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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

#251

Post by nine_k »

Stratoscope wrote: post #201
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 s…

Tangentially, there are extensions, such as "Auto tab Discard", that unload tabs from memory, thus avoiding slowdown or memory exhaustion. It allows to keep bunches of tabs as contexts / bookmarks.

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

#252

Post by vayup »

> Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data?

The ruling lays out the definition for "Qualified competitors". Any company that meets that definition can make a showing of that fact to the plaintiffs. Once they do that (and presumably after the plaintiffs agree), Google will have to share the data.

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

#253

Post by whatevertrevor »

ezfe wrote: post #204
whatevertrevor wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I'm not referring to the specific context of this lawsuit, but the broader context in general.

Google is in multiple anti-competitive lawsuits, while Apple has the most walled garden of all gardens, protects it with a giant club and manages to get away without a scratch. For example Google got sued for anti-competitive practices in Android regarding third party stores, Apple gets no such lawsuit because they simply made it impossible.

Of course it's the laws to blame since they incentivize aggressively closed ecosystems from the get go, but it's odd that there isn't even a conversation about it regarding Apple.

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

#254

Post by matthewfcarlson »

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…

AI has a huge advantage over search. It gets to the question you want answered rather than adjacent search terms. I honestly trust the congealed LLM slop over the piecemeal SEO optimized AI slop for many questions.

How long is the rear seat room is the 2018 XX Yy car? What is the best hotel to stay at in this city? I’m interested in these things and not interested in these amenities. I have leftovers that I didn’t like much, here’s the recipe, what can I do with it? (it turned it into a lovely soup btw).

These are the types of questions many of us search and don’t want to wade through a small ocean of text to get the answer to. Many people just stick Reddit on the query for that reason

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

#255

Post by lazide »

skrtskrt wrote: post #214
rafram wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve noticed this in New York Times articles in the last couple years. Articles are heavily interlinked now - most “keyword” terms will link to a past article on the same topic - but the links rarely leave the Times’ site. The only exception is when they need to refer back to a prior story that they didn’t cover, but that another publication did. Sources are almost never linked; when they are, it’s to a PDF embed on…

It's also a political tool. About a year ago when the NYTimes wrote an article called liked "Who really gets to declare if there is famine in Gaza?", the conclusions of the article were that "well boy it sure is complicated but Gaza is not officially in famine". I found the conclusion and wording suspect. I went looking to see if they would like to the actual UN and World Food Program reports. The official conclusion…

The editorial board would probably prefer the NYTimes not get murdered by the current political climate - which of course is part of why the political climate is what it is.

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

#257

Post by travoc »

bawolff wrote: post #248
Hard_Space wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read right in the story. I presume that this falls under the same consideration as direct links to science papers in articles that are covering those releases. Far as I can tell, the central tactic for lowering bounce rate and increasing 'engagement' is…

I think one of the lessons of Wikipedia, is the more you link out the more they come back. People come to your site because it is useful. They are perfectly capable of leaving by themselves. They don't need a link to do so. Having links to relavent information that attracts readers back is well worth the cost of people following links out of your site.

Wikipedia eventually failed.

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

#258

Post by [deleted] »

rprend wrote: post #179
deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s biggest threat is their own deteriorating search results. Gen Z/alpha are interesting barometers, because many of them probably can’t remember a time when Google search didn’t suck. I would use Google if there was anything to find. At this point, just figure out if you’re looking for a reddit post, a Wikipedia article or a github repo and go to the source — or let Claude do it for you.

Google sucking isn’t google’s algorithm getting worse; it’s the internet getting more competitive and polluted. If you magically turned on the recommendation algorithm from 2010 but with today’s internet, the results would be far far worse.

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by ryandrake »

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…

Is it common to use Internet search like that??? You're typing in literal questions to a search box rather than keywords, the name of the site you're looking for, or topics you want to read about. Maybe I'm just too old school, from the time where internet searches were essentially keyword searches, but it would have never occurred to me to type an actual english question as a full sentence into a search box.

If that's how most people use search engines these days, then I guess the transition into "type a prompt" will be smoother than I would have thought.

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