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Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

nytimes.com

121–130 of 236 posts

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#121

I am not following these testimonies in anti-trust cases where they have a competitor of Google testify against Google. Isn’t testifying all about presenting evidence? If I am accused of theft in a criminal court and my arch rival is brought for testimony against me, it doesn’t sound like a fair process to me. Of course if it’s a substantiated material it would make sense but otherwise it doesn’t just makes sense at…

"Google as a search engine is far better than Bing and that’s just a fact." Is it? I just tried a couple of searches on Bing. "Market Size of Apple Watch" Both Bing and Google didn't answer, providing market share instead. "novak djokovic age when he won first grand slam" both said 20 in an infobox on top. In my experience it's evened out, with Bing better at image and video search. OK just tried 3 more. Almost ident…

Random stuff:

>how many times russia surrendered moscow

Google provides links about the history of Russian wars.

Bing talks about the current Ukrainian affair.

Bing = garbage

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#122

I am not following these testimonies in anti-trust cases where they have a competitor of Google testify against Google. Isn’t testifying all about presenting evidence? If I am accused of theft in a criminal court and my arch rival is brought for testimony against me, it doesn’t sound like a fair process to me. Of course if it’s a substantiated material it would make sense but otherwise it doesn’t just makes sense at…

I am with you on this one. What the hell is this? Why is DOJ peddling for other trillion dollar companies? Microsft CEO is concerned for _Google's shareholders_? Are you serious? I don't believe a word of this guy. I'll just add, Bingbot has the same crawling opportunities as Googlebot. Nobody is stopping Bing from driving traffic to their website. It's also been 20+ years: Windows OS is constantly manipulating defau…

As I wrote in another comment, anti-trust is about protecting the consumer, the public.

This isn’t about the government trying to help Microsoft or represent their interest.

The whole point of anti-trust is that without competition prices go up and quality goes down.

For the consumer.

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#123

I am not following these testimonies in anti-trust cases where they have a competitor of Google testify against Google. Isn’t testifying all about presenting evidence? If I am accused of theft in a criminal court and my arch rival is brought for testimony against me, it doesn’t sound like a fair process to me. Of course if it’s a substantiated material it would make sense but otherwise it doesn’t just makes sense at…

> Google as a search engine is far better than Bing and that’s just a fact. I have been using DDG for several years now and honestly can't stand Google's results anymore. It seems like you can no longer search for an exact term and at every opportunity they try to slip in a merchant selling something as a result.

I have been using DDG for a few years, and most of the time end up doing !g to go to Google and get good answers. Nothing specific comes to mind right now, but the pattern is like this:

me: Who's that guy with a big hat?

DDG: showing results for bug hat IN UNITED KINGDOM: 1) Daily Mail woman wearing ladybird hat absolutely destroys woke liberal you won't believe. 2) Best hair cuts for guys who wear hats - generic-seo-spamsite.com. 3) Who's who in the world of business 2023 update. 4) Don't be "that guy"! tips for dating.

me: !g

Google: He's Crocodile Dundee.

me: how the heck did you know that.

Google isn't always that good, but DDG is all too often that bad. It's bad in a very Bing-way with search results that kinda touch on the right words but are low relevance and high SEO/spam. (And adamant that whatever I'm searching for - cat pictures, cities in California, Caesar Salad recipes, prices of things in America, I must want the results from UNITED KINGDOM because that's where I am. Which, incidentally, is a frustration of Google maps: "I wonder whats in California? Google maps, let me see the world..." "THIS IS YOUR HOUSE, THIS IS A ZOOMED IN MAP OF WHERE YOU LIVE, I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE". "Calm down, I know what things look like round here, I live here. I wanted to look somewhere else, like, obviously?").

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#124
post #10

> The image of the chief executive of a leading tech rival — Microsoft is one of the world’s biggest public companies, valued at $2.4 trillion — saying it could not easily fight Google was striking. Why is that striking? It's just a repeat of the playbook Microsoft used to great effect in the Activision trial. "Oh, woe is us, we've lost the console wars, we're in distant 3rd place and can't compete". They have absolu…

I don’t get why he saying “MS can’t compete” matters. It doesn’t mean it’s in any way true. MS has almost every opportunity that Google has when it comes to search. They fail to compete simply because they aren’t good enough. Google being default on Chrome the leading browser? Edge freaking comes with Windows and defaults to Bing. Google being default on iOS? MS has every opportunity to take Google's spot on iOS. The…

>Google being default on Chrome the leading browser?

This is why Microsoft won't win. Google obviously isn't going to not use their own search engine on their own browser, and that's totally fine. I'm not sure what Google can even do to reduce the market share of their search engine besides intentionally making it worse than Bing.

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#126
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how eager Americans are to break up the Big Tech companies that happen to be the only reason the US economy is not a complete dumpster fire. Look at GDP growth for the US vs. the Eurozone since 2008. The high level of integration, both horizontal and vertical, is what makes the US Big Tech companies so economically productive and valuable. But sure. Kill your software industry. Does the US even know how to…

> the only reason the US economy is not a complete dumpster fire. The US economy is a complete dumpster fire for those of us worth less than seven figures. Big tech monopolization does not strengthen our productive capacity, and breaking up the big tech companies won't weaken it. If anything, it will strengthen the economy by making it more viable to found a tech startup without the explicit goal of being bought out.…

> The US economy is a complete dumpster fire for those of us worth less than seven figures.

Not sure what you mean, you can invest in VTI, wait 30 years, and hit 7 figures real. The US economy is stronger than almost every other economy on the planet and is so even for the non-rich.

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moats are anticompetitive, that's the entire idea behind why founders want them. Who else would a moat keep away, customers? ;)

Customers are kept in by moats.

That's lock-in, moats are things that keep your competitors out. Source: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/economicmoat.asp

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past couple of years, many large tech companies developed a legal theory that scraping the public web for "internal" purposes is OK, and that any ToS-based or technical restrictions are just suggestions that they don't have to follow. These "internal" purposes included growing your social network, monitoring or reverse-engineering the algorithms of competing search engines, and now, it includes training ML. Wh…

Technology patents create a complex MAD situation. At the end of the day Alphabet will be paying tons of money to Microsoft who will pay it to Apple who will pay it to Samsung who will pay it to probably Nokia or Xerox or Nintendo or whatever. And this goes on for each and every company with wealth in these spaces.

They (BigCo) traditionally cross-license to benefit each other and lock out new entrants.

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#129
"Google has argued that the default positions are not overwhelmingly powerful and that users can switch to a new search engine if they like."

OK, then why pay Apple close to $20 billion annually to be the "default".

"Mr. Schmidtlein hammered Mr. Nadella with questions about instances in which Bing had been the default on mobile phones, only for users to switch back to Google."

If Google search is so great, and Apple needs to use it as a default, then shouldn't Apple be paying Google.

If users switch without Google paying to be default, then why pay.

Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

#130

"Google has argued that the default positions are not overwhelmingly powerful and that users can switch to a new search engine if they like." OK, then why pay Apple close to $20 billion annually to be the "default". "Mr. Schmidtlein hammered Mr. Nadella with questions about instances in which Bing had been the default on mobile phones, only for users to switch back to Google." If Google search is so great, and Apple…

For me, the fact that Google has >50% market share on Edge is proof that Google is right. Consumers clearly know how to change defaults when they want to.
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