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

Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 761 posts

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#251

Post by groovecoder »

knuckleheads wrote: post #37

> Mehta’s decision is expected to trigger a separate proceeding to determine what penalties Google will face – and the company is also likely to file an appeal As a Google antitrust watcher, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with what remedies the court will actually recommend to correct this monopoly. If you ask 20 experts, who all otherwise agree that Google is a monopoly, you might get 40 different answers ab…

Do you know which will happen first? Specifically, will the court put forth its remedies before the appeals begin? Or will those actions happen in parallel? Or what?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#252

Post by layer8 »

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…

Since you are also operating in the EU, it sounds like you could bring these issues up with the Commission.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#253

Post by coliveira »

pklausler wrote: post #239
tootie wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can envision a gnarly Venn diagram of search, ads, AI, analytics, Chrome. You could easily make this 5 separate companies (ads and analytics were acquired), but you probably just need to split it somewhere in the middle.

"easily?" Which one would own Platforms? Which one would own the google3 monorepo?

This is not the courts problem. Google needs to solve this before the split.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#254

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

This is a good start but all the tech giants need to broken up. Their size alone, and their access to capital, lets them do any number of anti competitive things. The deals/partnerships they make, the acquisitions, the bundling (like Teams and Office), loss leading, reliance on network effects, patent portfolios / giant legal teams, all of it. There isn’t really a great innovation landscape when these companies can just copy your idea and go scorched earth. We also need to regulate some of their products as general public utilities. For example there is no reason YouTube, a basic video hosting platform, should have content that only Google can train AIs on. I really hope Harris and Trump double down on Lina Khan’s direction and not succumb to corporate bribery…I mean lobbying.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#255

Post by shuntress »

knuckleheads wrote: post #37

> Mehta’s decision is expected to trigger a separate proceeding to determine what penalties Google will face – and the company is also likely to file an appeal As a Google antitrust watcher, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with what remedies the court will actually recommend to correct this monopoly. If you ask 20 experts, who all otherwise agree that Google is a monopoly, you might get 40 different answers ab…

The issue is that there is no direct fix.

It depends instead on the overall health of the Internet.

We are moving away from open commerce and into walled gardens. Once Google makes deals similar to their Reddit deal with Meta and Bytedance, it's going to become basically impossible for an upstart search engine to index anything competitively.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#256

Post by hrpnk »

jl6 wrote: post #237

It’s called out that Google pays Mozilla to have Google be the default search engine in Firefox. I worry this ruling will lead to Google ceasing those payments, effectively killing Mozilla as a going concern.

Maybe they will allow a level-playing field and allow bids like in a marketplace?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#257

Post by nox101 »

pradn wrote: post #162
larubbio wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this article from 2017 about the google snippet for how long it takes to caramelize an onion. https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-... The gist of the story is the author wrote an article debunking the recipe myth that you only need 5 minutes. In their tests it was 25 - 45. Google snippet would report "about 5 minutes" and link to the article as a reference. I think the information s…

It's certainly wrong, but its not out of place w/ the sheer number of recipes and blogs saying the same thing. It's parroting "common wisdom" which is wrong. It's not as egregious as some of the generative AI results spewed out by the lowest-cost-inference LLMs they hooked up to Google search a few months back.

It was still a common occurrence for google to display incorrect results that weren't common wisdom.

I had tons of such experiences. One I remember was searching for "healthy body weight for x of age y" where x was man,woman and y was my age. Google said 50lbs higher than I expected. I clicked through to the article. The article said the average was this high number, not a healthy weight.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#258

Post by dagmx »

jd3 wrote: post #173
WheatMillington wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you live in a tech bubble without telling me you live in a tech bubble.

I do deep research for a living and it's the only search engine I've tried that returns superior results over Google Search.

I don’t believe they’re questioning the quality of the product but rather the broad market knowledge of it.

It may be great or not, but it’s largely unknown outside of a tech bubble, and therefore is unlikely to be mentioned.

There should be absolutely no surprise there.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#259

Post by dijit »

causal wrote: post #34
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…

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.

if that’s true, expect another antitrust lawsuit soon after.

Using market dominance to enter other markets is the problem…

I say this as a heavy apple user myself btw.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#260

Post by austhrow743 »

bee_rider wrote: post #234
trentnix wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to figure it out.

Are we supposing that Google made their payment conditional on obfuscating the ability to switch search engines?

As long as it’s an ongoing relationship nothing needs to be said. Apple knows that if more users swap away from the default then the default setting is less valuable.
Post reply on HN