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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

#141

Post by moffkalast »

causal wrote: post #53
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?

If it creates a monopoly then no, it's not okay, no matter how normal.

Damn, someone tell the Justice Department that Nvidia exists.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#142

Post by crazygringo »

ankit219 wrote: post #102
akira2501 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Google didn't buy its way into dominance annd maintain their dominance through exclusivity deals This is a huge claim. Do you have any evidence to back it up?

I fail to see your reasoning. The court's argument is Google is maintaining this dominance via these default deals, not that it got there through them. Given the last 25 years of history, Google's product has gotten worse after these default deals. Previously it established the dominance because it found whatever a user searched for. Arguing otherwise just feels unrealistic. They never had any exclusive deals with an…

There are no exclusivity deals.

These are deals around defaults, not exclusivity.

Google never paid Apple to remove Bing from the list of choices. That's what an exclusivity deal would do. But it didn't happen, because this doesn't have anything to do with exclusivity.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#143

Post by larubbio »

jd3 wrote: post #99

A couple passages of note: > 112. The integration of generative AI is perhaps the clearest example of competition advancing search quality. Google accelerated and launched its public piloting of Bard one day before Microsoft announced BingChat, the integration of ChatGPT’s generative AI technology into Bing to deliver answers to queries. Id. at 8272:4-7 (Reid); id. at 2670:10–2671:9 (Parakhin). (describing BingChat).…

I remember this article from 2017 about the google snippet for how long it takes to caramelize an onion.

https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-...

The gist of the story is the author wrote an article debunking the recipe myth that you only need 5 minutes. In their tests it was 25 - 45. Google snippet would report "about 5 minutes" and link to the article as a reference.

I think the information summaries at the top of searches have been wrong for a while.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#144

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

mrob wrote: post #117
init2null wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I was a government party with subpoena power I'd be really interested in the email chain around that decision.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#145

Post by jfoster »

acdha wrote: post #119
chadash wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, to summarize: defaults are powerful, but advertising is more powerful.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#146

Post by init2null »

everfrustrated wrote: post #100
init2null wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This would be the same Firefox that changed my default search from Kagi to Google after a routine update?

I've never had that happen and wouldn't appreciate it. Corrupted configuration maybe?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#147

Post by mandevil »

CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #120
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. Mayb…

According to sworn testimony, Apple got over 20 billion dollars from Google in 2022.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-...

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#148

Post by shadowgovt »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #108
the_duke wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume OP meant in terms of money. Apple will not accept scraps (like tens of Millions) for the default search engine, after getting billions from Google. And no-one else will have the financial resources or be willing to burn these amounts (Microsoft) to offer similar numbers.

They don't need to offer similar numbers? If this ruling prohibits Google, the dominant search engine, from buying their Safari defaults, then Apple has a choice of: - Zero dollars - More than zero dollars from a smaller search competitor (Bing? New AI player?) I suspect Apple will want more than nothing. They also have quarterly financials to report.

Apple's biggest disincentive to continue the practice is that they themselves end up in the monopoly crosshairs from time-to-time, and it doesn't look good in terms of the DOJ targeting them if they continue a practice that was ruled monopolistic with another company. It isn't necessarily monopolistic if they do, but it raises suspicion.

(Personally, I wish monopoly law didn't seem so much like "vibes". It's really hard to answer whether the rule is fair when the same actions have different legal consequences depending on some vaguely-defined categories like "market sector").

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#149

Post by crazygringo »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #69
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.

For those disagreeing, the power of defaults is incredibly powerful , most users are blissfully unaware on how to, or why they might want to change them. Sure, plenty will change it back, but many won't. We've seen this play out with Apple Maps already — Something that may get Apple in trouble too. Remember that Google was paying Apple 20 BILLION for the privilege, and a key reason they had an antitrust case against…

No, defaults aren't incredibly powerful.

Chrome utterly dominates Edge on Windows, despite Edge being default.

How do you explain that?

The reality is that people know what they like, and most will switch to the thing they like most. Especially when it costs nothing.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#150

Post by philistine »

nabla9 wrote: post #121
cletus wrote: post #31

I expect this to be bad for everyone except Google if the ruling holds. Why? Mozilla and Apple will lose significant revenue from having Google as the default search engine and Google will no longer have to pay those billions. What's more, no one else can pay to be the default either (eg the short-lived Mozilla Bing deal). So what's going to happen? Most users will probably still use Google, nobody is getting paid an…

> So what's going to happen? Apple might make their own search engine. Apple has a team that's been creating a next-generation search engine codenamed Pegasus under John Giannandrea. They already have search engines for App Store, Maps, Apple TV and News and Spotlight. Apple web search development worked as bargaining chip in pricing negotiations with Google. Google paid them $20 billion per year to not compete as mu…

Yeah, the calculus is simple. You just lose 20 billion in potential pure profits. Google is paying you 34% of all search revenue originated by you. You have all the financial structure of your own search engine right there.

Just make your own damn search engine. You could even put Google's own ads on it to make some money that way.

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