Seems like the responses ignore that fact that it’s not illegal to have a monopoly. It’s illegal to unfairly use your monopoly to prevent competition. That’s what this is about.
Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
131–140 of 236 posts
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#132Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#133One way Google maintains their monopoly is that many websites block all bots except for the Google indexing bot. This makes it literally impossible for anyone to make a competing search engine because millions of doors are slammed in their face. There is no practical way to negotiate access at this scale either leaving no options for small startups — e.g.: AI-based search! One possible anti-monopoly measure would be…
That's not true. First of all, no website owner in their right mind is going to block Bing. Second of all, they have to detect that you're a bot in the first place. Most sites don't employ sophisticated anti-bot technology. Simply running a headless browser (which you need to do anyways for JavaScript) with a common user-agent, and slow enough browsing not to be rate-limited, will let you index 99.9+% of sites.
Many website owners do explicitly block Bing and all other crawling bots in their right minds.
If you have a wide low-traffic website then bots of all sorts will make a majority of your traffic and subsequently a majority of your AWS costs.
If you see money spent on search engine X indexing and very few users incoming from that search engine it's a rational decision to block it. Or ask for money (that actually happens).
Overall it's a systematic problem with building a search competitor: 1) Your costs are largely proportional to the size of your index 2) Your income is proportional to your userbase 3) You need a huge index to be competitive even if you don't have any users yet
So, very hard to bootstrap even when you exclude all other advantages of the existing monopoly like browser-based distribution.
Microsoft has the money to beat the indexing problem so they argue about distribution in court but all the small players can't even get to that level of failure.
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#134"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.
If they only have 50%+ market share, vs the 90%+ they have on android for instance, I'd argue it's a sign the defaults have a serious impact.
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#135But actually what we want from "search" providers ? What "search" actually is ?? Some OS that monopoly is impossible to avoid ?? Or hardware you can't don't have because your own government or law require it ? Or other dead end, shorter or longer ?
Last week I installed some Debian and Duck was default in FF... What a unpleasant experience... 90's Yahoo catalog or pre-google "search engines" - all was working as expected. Only with Bing and that so called "privacy preserving" clone you are shocked that trivial things to find/match are absent in results...
So Google search is "ubiquitous", simple the best. But is's trivial to avoid ! Not like Microsoft monopoly on OS-like trap. Or Android :)
I personally would pay for good search app, offline, open-source, with _data_ updates. Or probably app is not needed here, just [pretty legal] data to buy. But Unity had some troubles just previous week... Free stuff is hard to match :>
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#136I 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.
It was better than Bing...
Two things:
1) HN and elsewhere constantly point out how bad Google Search is lately 2) The introduction of ChatGPT and DALL-E powered Bing into Edge, the new Windows Sidebar and elsewhere has changed the game.
The new Windows 11 Bing/ChatGPT/DALL-E sidebar is so good that my hot-take is that it's going to put a dent into Google's Search dominance at a depth that Bing and others never have.
My final wild out-there prediction: MS ditch the Bing brand and pivot to using Copilot as their search and discovery brand.
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I know it probably gets tiring to hear it on every thread about search, but Kagi gets just as good results for that hat query, and tends to do better than Google on more serious work. Pinning and blocking domains is a huge deal—it's got a great list of blocked domains natively, and after just a little bit of customization my SEO spam has basically disappeared.
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If they only have 50%+ market share, vs the 90%+ they have on android for instance, I'd argue it's a sign the defaults have a serious impact.
Defaults definitely matter (that's why Google pays Apple for default status), but legally what matters is if the contracts are exclusive. That's what this fight over the "power of defaults" is about. Microsoft and the government argue that they are exclusive because, while consumers can change the default, they don't in practice.
But the fact that consumers clearly know how to change the default on Edge fatally undercuts that argument. And if the contracts with Apple aren't exclusive, Google can't be liable for them under the antitrust laws.
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#139"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…
If they were "overwhelmingly" powerful, they'd pay ten times more :)
Re: Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous
#140I, for one, find myself from time to time wondering, what are these subpar search results I'm getting? And then realize I haven't yet set Kagi as default search engine on this device yet.