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Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

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Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#111

Post by TheCleric »

fuzztester wrote: post #98
ren_engineer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the more blatant monopoly abuse by Google is how they use the Google search homepage to shill their other products. They effectively give themselves billions of dollars in free advertising

how is that abuse, though? is it against the law? IANAL, but I would think not. I mean, many people put links to their other products or services on the web page of one of their products or services.

It is, if you are leveraging one monopoly to attempt to gain more. This is what happened with Microsoft and Internet Explorer (via the Windows monopoly)[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#112

Post by mbreese »

jd3 wrote: post #101
hugh_kagi wrote: post #21

We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: 1. On iOS the list of allowed search engines is simply baked into OS, we have a fiddly extension that hooks outbound calls to /search and redirects them but I wish we didn't need to. 2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such a…

I'm surprised Kagi Search wasn't mentioned once in the ruling given that it's the most compelling Google competitor on the market.

Specifically, it's the most compelling competitor that isn't included in the default iOS search engine list...

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#113

Post by dartos »

jd3 wrote: post #101
hugh_kagi wrote: post #21

We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: 1. On iOS the list of allowed search engines is simply baked into OS, we have a fiddly extension that hooks outbound calls to /search and redirects them but I wish we didn't need to. 2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such a…

I'm surprised Kagi Search wasn't mentioned once in the ruling given that it's the most compelling Google competitor on the market.

I think openai is the most notable org taking swings at Google.

At least Google seems to feel that way. Might just be the Silicon Valley bubble

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#114

Post by repelsteeltje »

JohnFen wrote: post #82
repelsteeltje wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad for Firefox , which still relies exclusively on Google sponsorship. Thunderbird , on the other hand, takes user donations.

> Thunderbird, on the other hand, takes user donations. And it depends on Firefox, sadly.

Fair enough. In any case, now would probably be a good moment for Mozilla to reconsider user donations on Firefox.

Just my €50 of course isn't going to change the future by itself. But I'd happily give it to them if they'd let me.

(And I don't even mind manually removing Google and replacing it with DDG.)

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#115

Post by ncruces »

ren_engineer wrote: post #70
hintymad wrote: post #47

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

I feel like the more blatant monopoly abuse by Google is how they use the Google search homepage to shill their other products. They effectively give themselves billions of dollars in free advertising

Because it's much better for the consumer to search for a city, get an interactive map right there on the search results, but no link to jump to Google Maps so they can get an estimate on how long it takes to get there, because that'd be bundling.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#116

Post by zbentley »

JohnFen wrote: post #82
repelsteeltje wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad for Firefox , which still relies exclusively on Google sponsorship. Thunderbird , on the other hand, takes user donations.

> Thunderbird, on the other hand, takes user donations. And it depends on Firefox, sadly.

Do you mean it depends on Firefox for money and staff from Mozilla inc/fdn? Or that it uses a Firefox-based browser engine for HTML emails?

If the latter, I don’t imagine this will have too terribly much impact. Email clients often lag behind browsers in what they can display.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#117

Post by mrob »

init2null wrote: post #50
hugh_kagi wrote: post #21

We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: 1. On iOS the list of allowed search engines is simply baked into OS, we have a fiddly extension that hooks outbound calls to /search and redirects them but I wish we didn't need to. 2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such a…

There's no excuse for not making search engine management as simple and flexible as Firefox does, especially on the desktop, but I appreciate the hoops you jump through to keep hacks available for browsers with less user choice.

Firefox makes you jump through hoops too. To enable the UI for adding custom search engines you need to set the undocumented preference "browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh" to true.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#118

Post by JohnFen »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #114
JohnFen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thunderbird, on the other hand, takes user donations. And it depends on Firefox, sadly.

Fair enough. In any case, now would probably be a good moment for Mozilla to reconsider user donations on Firefox. Just my €50 of course isn't going to change the future by itself. But I'd happily give it to them if they'd let me. (And I don't even mind manually removing Google and replacing it with DDG.)

I've long been baffled at the inability to contribute to Firefox development. It seems crazy to me that this isn't possible.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#119

Post by acdha »

chadash wrote: post #62
causal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. People use Google because it's the default, not because they will go out of their way to keep using it. The minute Apple changes the iPhone default, all but a few iPhone users stop using Google.

Chrome is not anyone's default browser, but it still has dominance. People will be bothered a little under some circumstances.

Chrome is a complicated case in general because Google poured money into promoting Chrome and had some of the most popular sites on the web promoting it heavily and actively sabotaged Firefox at several key points. I respect a lot of the Chrome team’s early work but it’s very hard for me to see that as a story about fair competition alone.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#120

Post by CapmCrackaWaka »

hugh_kagi wrote: post #21

We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: 1. On iOS the list of allowed search engines is simply baked into OS, we have a fiddly extension that hooks outbound calls to /search and redirects them but I wish we didn't need to. 2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such a…

I use Orion exclusively because Kagi is the default search engine. It does have a few more bugs than chrome / safari, but they're well worth putting up with to get native Kagi support. Thank you.

It's interesting though - what is Apple's vested interest in only having native support for certain search engines? I now no longer use their browser because of this - I would think that is _some_ kind of loss for them. Maybe not, since I'm on macOS anyway.

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