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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

#391

Post by ajross »

epictluren wrote: post #326
cletus wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We forget that there was at least a decade of several "Google killers" a year [1]. It's a graveyeard. That was 2009 too. The volume slowed down but people are still trying (and failing) [2]. Microsoft has of course tried but Bing is only really propped up by Microsoft's deep pockets. It's not a profitable enterprise (AFAIK). And this is with Microsoft using every trick they can to bypass EU and US consent decrees and…

> [Bing]'s not a profitable enterprise It makes $10+B per year, pennies next to Google of course, but non-negligible. https://backlinko.com/bing-users#

That's a revenue number, not profit. Also the linked article says $6.24B AFAICT.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#392

Post by daedrdev »

larubbio wrote: post #143
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).…

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…

I think I actually ran into that exact search issue and was confused why my onions were not cooking well, lmao

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#395

Post by beej71 »

diogofranco wrote: post #161
m_ke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gives people room to try, especially now with new entrants like perplexity that might offer better results. Google search went to shit and ruined most of the web with it, by creating an SEO industry that's 100% focused on optimizing for their ranking signals.

> by creating an SEO industry that's 100% focused on optimizing for their ranking signals. The SEO industry will optimize towards ranking on whatever search engine people are using

This is why my dream search engine downranks pages with advertising on them. Optimize away! :)

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#396

Post by [deleted] »

singron wrote: post #263
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#397

Post by greycol »

xnx wrote: post #378

I still struggle to see the harm, or what a remedy would aim to fix. Of all the possible antitrust fights to pick (Comcast, Apple, Meta, etc.), I'm not sure this would even make my top 10. Google search is still the best out there. If you want to use a another web search, the switching cost is lower than almost any other product/service (e.g. compared to OS, cell phone network, ISP, etc.). Competitors like Microsoft,…

>>I still struggle to see the harm

>>Google search is still the best out there

The second statement coupled with the fact that google search has declined in quality due to choices by google (not just the admitidely difficult SEO adversaries) is the harm. Google is able to purposefully degrade it's experience because of the lack of competition, and demonstratably has (while still, arguably, being viewed as the best).

I'm with you on the remedies, I can't think of any specific to paying to be the default that don't have multiple negative knock on effects (I'm particuarly worried about what this means for Mozzila funding myself). Still you don't skip chemotherapy just because it's more acute in the short term.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#398

Post by mh- »

fragmede wrote: post #390
rkagerer wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile Windows Start Menu is locked to Edge and Bing Why does software suck these days.

Because the money for it is stuck in weird places. I can't write some small bit of software and just sell that for a decent price. People don't pay for software these days, so my best hope is to give it away for free and then running ads. And then, if it's any good, someone will come by and make an open source clone and give that away for free, tanking sales/ad revenue. So the money in writing software is by working…

This is really the most concise (and depressing) explanation of the situation I've seen.

When I was a kid, I dreamt of being a solo programmer that had a few successful desktop programs. Think mIRC, WinAmp, WinRar. Despite the audience for that being >100x larger than it was in the 90s, I'd bet the number of solo shops doing that successfully isn't a whole lot larger than it was then.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#399

Post by kemiller »

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 like your product but find the inability to set it as default very aggravating. Your plugin has improved a lot but it’s still janky. I blame Apple as much as Google. They could choose to align with users but instead they made Safari a profit center with Google’s collusion.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#400

Post by kemiller »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #279
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.)

> I’m one of the paying Kagi customer who wants to make Kagi my default iOS search engine, but cannot FYI, there is a workaround [1]. It's trash that Apple makes us do this. But you can . Granted, it nudged me to switch to Orion as my main desktop browser. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.h...

How’s the stability on Orion lately? I want to use it be plugin compatible was too dicey.
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