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Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

cnbc.com

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Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#201

Post by Stratoscope »

Hansenq wrote: post #31

This seems like a very sensible and logical conclusion by the judge to me. An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The b…

How is Chrome a better browser than Edge? They are both just custom builds of the underlying Chromium browser.

I switched from Chrome to Edge on my Windows machine a couple of months ago for the embarrassing reason that I had so many tabs open that Chrome slowed down to a crawl.

(Yes, I'm one of those lazy people who uses old tabs as if they were bookmarks.)

Of course I eventually opened enough tabs in Edge that it slowed down too! So I finally bit the bullet and started closing tabs in both browsers.

Otherwise, I hardly notice any difference between the two.

There are bigger differences on my Android device. Edge supports extensions! (Yay!) But it lacks Chrome's "tab group carousel" at the bottom of the screen. Instead, you have to tap an icon to open the full-page list of tab groups, then tap the tab group you already had open, and finally tap the tab you want from this tab group. (Boo!)

So I went back to Chrome on mobile but still use Edge on desktop.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#202

Post by neoromantique »

Ray20 wrote: post #141
neoromantique wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty with very low quality of life and very wealthy shareholders.

This is disgusting. But I think this problem should be solved at the level of countries, not individuals. Because individuals are always looking for a way to avoid taxes, they can disappear as a class, and there is not that much money if it is fairly redistributed among everyone. In fairness, EVERY American should be taxed an additional 80-90% in favor of poorer countries. How can a country with a minimum wage of $10…

There has never been any fairness in the world :shrug:

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#203

Post by crazygringo »

benoau wrote: post #182
crazygringo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think Microsoft , a company worth $3.8 trillion , doesn't have enough money to pay for placement?

Bing by itself reportedly doesn't even gross that much, overall $20 billion represents about a quarter of Microsoft's entire annual profit. Microsoft already decided it wasn't viable to spend that much to compete, and the rest of the search market (including AI) need not apply.

But the point is that's Microsoft's choice.

They have the money to compete and jumpstart Bing with default placements and reap the ad dollars and build Bing into a serious competitor.

If they don't want to compete because they think investing money in Xbox will have a higher return, that's their decision (and maybe their mistake). It's not Google's fault.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#204

Post by ezfe »

whatevertrevor wrote: post #99
paxys wrote: post #61

> The company can make payments to preload products, but it cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision stated. How is this relevant? Apple is the one selling exclusive access to search on iPhone, not Google.

Yeah, that's an interesting side of this. How is Apple not under any fire for basically weaponizing something as basic as internet search on their platform? If we think this practice is anti-competitive shouldn't we also make it illegal for the platforms to do this? It's a little bit like sentencing the sex-worker to jail but letting the pimp go scot free.

Because anti-competitive behavior in this context cannot be performed by someone without a monopoly.

Apple cannot be anti-competitive in the search space unless you show they have a monopoly on browser apps (which you could, but would probably fail based on how the Apple lawsuit is going).

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#205

Post by makeitdouble »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #10

Firefox can still get money, and maybe Apple too. The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity. Google also must share search data with competitors, but it's not totally clear what this is. The ruling mentions helping other engines with "long tail" queries. All in all this seems like a pretty mild ruling, and an appeal can generally only help Google from a not to bad ruling at this point.

Google being allowed to pay Firefox or Apple whatever they want makes the exclusivity restriction pretty moot.

If Google pays Apple 3x more than OpenAI and Apple sets Google as default "because of market research, not because of the money", we're firmly in the status quo. So much as Google can modulate how much it pays Apple depending on how friendly they've been to Google in the last round.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#206

Post by makeitdouble »

thayne wrote: post #78
LeoPanthera wrote: post #9

The BBC is reporting the exact opposite of this headline. "It's also free to keep making payments to partners such as Apple, to secure placement of its browser - another closely watched and contentious part of the case." https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t Edit: Even the CNBC body text contradicts its own headline. The confusion seems to be what "exclusive" means. "The company can make payments to preload prod…

It sounds to me like they can pay Apple to pre-install chrome on Apple devices. But they can't pay Apple or Mozilla to be the default search engine in their browsers (Safari and Firefox). And the latter is going to be pretty bad for Mozilla.

So they have to change the item name in their yearly check to Apple and Mozilla, and let them do the rest on their own ?

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#207

Post by CamperBob2 »

IshKebab wrote: post #116
stackskipton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like judge was looking for any excuse not to apply harsh penalty and since Google brought up AI as competitor, the judge accepted it as acceptable excuse for very minor penalty.

AI is a competitor. You know how StackOverflow is dead because AI provided an alternative? That's happening in search too. You might think "but ChatGPT isn't a search engine", and that's true. It can't handle all queries you might use a search engine for, e.g. if you want to find a particular website. But there are many many queries that it can handle. Here's just a few from my recent history: * How do I load a share…

StackOverflow is dead because its rules are nonsensical and many of its users are dicks.

It's going to be a real problem going forward, because if AI hadn't killed them something else would have, and now it's questionable whether that "something else" will ever emerge. The need for something like SO is never going to go away as long as new technologies, algorithms, languages and libraries continue to be created.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#208

Post by george_perez »

azemetre wrote: post #151
dragonwriter wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the actual remedy is not yet decided in detail (though sharing some search data is going to be part of it), this ruling was basically setting some parameters of what is on and off the table and then ordering the parties to meet on details before further court action.

Unless the remedy is that Google's online ads has to be spun out into a separate company away from their control, I don't see how any remedy can be effective. What can honestly be done to punish them? I mean punish too, certain entities of Google should not exist.

That's actually a separate case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#209

Post by adam_arthur »

jonas21 wrote: post #46
fidotron wrote: post #19

This is an astonishing victory for Google, they must be very happy about it. They get basically everything they want (keeping it all in the tent), plus a negotiating position on search deals where they can refuse something because they can't do it now. Quite why the judge is so concerned about the rise of AI factoring in here is beyond me. It's fundamentally an anticompetitive decision.

Do you not see ChatGPT and Claude as viable alternatives to search? They've certainly replaced a fair chunk of my queries.

Google Search has AI responses at the top of the fold.

Eventually those answers will be sufficient for most and give people no reason to move to alternatives.

Allowing them to pay to be default seems to mostly guarantee this outcome

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#210

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

supernova87a wrote: post #56

By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... ) It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the rul…

"Why is it up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?"

The data sharing remedy and other remedies were not the judge's proposals. They were proposed by the parties.

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