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Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

bloomberg.com

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Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#361

Post by shuntress »

j_maffe wrote: post #336
shuntress wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> But if it were possible to build a better index of the Internet, Google would do it. Not when it's detrimental to their sources of income, i.e. Ad Sense.

I think it's reasonable to assume that google would favor the Ad Sense customer given two results that are otherwise of equal or near equal quality but the notion that google would exclude good results from domains that do not serve Ad Sense ads is absurd.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#362

Post by threatofrain »

layer8 wrote: post #265
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.

Or maybe based on cold economic merits, Firefox simply doesn't deserve to exist.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#363

Post by j_maffe »

fuzztester wrote: post #303
ren_engineer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

They're giving themselves money by abusing their monopoly status. Sure, in a totally free market, it looks innocent. There are laws against this because monopolies are damaging to any market it's in and ends up hurting the end user.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#364

Post by mandevil »

matwood wrote: post #163
mandevil wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to sworn testimony, Apple got over 20 billion dollars from Google in 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-...

That's to have Google be default. It doesn't explain why it's impossible to add others to the list.

Under these circumstances, it is appropriate to ask who is the customer. Then presume that the company is trying its best to make the customer happy.

Apple has clearly defined that the customer for the "default search engine selection" option is Google and not the users. There is obviously some mediation by regulators in Europe and elsewhere (hence Google's major competitors being included on the list), but the customer is Google. I think that from that fact flows two further inferences: A) the customer might not want to write down everything, or even communicate in any non-deniable way, all of their preferences (due to those regulators), but can presume that Apple understands their preferences B) The customer is happy to the tune of 20 billion dollars with the current set-up.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#365

Post by octodog »

gessha wrote: post #79
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…

> Google didn't buy its way into dominance annd maintain their dominance through exclusivity deals That’s just a waste of money then. Why are they paying bilious to Mozilla and Apple? Because they’re good buddies? Wouldn’t people use Google anyway? Just imagine the Google CFO looking through the finance spreadsheets last year and instead of going “let’s layoff a whole bunch of people” they go with “let’s stop paying…

Not necessarily. At least some of the benefit for Google is that they prevent a competitor from paying to be the default search.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#366

Post by seoulmetro »

otterley wrote: post #272
singron wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's an interesting example of a "slight" quality reduction. In apples, a slight quality reduction might be a bit of discoloration or a small bruise. The presence of a worm, on the other hand, causes the apple to be perceived as unsafe or inedible.

Yeah, a worm in Apple the company would be their phones blowing up randomly.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#367

Post by j_maffe »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #207

It's Apple who is using their market power in smartphones to dominate search. Apple makes 10's of billions a year out of search. In the search business, they are a distributor. Google doesn't want to pay this money, they are forced to.

No body is forced to do anything. Google can just not pay that money and lose that share of the market. They're not doing that because they want to preserve their monopoly status.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#368

Post by malfist »

immibis wrote: post #310
gregdoesit wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the power of monopoly, or in this case duopoly. You don't get to choose to not buy into the platform

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#369

Post by j_maffe »

shuntress wrote: post #361
j_maffe wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if it were possible to build a better index of the Internet, Google would do it. Not when it's detrimental to their sources of income, i.e. Ad Sense.

I think it's reasonable to assume that google would favor the Ad Sense customer given two results that are otherwise of equal or near equal quality but the notion that google would exclude good results from domains that do not serve Ad Sense ads is absurd.

Why is it absurd? If it's still considered the go-to option by most users, they could afford the slightly worse quality for the extra revenue, no? That's the end result of monopolies, the provider starts to compromise on the service to capitalize on the user's lack of viable options.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#370

Post by layer8 »

threatofrain wrote: post #362
layer8 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe Mozilla will focus more on Firefox again.

Or maybe based on cold economic merits, Firefox simply doesn't deserve to exist.

Maybe, but a lot of software exists regardless of cold economic merits, because they have merits for their users.
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