Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones • Hacker News Board

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#301

Post by jsnell » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:49 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #127

jsnell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the only way to get on that list at all is to pay Apple (as revealed in this very case).

That's false. Google paid Apple to be the default. There is no reporting whatsoever that there is any other payment to be in the list of alternatives. There is no evidence that Microsoft pays Apple to include Bing in the list of alternatives. So nothing whatsoever like that was revealed in the case.

Dude, given you don't have any evidence to the contrary, the correct response here is "wow, I hadn't heard of that, please tell me more", rather than to assume that if you haven't heard of something, it must be false.

I don't know why there was no reporting of this, but it is what Gabriel Wineberg testified to under oath. See the trial transcripts, 2023-09-21, 1:36pm[0].

> Q. And since this agreement was signed in 2014, DuckDuckGo has been one of the built in options that a user can select as their search engine in Safari, right?

> A. Yes.

> Q. DuckDuckGo agreed, through this service integration agreement, to pay Apple a share of the revenue that DuckDuckGo receives from certain search traffic originating from Safari, right?

> A. Yes.

You see how that is DDG paying for being in the list of alternatives, right? And that it was revealed in this case?

[0] https://thecapitolforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023....

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#302

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:50 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#303

Post by fuzztester » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:50 PM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #70

hintymad wrote: post #47

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

I feel like the more blatant monopoly abuse by Google is how they use the Google search homepage to shill their other products. They effectively give themselves billions of dollars in free advertising

>They effectively give themselves billions of dollars in free advertising

how the heck is google's " 'giving' themselves something for free", considered wrong? even if it is billions of dollars?

in which alt world is it wrong of you to 'give' yourself a 100 dollars? or even billions? of your own money? or even billions worth of advertising space? both the giver and the receiver are you, right? you are not stealing anything from anyone.

then what the heck is the problem? maybe I am dumb, but I fail to see it.

in your own words, they are giving it to themselves, right?

they are not taking that money away from anyone else.

and note: I am not a Google shill. I criticized them, with some justifications that I gave, roughly about a day ago. check my comments. I try to be objective, though of course I may sometimes fail at that.

interested to hear what you have to say about all this.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#304

Post by bee_rider » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:51 PM UTC

mminer237 wrote: post #250

bee_rider wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even if not explicitly conditioned, which I don't believe came out as being the case in this case, there's still an inherent motivation. Google will pay more for a default on an OS where it's hard to switch the default than it will for a default where it's easy to switch away. Google might pay $20 billion for defaults on iOS as-is where 99% of people stick with Google, but if Apple started asking users if they were s…

It seems plausible. Mostly I think people should be explicit and clear about their accusations.

Something that doesn’t make a ton of sense to me in this theory is that, despite it being hard to add a new engine (which is not great), it is easy to switch away from Google on iOS. And the big search engines are in their pre-populated list. So it seems Google and Apple have engaged in a conspiracy to keep people from switching… just to the niche engines? That doesn’t make a ton of sense, right? Google is probably not more scared of Kagi than Bing.

My first guess is that Apple lived through the era of confused non-technical people adding a bunch of scam search engines and didn’t want a repeat of that.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#305

Post by w10-1 » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:52 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #106

hintymad wrote: post #47

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

This is explained in quite a bit of detail in the judge's ruling: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rZ1UlL.0... Starting about page 197. > Google understands there is no genuine competition for the defaults because it knows that its partners cannot afford to go elsewhere. Time and again, Google’s partners have concluded that it is financially infeasible to switch default GSEs or seek greater flexibi…

The court is plain silly if it's concluding that multi-billion-dollar deals create resistance or diminishes incentives. If anything, it creates incentives by proving that another search engine could make billions from smartphone fees alone.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#306

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:53 PM UTC

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #204

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...

If the rate Google pays is in some way set per usage/rev-share, then Google is indeed paying to make the setting difficult to change.

> If the rate Google pays is in some way set per usage/rev-share

Rule number 1 of commiting a crime, is don’t create evidence and then sign it yourself and send it to lawyers

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#307

Post by jsnell » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:53 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #227

jsnell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the only way to get on that list at all is to pay Apple (as revealed in this very case).

We don’t actually know that. I do sometimes wonder if that’s the case, but you shouldn’t state something as a fact without anything to back it up.

We actually know it. I told you how we know it, and you ignored it. If that wasn't enough for you, you could have asked for details rather than scold me about not providing tedious details on something that was public knowledge.

Anyway, I've provided said tedious details in a sibling comment.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#308

Post by coldpie » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:54 PM UTC

isomorphic wrote: post #292

akdor1154 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Firefox has its issues - they don't sync search settings along with everything else, and the reason is they're worried about interfering with paid search defaults on new installs.

The last time I checked (this may have changed), Firefox also tags the default search engines with URL query parameters indicating that the search came from Firefox. When I tried to change this it would not let me edit the default URLs. I had to add entirely-new versions of Google and DuckDuckGo, with custom names and stripped-down URLs in order to avoid the tagging. No doubt it is revenue-related, but it's also a pr…

> it's also a privacy problem.

Can you describe how? What information is that query parameter providing to an attacker that is not being provided in 50 other ways?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#309

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:54 PM UTC

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 .

When you are committing a crime, do you put it in writing, sign it and send it to a judge?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#310

Post by immibis » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:55 PM UTC

gregdoesit wrote: post #215

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…

I’m one of the paying Kagi customer who wants to make Kagi my default iOS search engine, but cannot. It’s maddening that even though I paid for both my iPhone / iPad and for Kagi, Apple for some reason makes it impossible for me to make this choice (that I already made by paying for Kagi). On Chrome at least this is possible, even if it’s additional steps (I have not used the extension though there.)

You chose to buy a platform with severe restrictions. It's not like we can blame monopoly power, because Android phones are easy to get. It was legitimately your choice - it seems like for some reason you wanted the restrictions.