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Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

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Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#181

Post by svnt »

xpe wrote: post #96

After the DoJ vs. Apple suit was mentioned in March, I did some research before about what the DoJ views unfavorably in this arena. My bullet points were useful to a lot of people here then, so perhaps it can help inform some of the conversation here too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39782290 After some research, the practices below may capture much (though not necessarily all) of what the Department of Justi…

Some of these are a bit different in scope to some of your points, but here a few things I believe aren't really covered:

Predatory hiring: Hiring key employees from competitors primarily to weaken them rather than to benefit from the employees' skills.

Patent abuse: Using a large portfolio of patents to stifle competition rather than to protect legitimate innovations.

Regulatory capture: Using influence to shape regulations in ways that benefit the monopolist and create barriers for potential competitors.

Killer acquisitions: Buying potential competitors primarily to eliminate future competition rather than to integrate their technology or talent.

Data hoarding: In digital markets, collecting and refusing to share data that is crucial for competitors to enter or compete effectively in the market.

Self-preferencing: In platform markets, giving preferential treatment to one's own products or services over those of competitors.

Vaporware: Announcing nonexistent or deliberately suboptimal products or features to discourage customers from switching to competitors' existing products.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#182

Post by hugh_kagi »

prophesi wrote: post #95
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: I use Kagi's extensions to maintain Kagi as default search across many devices and browsers. It's been seamless across Firefox/Waterfox/etc instances. IIRC, Kiwi and Brave were fairly agreeable (I avoid Chrome, Edge). Opera was a pain because Opera is a pain about everything. I appreciate the effort you+team have put into…

I did have issues on Linux regarding the extension working in private windows due to the official Firefox extension being out-of-date. Using the latest Github release of their extension fixed it, and they promptly submitted the new update for it to propagate through the extension store after a ticket on their feedback forum asked about it[0]. Github releases with .xpi's to install have been removed[1] which is odd bu…

We're definitely keeping the extensions going, just need to prioritise a few parts internally.

You can just git clone the new chrome extension and 'load unpacked' if that's of any use. It's extremely simple.

https://github.com/kagisearch/chrome_extension_basic

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#183

Post by asadotzler »

crazygringo wrote: post #142
ankit219 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see your reasoning. The court's argument is Google is maintaining this dominance via these default deals, not that it got there through them. Given the last 25 years of history, Google's product has gotten worse after these default deals. Previously it established the dominance because it found whatever a user searched for. Arguing otherwise just feels unrealistic. They never had any exclusive deals with an…

There are no exclusivity deals. These are deals around defaults, not exclusivity. Google never paid Apple to remove Bing from the list of choices. That's what an exclusivity deal would do. But it didn't happen, because this doesn't have anything to do with exclusivity.

It is exclusivity. I've been involved in some of these contracts going all the way back to the Summer of 2004 and they absolutely involve exclusivity. If Safari or Firefox product managers added a new search access point and their business people tried to sell default placement for that new search access point, they'd violate their contract. That's exclusivity. Opera used to do that kind of thing, they had three different search defaults for three different access points in the 2000s but by 2010 Google was no longer allowing that in their contracts because exclusivity.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#184

Post by yesco »

sva_ wrote: post #2

This could be bad for Mozilla?

While they are certainly dependent on Google funding, I believe this dependence is a net negative for the long term health of Firefox development. It implicitly skews the incentives of Mozilla leadership, making them comfortable with getting lots of money they didn't really work for and giving them some funny ideas on where their priorities lie.

Presumably a proper non profit would be more incentivized to stick to the projects ideals so they can brag about it in their fundraising activities (with perhaps a little too much of that money going into administrator pockets on the down low). Meanwhile Google's funding creates a status quo where it's pretty much fine with anything so long as Firefox continues to exist as a scarecrow to anti-trust suits. It effectively muscles out all the potential well meaning donors which could have helped steer things in a more positive direction, and acts like a sword of damocles floating over Mozilla's head, engorging the organization in addictive cash they don't deserve, and implicitly discouraging them from ever stepping on Google's toes lest the money hose gets turned off.

