but other engines do not. Perhaps you can be the exception.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has over 75% of 18-24 year olds with their phone in their pocket.

But how is this the result of Apple engaging in anti-competitive practices? 75% of people choosing your product can not be grounds to breakup a company and the fact that it looks different for other age groups is just further evidence that Apple is engaging in fair competition.

You could make an argument that number would be smaller if Apple was forced to make iMessage interoperable with Android devices.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#54
It's hard to tell if it's Google's dominance causing search to suck or just the web ecosystem naturally optimizing for clicks. I will say most queries with even vaguely commercial intent do seem to get the max or nearly a full page of sponsored links. I don't recall what it was like years ago but I'm pretty sure it is worse. I also think it's pretty clear the platform take-rate needs to be generally lowered across the board, likely making it illegal to lock customers to a store or require payments go through the same store. This is a tax on basically everyone and provides very little value.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#55
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google controls mine as search and gmail and chrome are major ways that I communicate with others. It’s difficult not to use them because my employer and many sites require chrome. I’m not sure what the gmail market share is, but chrome and search are over 50% and they’ve used that market position to harm users (showing ads for their own products until you choose chrome) and harm competitors (showing their own ads ab…

It's hard to say google controls your communication. You: 1. Voluntary use their services 2. There are lots of alternatives 3. The switching cost is minimal

Google absolutely controls communication. Two examples,

Example 1: GMail. Google uses the mass adoption of GMail as a cudgel. It's no longer possible to independently host email without being marked as spam or rate limited by Google, https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/gmail-independent-email

Example 2: Google did a good old "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" on XMPP, https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-netwo...

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#57
post #7

> controlling much of our communications Google doesn't control my communication with others.

Google controls mine as search and gmail and chrome are major ways that I communicate with others. It’s difficult not to use them because my employer and many sites require chrome. I’m not sure what the gmail market share is, but chrome and search are over 50% and they’ve used that market position to harm users (showing ads for their own products until you choose chrome) and harm competitors (showing their own ads ab…

I was in Google Ads 2008-2010 and I do remember: it was 3 top ads and 7 right hand side ads.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#58
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't about market share, but about anti-competitive practices. Is Microsoft abusing their market position to keep competitors out of the market?

laughs in constant bing, onedrive, fucking edge, teams upsells on my paid version of windows. Laughs in edge ignoring browser preferences screwing over firefox laughs in constantly returning widgets, Microsoft reward currency on the start menu, forced telemetry. Laughs in teams bundling. Laughs in the coming super monopoly of cross domain AI finetuning in teams. Lol, by the standards of the last century, they are wor…

[flagged]

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#59
post #3

Hopefully this is won and followed by similar for all other tech monopolies: Amazon, apple, meta, Microsoft, etc.

Google has 95% of search market, but none of the other examples have 95% of anything. What are Amazon, Apple, Microsoft’s monopolies? They all have substantial competitors across their various verticals. Amazon: Walmart (goods), Netflix (media) Microsoft: Apple (OS), Google, Amazon (enterprise compute) Apple: Microsoft (O, services), Samsung (mobile), Google (mobile, services), Netflix (media)

Many have made cases against Amazon, e.g. https://doctorow.medium.com/californias-antitrust-case-again...

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#60
post #9

>Google has maintained this monopoly, the government alleges, not by making a better product, but by locking down everywhere that consumers might be able to find a different search engine option, and making sure they only see Google. Google improves search every year. Internally they have data to back this up. Google doesn't lock down everywhere consumers can learn about a new browser. The most notable being the defa…

> Google improves search every year. I don’t believe this based on my own search experience getting worse year over year. I believe they know how to improve it, but they choose to increase revenue instead. Results seem to be less relevant to me and there are frequently more ad results than organic that display on the page. I think they are able to do this because of lock in with users and vendors. If there was more c…

That line gave me a chuckle, too. It was so hilariously bad, it was funny in a way.
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