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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

#261

Post by slaymaker1907 »

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…

I’m not really sure how you fix it. Considering it specifically calls out being the default option on iOS, we can assume that’s going to change. However, I could also see Chrome’s market dominance challenged. Maybe they’ll be forced to somehow split that off and Chrome will need to be funded through some combination of donations or selling its own ads/data.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#262

Post by warkdarrior »

hrpnk wrote: post #256
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?

Why would anyone bid for being the search engine in a browser with <4% market share and falling? Everybody will want to be on iPhone/Safari, Android/Chrome, and Windows/Chrome or Edge.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#263

Post by singron »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #218
jd3 wrote: post #99

A couple passages of note: > 112. The integration of generative AI is perhaps the clearest example of competition advancing search quality. Google accelerated and launched its public piloting of Bard one day before Microsoft announced BingChat, the integration of ChatGPT’s generative AI technology into Bing to deliver answers to queries. Id. at 8272:4-7 (Reid); id. at 2670:10–2671:9 (Parakhin). (describing BingChat).…

The idea that a 0.66% decline in revenue would be insignificant made me snort. Increasing revenue that much would make many careers - it would justify the existence of a substantial origination. That’s billions of dollars annually.

In a very competitive market, reducing quality slightly could drastically reduce revenue.

E.g. if there were two brands of apple at the grocery store and one started putting a tiny worm in each apple, you would expect the worm apples to lose nearly 100% of their revenue.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#264

Post by fallingknife »

currysausage wrote: post #187
Ferret7446 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Everybody who has read the contract. What are you alleging?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#265

Post by layer8 »

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.

Or maybe Mozilla will focus more on Firefox again.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#266

Post by jacooper »

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.

And nothing of value will be lost. Mozilla is not an alternative to Google, never was. It's more of a controlled opposition.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#267

Post by shuntress »

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…

> They simply have a better product

This is the key.

I'm not saying Google couldn't be better. But if it were possible to build a better index of the Internet, Google would do it.

Spam garbage overrunning the web is the underlying issue.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#268

Post by taeric »

o-o- wrote: post #246
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…

I always thought that the idea behind antitrust laws was that if an entity reaches total market dominance and uses that dominance to keep other out of the game, the entity should be split into competing entities. What I'm seeing however is nothing more than toothless, political pointing sticks. Both IBM, Microsoft and Google have clearly at some point obtained total domination of their markets. Consequently they've a…

Splitting companies that have physical presence is something that is a bit easier to do? That is, my gut would be that the examples you have in your mind for how companies that hit market dominance were split, are dominated by markets that required a bit more physical connection to the consumers they were serving.

You could also see easy ways to force a company that is using a dominant position in one industry to gain an upper hand in another to divest from that expansion.

Most of that falls apart with the nature of these markets, though?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#269

Post by magicalist »

acdha wrote: post #244
jfoster wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to summarize: defaults are powerful, but advertising is more powerful.

Not just advertising: Mozilla could not have put a “better in Firefox” button on Gmail or YouTube at any price, or forced Google to follow through on their promise around H.264, etc.

> Mozilla could not have put a “better in Firefox” button on Gmail or YouTube at any price

Microsoft is literally doing this, and yet...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/microsoft-edge-will-...

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#270

Post by otterley »

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…

Have you engaged Apple about registering your search engine? How's that process going?
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