These days I'd call Firefox "good enough" from a privacy & open source perspective. It checks the boxes, and while I'm actually pretty open to the UI changes they have made over the years, I've gotten the sense that top Mozilla leadership don't really care about Firefox anymore, even distancing themself from it in certain respects. These days Firefox doesn't really seem to be going anywhere, it does the bare minimum by implementing web standards but all efforts to distinguish it from Chrome seem to be gradually extinguished. I wouldn't even be surprised at this point if they eventually turned off Mv2 support in a few years from now, despite all promises to the contrary, citing complexity or perhaps even "security" like Google's been doing as the reason.

If in the "worst" case Mozilla shutters down or abandons Firefox development after losing their money hose, perhaps the mindshare of the community they have been hoarding away all these years will coalesce around a healthier fork with an organization structure closer to the Linux foundation, maybe then Firefox would actually have a future again.

One can only dream.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#185

Post by greg_V »

cletus wrote: post #31

I expect this to be bad for everyone except Google if the ruling holds. Why? Mozilla and Apple will lose significant revenue from having Google as the default search engine and Google will no longer have to pay those billions. What's more, no one else can pay to be the default either (eg the short-lived Mozilla Bing deal). So what's going to happen? Most users will probably still use Google, nobody is getting paid an…

With how the market is looking as of today, the next YC batch might have a promising carrier pigeon startup and a ridesharing blip services that monetizes with ads!

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#186

Post by Ferret7446 »

chadash wrote: post #62
causal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. People use Google because it's the default, not because they will go out of their way to keep using it. The minute Apple changes the iPhone default, all but a few iPhone users stop using Google.

Chrome is not anyone's default browser, but it still has dominance. People will be bothered a little under some circumstances.

For factual correctness, I'll point out that Chrome is the default on (Pixel) Android and ChromeOS.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#187

Post by currysausage »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #177
hugh_kagi wrote: post #21

We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: 1. On iOS the list of allowed search engines is simply baked into OS, we have a fiddly extension that hooks outbound calls to /search and redirects them but I wish we didn't need to. 2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such a…

1. That sounds like an Apple issue, not a Google issue 2. That sounds perfectly reasonable. Google doesn't want people to bundle other things for users who want to install just a different default search (and not "your hotbar" like the Netscape days). 3. I'm not sure what you're talking about, is Chrome on Linux default search configured differently than Chrome on Windows?

> That sounds like an Apple issue

True. But guess who’s paying Apple good money in order to remain the default search engine. Who knows what else might be part of this deal?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#188

Post by srcreigh »

crazygringo wrote: post #125
arresin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20 billion in 2022 according to the verge via court docs: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/2/24147007/google-paid-apple...

No, absolutely not -- that says nothing whatsoever about making the default difficult to change. It's just about what the default is .

The “make search difficult to change” is more obviously anti trust worthy, and if they did make this deal I would not be surprised if they were careful to not write anything down.

(Not to mention google deleting chats against court orders)

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#189

Post by bryanrasmussen »

crazygringo wrote: post #125
arresin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20 billion in 2022 according to the verge via court docs: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/2/24147007/google-paid-apple...

No, absolutely not -- that says nothing whatsoever about making the default difficult to change. It's just about what the default is .

sure, but every change away from that default means having the default is that much less valuable. So it sort of seems like it might make financial sense not devoting dev time to making it easy to switch.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#190

Post by asadotzler »

dwighttk wrote: post #61
Tumblewood wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they do allow you to switch - maybe it refers to google paying to be the default search engine?

seems like these days most of the payment is 36% of ads in Google searches, but maybe there is also some money sent specifically for it to be the default.

They get paid a share of ad revenue their users generate if they make Google the default in all of their web search entry points. These are not separate. The deal is 1) "make Google the default" and then 2) "there's a revenue share". No 1 then no 2.
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