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

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

#341

Post by caminanteblanco »

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…

Have you used edge recently? It feels as bloated and ad-filled as yahoo news. I would take Chrome anyday, and I used to be a proud member of the edge fanclub.

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

#342

Post by RachelF »

How corrupt are judges in the USA?

Are their any measures that audit their finances or stop them or their relations from taking work with companies they have issued judgements on?

I'm not saying this is the case here, it is a general question.

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

#343

Post by girvo »

crazygringo wrote: post #165
lysace wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an outsider POV (holding Alphabet stock!): The US legal system seems quite broken.

Oh course it is, but is there another country that is any better at antitrust? I haven't seen it. And remembering that antitrust which goes too far is just as harmful as antitrust that is too weak.

They can’t be, because the FAANG (or whatever we call them today) companies are de facto a part of the US government (with the context of some other country trying to break them up)

Antitrust that is nonexistent is far more harmful.

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

#344

Post by glenstein »

ajross wrote: post #167
jonas21 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Do you not see ChatGPT and Claude as viable alternatives to search? This subthread is classic HN. Huge depth of replies all chiming in to state some form of the original prior: that "AI is a threat to search"... ... without even a nod to the fact that by far the best LLM-assisted search experience today is available for free at the Google prompt. And it's not even close, really. People are so set in their positions…

Like others have noted, I think it's far from obvious that Google's LLM prompt is the best experience in the space, I would say it's clearly not in the top tier and even that relatively speaking, I consider it bad compared to the best options.

Assuming we're talking about the AI generated blurbs at the top of search results, there are loads of problems. For one they frequently don't load at all. For another search is an awkward place for them to be. I interact with search differently than with a chat interface where you're embedding a query in a kind of conversational context such that both your query and the answer are rich in contextual meaning. With search I'm typically more fact finding and in a fight against Google's page rank optimizations to try and break through to get my information I need. In a search context AI prompts don't benefit from context rich prompts and aren't able to give context-rich answers and kind of give generic background that isn't necessarily what I asked for. To really benefit from the search prompts I would have to be using the search bar in a prompt way, which would likely degrade the search results. And generally this hybrid interaction is not very natural or easy to optimize, and we all know nobody is asking for it, it's just bolted on to neutralize the temptation to leave search behind in favor of an LLM chat.

And though less important, material design as applied to Google web sites in the browser is not good design, it's ugly and the wrong way to have a prompt interaction. This is also the case for Gemini from a web browser. Meanwhile GPT and Claude are a bit more comfortable with information density and are better visual and interactive experiences because of it.

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

#345

Post by dawnerd »

overfeed wrote: post #319
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it t…

> In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best? As a former Firebug fan: Chrome/Chromium has had superior browser dev-tools experience for over a decade now.

You should try out Firefox’s if you haven’t. It’s pretty good now and I haven’t found something that I’ve been like damn wish it was there. Lighthouse testing I guess?

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

#346

Post by ninkendo »

chneu wrote: post #313
ninkendo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, after you dismiss the pop-up telling you to become an ars subscriber. I’m only angry about this because I’ve been on ars since 2002, as a paid subscriber for most of that time, but I cancelled last year due to how much enshittification has begun to creep in. These popups remove any doubt about the decision at least. (I cancelled because I bought a product they gave a positive review for, only to find out they h…

Lol if you aren't blocking those popups by default. Lots of extensions will take care of that for ya.

No, my policy is to just not go to websites that don’t respect me.

It basically means I don’t use the web very much, but it’s probably better for me in the long run anyway, at least that’s how I see it.

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

#347

Post by balder1991 »

ryandrake wrote: post #260
IshKebab wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m quite sure it was common, because Google optimized for that over time, that’s why they switched to a semantic search instead of actual “contains” (remember they had a few questions and answers at the top way before ChatGPT).

Also if you type a few words on Google, it’ll “autocomplete” with the most common searches. Or you can just go to trends.google.com and explore search trends in real time.

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

#348

Post by nerpderp82 »

bc569a80a344f9c wrote: post #183
Workaccount2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never link outside your domain has been rule #1 of the ad-driven business for years now. Once users leave your page, they become exponentially less likely to load more ad-ridden pages from your website. Ironically this is also why there is so much existential fear about AI in the media. LLMs will do to them what they do to primary sources (and more likely just cut them out of the loop). This Google story will get a l…

> But it is easy to see a near future where an AI agent just retrieves and summarizes the case for you. And does a much better job too. I am significantly less confident that an LLM is going to be any good at putting a raw source like a court ruling PDF into context and adequately explain to readers why - and what details - of the decision matter, and what impact they will have. They can probably do an OK job summari…

> significantly less confident that an LLM is going to be any good at putting a raw source like a court ruling PDF into context and adequately explain to readers why

You should play with LLMs this week.

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

#349

Post by nsonha »

mig39 wrote: post #76
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.

Yeah, I don't think Google is the "exclusive" on either Apple OSes or Firefox. Just the default.

using that argument nothing is exclusive, no browser is hard coded to a single search engine

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

#350

Post by kelnos »

x0x0 wrote: post #237
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.

While I'd love to see google harshly penalized, nobody has proposed an answer that doesn't end with the destruction of essentially the world's only browser. Or it's sale to extremely sketchy people, which I guess also ends in destruction plus with OpenAI or whomever buys it hoovering up as much personal data as they can. So I get not liking this answer, but I haven't heard a better one.

Destroying Chrome would be a net positive for the world. Also it is not even remotely the "only browser".
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