Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by alexey-salmin » Tue, Oct 03, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #212

alexey-salmin wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 happen…

> Many website owners do explicitly block Bing and all other crawling bots in their right minds. If by "many" you mean "less than 0.1%". Nearly all sites want traffic, which search engines provide. And you're moving the goalposts from the commenter I was responding to. Nobody disputes it takes a large capital investment to create an index in the first place. But this is the business world -- that's what investors are…

> Nearly all sites want traffic, which search engines provide.

You don't seem to grasp the problem of indexing. If search engine fetches 100M pages but only brings 100 users it's a net loss for the website because of server costs. This means that a marginal player cannot index a big website.

I'm aware of at least one website from top20 that actively blocked crawlers other than Google citing this as a reason. And this website has tons of high-quality ugc that ranks at the top on many nontrivial queries. A huge blow to search quality when absent.

Having said that, it's true that for big search engines the issue is mostly distribution. However for small players it's distribution AND indexing and in the end they have to resort to buying the search results from big players.

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

#232

Post by throwaway892238 » Tue, Oct 03, 2023, 11:00 PM UTC

jojobas wrote: post #191

throwaway892238 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the testimony is easily dismissable, then submitting it would be bad for their case. They wouldn't submit it as evidence unless it could be backed up or was reasonable. It's a serious mistake to underestimate testimony as somehow less useful in a case.

"He said, she said" is easy to dismiss. "He said, she presented a CCTV recording" is a different story. Hard/soft evidence are established legal terms.

The CCTV recording would be direct conclusive evidence. In the absence of such evidence, testimony that can't be disproven in cross and casts reasonable doubt will work just fine.

Even with a CCTV recording, you can use testimony to cast the CCTV recording in a light favorable to either the prosecution or defense. The circumstances surrounding evidence are weighed in order to come to a verdict or judgement.

Court cases are not about "who has the most incontrovertible proof", they are about convincing a judge or jury of an idea in order to get a specific outcome. Do not underestimate testimony (or really, any evidence that you think is inferior)

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

#233

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 4:51 AM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #74

lolinder wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an antitrust trial your competitors are by definition victims of the monopolistic behavior that is being alleged. Yes, there will be a conflict of interest in their testimony that needs to be accounted for, but it's not unreasonable for the victim in a court case to testify of the manner in which they feel victimized. Regarding your analogy, it would be more like if you're accused of stealing from your arch rival…

The victims are the public. Edit: to clarify, I believe this is the actual legal basis of anti monopoly legislation. Protection of the interests of the public, not competitor companies.

That is the Bork doctrine, which itself was radical revisionism of the actual original US antitrust statutes.

Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow's Chokepoint Capitalism goes into detail on this.

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

#234

Post by somsak2 » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 8:13 AM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #52

This is a prisoner dilemma situation. Both Microsoft and Google abuse their position, they could shut up about it, but instead it looks like Microsoft is defecting. I wonder if Google intends to counterattack. What Google does with Android, Microsoft does it with Windows, but worse.

how would google counterattack? this is a court case brought by the government.

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

#235

Post by specialist » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

Woshiwuja wrote: post #223

specialist wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we need more more specialized courts. My local jurisdiction has separate tracks for both vets and addicts. Because handling those cases in the "normal" court is inefficient and unproductive. (eg Most addicts need treatment, not jail time. Vets specific care, not jail time.) IIRC, there's a separate bankruptcy court. Sounds smart. I don't expect laypersons to understand finance and such. Methinks we need separ…

Is the jury decision final or can the judge ignore it? For example, why is the jury even involved in a murder trial?

To adjudicate.

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

#236

Post by cptskippy » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #144

jodrellblank wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google works better than DDG with natural language questions like that But if you're like me and never evolved from the oldschool search engines and still use the same format of listing key words, DDG is better than or equal to Google.

Well in some cases, like searching for an error message when troubleshooting, Google's NLP is a hindrance because it will alter or change your query in attempts to provide results.

So for example if I search for "Error 12345: Something bad happened", Google might remove the "12345" because it increases the number of results. They take the stance that more is better.