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

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#351

Post by fragmede » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:33 PM UTC

warkdarrior wrote: post #276

mrguyorama wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And just like when we force AT&T to do a bunch of stuff, that incentive should be "encourage and fund a healthy and competitive market or be dismantled with prejudice". We made AT&T basically give away patents to anyone and open up their network to compatibility. People regularly talk about the innovations that came from the labs funded by that agreement. Then they turn around and dismiss government regulation of ind…

> People regularly talk about the innovations that came from the labs funded by that agreement. Do you have some examples?

UNIX and the C programming language were first released before the agreement but continued to be worked on by the labs after the agreement was signed and took force. C++ had it's first commercial release in 1985 (agreement took force in 1985). Fiber optic transmission which powers the Internet also came from those labs. DSL technology is another one you might have heard of.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#352

Post by uabstraction » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:35 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #149

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those disagreeing, the power of defaults is incredibly powerful , most users are blissfully unaware on how to, or why they might want to change them. Sure, plenty will change it back, but many won't. We've seen this play out with Apple Maps already — Something that may get Apple in trouble too. Remember that Google was paying Apple 20 BILLION for the privilege, and a key reason they had an antitrust case against…

No, defaults aren't incredibly powerful. Chrome utterly dominates Edge on Windows, despite Edge being default. How do you explain that? The reality is that people know what they like, and most will switch to the thing they like most. Especially when it costs nothing.

Google leverages their monopoly search position to push people towards Chrome, using messages that, to lay people, imply a lot of websites won't work correctly unless they install Chrome. This is the most charitable reading, assuming they don't deliberately impede compatibility with third party browsers.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#353

Post by greatgib » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

sida wrote: post #72

greatgib wrote: post #28

[flagged]

Not defending google but I don't believe that Google is sending the passwords anywhere This is how 1password does it for their watchtower feature (basiclaly same feature as your google example) https://support.1password.com/watchtower-privacy/ The way it works is that instead of sending your password to their server to check (which they do not do that). They download known a list of leaked password to local to check.

I think that you are too naively wrong on this.

The wording of Google is very very ambiguous there avoid to say that they are sending it but says that they are encrypting your credentials so that Google can't know it.

I have found the following page that gives more details:

https://community.spiceworks.com/t/is-google-chromes-passwor...

So if what it says is true, they don't exactly send your password, but still quite a lot of data about your credentials, in addition with the fact that you are trying to connect to a website based on the fact that you are doing the request at this exact moment.

Again, in theory I don't have a problem with them providing that kind of service. Just not to suddenly enable it for users in secret, hide very well the way to disable that, and especially when you asked Google to not manage your passwords.

A good question to ask is why the option to disable that is not located near the parameters for password and password management in the browser?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#354

Post by tracerbulletx » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:37 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.)

"for some reason" (the reason was 20 billion per year in cash)

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#355

Post by worksonmine » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:38 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #308

isomorphic wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Your question is assuming they're not already locking down as many of the 50 other ways as possible. Yes there are other bad things but that doesn't mean we should add #51 to that list.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#356

Post by j_maffe » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:38 PM UTC

w10-1 wrote: post #305

eli wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I highly encourage you to read about monopolies and their mechanisms. Competitors can be incentivized with a monopoly's profits all they want, the amount of money it'd take to enter the space is unfeasible.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#357

Post by ryeights » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:39 PM UTC

w10-1 wrote: post #305

eli wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>another search engine could make billions from smartphone fees alone.

I’m not following… the search engine would be the one paying the billions.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#358

Post by j_maffe » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:39 PM UTC

pnt12 wrote: post #323

moffkalast wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, someone tell the Justice Department that Nvidia exists.

Does Nvidia negotiate deals for all gaming + crypto + AI companies to use their cards, or do they just provide good hardware + software that consumers want to use? That would be the difference of an anti-competition monopoly vs just a monopoly.

Exactly. Google capitalized on its monopoly status. That's what matters.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#359

Post by j_maffe » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:40 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #74

causal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it creates a monopoly then no, it's not okay, no matter how normal.

Not necessarily - as it is written, the Sherman anti-trust act and all of the amendments distinguishes between "innocent" and "coercive" monopolies. But the definitions are very loose and hard to pin down. It's hard to even consistently distinguish a monopoly - is it market share? Earning power? Barriers to entry?

> But the definitions are very loose and hard to pin down.

So are a lot of laws and regulations. Doesn't make them any less valid.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#360

Post by greatgib » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:40 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #87

greatgib wrote: post #28

[flagged]

This isn't "weakly related". It's you trying to hijack a topic to discuss your totally unrelated topic. The result is that a substantial proportion of the discussion is now about whether your tangent has any merit or not.

It's not true, here on Android you just want to use a web browser, the one that is deeply linked in your phone, and they profit of their spot to insert dependencies to their service. Stealthily. Looks probably meaningless but just the fact that you don't have an obvious option to disable that in password management of the parameters should tell you something about it.

Also that even if you don't want your browser to sync with Google, to use Google search, your Chrome to use your Google account, there are still connections and data about you sent to Google...