Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 663 posts

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

#121

Post by solardev »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #80
solardev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the overall well-being of a society is supposedly more important than a few shareholders' wealth?

Probably about 60% of Americans are Google shareholders. Not saying we should favor share price over all else, but far more than a few wealthy shareholders will be the benefactors of this.

...owning some tiny percentage of stock, often not knowingly. Those same 60% would also benefit from having a less monopolistic Internet. Well, that's the theory at least.

I think a lot of regular users actually might prefer one company that makes all their choices for them so they don't have to deal with decision fatigue so often... the browser wars of the 90s and 2000s were not pretty, either...

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

#122

Post by jonas21 »

stackskipton wrote: post #109
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Under good Monopoly law, you would remedy the situation that got them to this point, not worry about their future. I mean but it appears to be being remedy'd by itself why would the court proscribe something for a problem that no longer exists?

Because it happened. If I was stealing cable but then all shows I wanted to watch switched to streaming, should I be let off the hook because situation remedy'd itself? I'd imagine most people would say no, the fact you can no longer do the crime in the future does not change the fact you did the crime in the past.

This is a civil case. The point is to remedy the situation, not to punish a crime.

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

#123

Post by IshKebab »

vkou wrote: post #42
edm0nd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just fed this to Claude >write me two paragraphs about how AI has grown in 2025. include a few typos to make it appear as if a human wrote them. its response: I can't write content with intentional typos to make it appear human-written, as this could be misleading about the source of the content. However, I'd be happy to write you two informative paragraphs about AI's growth in 2025!

Sure, public models won't do it for you, but private models that will be used for propaganda purposes will absolutely be built to be misleading and convincing.

Public models will do it for you too. I was going to demonstrate that removing "to make it appear as if a human wrote them." would probably fix that but I pasted the exact same prompt into Claude and it happily complied. The response contained a few convincing typos.

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

#124

Post by thayne »

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.

> “Google is permitted to pay browser developers, like Apple,” he said in the decision. However, the partner company must promote other search engines, offer a different option in various operating systems or in privacy mode, and are allowed to make changes to the default search settings annually, Mehta wrote.

From https://archive.is/GJWPP#selection-1579.0-1579.309

So I guess maybe Google can still pay to be the default, as long as there are more limits on the contract? But I suspect those limits are going to result in lower payments.

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

#125

Post by diamond559 »

motoxpro wrote: post #44

Thank goodness. Them spinning that out would have been a nightmare. Bad day to be Apple. Edit: I just checked the stock, I had no idea people priced in a split with that much certainty.

After hours moves can be dramatic, we'll see where it's at tomorrow w/ full volume. It's good news for sure but you can't tell me Wall Street actually thought they would be broken up or anything drastic.

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

#126

Post by solardev »

thayne wrote: post #97
solardev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally Mozilla would go bankrupt and a better-managed org could fork Firefox and pick up from there.

Who would this better managed org be? And how would they get the necessary funding?

Personally I'd vote for Apache, or a new FOSS group. They don't need all the funding that Mozilla currently gets (most of which isn't spent on Firefox anyway).

I'd rather see that effort than something like Ladybird, personally.

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

#127

Post by sothatsit »

Rohansi wrote: post #110
sothatsit wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools like GPT-5 Thinking are actually pretty great at linking you to primary sources. It has become my go-to search tool because even though it is slower, the results are better. Especially for things like finding documentation. I basically only use Google for "take me to this web page I already know exists" queries now, and maps.

> pretty great at linking you to primary sources Do you check all of the sources though? Those can be hallucinated and you may not notice unless you're always checking them. Or it could have misunderstood the source. It's easy to assume it's always accurate when it generally is. But it's not always.

I have noticed it hallucinating links when it can't find any relevant documentation at all, but otherwise it is pretty good. And yes, I do check them.

The type of search you are doing probably matters a lot here as well. I use it to find documentation for software I am already moderately familiar with, so noticing the hallucinations is not that difficult. Although, hallucinations are pretty rare for this type of "find documentation for XYZ thing in ABC software" query. Plus, it usually doesn't take very long to verify the information.

I did get caught once by it mentioning something was possible that wasn't, but out of probably thousands of queries I've done at this point, that's not so bad. Saying that, I definitely don't trust LLMs in any cases where information is subjective. But when you're just talking about fact search, hallucination rates are pretty low, at least for GPT-5 Thinking (although still non-zero). That said, I have also run into a number of problems where the documentation is out-of-date, but there's not much an LLM could do about that.

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

#128

Post by scarface_74 »

bediger4000 wrote: post #49
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.

I do not. I prefer to read the primary sources, LLM summaries are, after all, probabilistic, and based on syntax. I'm often looking for semantics, and an LLM really really is not going to give me that.

ChatGPT gives you web citations from real time web searches.

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

#129

Post by mrcwinn »

It’s remarkable that in certain instances, it’s wrong or even potentially dangerous to democracy to question institutions, and in other instances it’s okay to say a judge or a judicial system is corrupt and favoring big tech.

Anyone have a rubric I can follow?

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

#130

Post by scarface_74 »

coliveira wrote: post #64
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…

> but even Apple testified Of course, Apple didn't want to lose its part in the ilegal scheme.

Bing - you know the search engine by the struggling Trillion dollar market cap company - is free to match Google’s offer.
Post reply on HN