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Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

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Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#411

Post by safety1st »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #117
lysace wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an outsider POV (holding Alphabet stock!): The US legal system seems quite broken.

It is. Enforcement is incredibly slow (all of the monopolies Google has been ruled against for were obvious in 2014, with appeals they will not face penalties until at least 2030 for most of it), and we have a dictator running the country who will create or erase any case with the right amount of fealty payments. (Google's million to the inauguration fund just... wasn't enough.)

I mean you can't blame Trump for this one. Trump 1's DoJ initiated this case. Trump 2's DoJ asked for structural remedies e.g. breaking up Google (can't remember if the Biden DoJ was the first to talk about breakup, they probably were, but Trump DoJ carried on with it).

The news of the day is that the JUDGE told both Democrats and Republicans, as well as a supermajority of the American public, no you can't have what you want. Even though Google is guilty, you don't get it. Instead, corporate power will win again.

Imagine an alternate American history where the judge decided not to break up Standard Oil. I think it's Marc Andreesen who's literally made the comparison that data is the modern day oil. We are about to get that alternate history where the corporate robber barons win and everyone else loses. Mehta sealed the deal.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#412

Post by matwood »

Rohansi wrote: post #110
sothatsit wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools like GPT-5 Thinking are actually pretty great at linking you to primary sources. It has become my go-to search tool because even though it is slower, the results are better. Especially for things like finding documentation. I basically only use Google for "take me to this web page I already know exists" queries now, and maps.

> pretty great at linking you to primary sources Do you check all of the sources though? Those can be hallucinated and you may not notice unless you're always checking them. Or it could have misunderstood the source. It's easy to assume it's always accurate when it generally is. But it's not always.

> It's easy to assume it's always accurate when it generally is. But it's not always.

So like a lot of the internet? I don’t really understand this idea that LLMs have to be right 100% of the time to be useful. Very little of the web currently meets that standard and society uses it every day.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#413

Post by vasco »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #382
VoidWhisperer wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that this is less an example of why linking out may be bad for engagement and more an example of google abusing its intermediary/market position to keep users on their own pages longer

I'd argue that a user not having to click through is clearly a better result for the user, and that alone would be sufficient motivation to do it. In terms of a single search, I don't think Google really benefits from preventing a click-through - the journey is over once the user has their information. If anything, making them click through to an ad-infested page would probably get a few fractions of a cent extra giv…

That'd be all fine if google produced that content, but since it doesn't, once they kill off the website, what happens to the quality of their snippets? Then the user has only shitty snippets that are out of date.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#414

Post by ulfw »

snihalani wrote: post #317
mrcwinn wrote: post #245

A loser in this is Perplexity. I’ve never understood the thesis of Apple purchasing them: whether or not you enjoy their product, I see nothing defensible or interesting and suspect they’re among the most overvalued AI startup. Nonetheless, I’d bet Apple will do more of what’s worked: partner with Google to solve something core that they’re not great at. I’d take a deeply integrated Gemini on the iPhone over Siri any…

why couldn't perplexity fork firefox/chromium and make it chromy?

Why would anybody use it and what for?

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#415

Post by zargon »

rs186 wrote: post #304
ajross wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you not see ChatGPT and Claude as viable alternatives to search? This subthread is classic HN. Huge depth of replies all chiming in to state some form of the original prior: that "AI is a threat to search"... ... without even a nod to the fact that by far the best LLM-assisted search experience today is available for free at the Google prompt. And it's not even close, really. People are so set in their positions…

I have seen way more hallucination from "AI overview" than ChatGPT. You are biased, sure, but it seems that you haven't even used ChatGPT or other similar products enough to even attempt to give a fair assessment.

I'm not sure I have ever seen "AI overview" not hallucinate. Granted, I only end up at google on other people's computers or on some fresh install where I haven't configured search yet.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#416

Post by brookst »

balder1991 wrote: post #356
jeffhwang wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally have moved almost all my Stack Overflow usage to LLMs. Just wondering if other folks have done the same…

The thing is, a lot of questions user have aren’t unique, maybe just with a slightly different context and LLMs are good at adapting answers to other contexts. But it only works for stuff that is already consolidated. For example, something like a new version of a language will certainly spark new questions that can only be discussed with other programmers.

> something like a new version of a language will certainly spark new questions that can only be discussed with other programmers.

I'm not sure this is true? Most languages have fairly open development processes, so discussions about the changes are likely indexed in the web search tools LLMs use, if not in the training data itself. And LLMs are very good at extrapolating.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#417

Post by Natsu »

supernova87a wrote: post #56

By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... ) It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the rul…

I would go so far as to inherently mistrust any legal reporting that does not link to the ruling or trial footage at this point. I've watched multiple public trials and seen reporting that simply did not reflect what actually went on.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#418

Post by brookst »

ajross wrote: post #167
jonas21 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not see ChatGPT and Claude as viable alternatives to search? They've certainly replaced a fair chunk of my queries.

> Do you not see ChatGPT and Claude as viable alternatives to search? This subthread is classic HN. Huge depth of replies all chiming in to state some form of the original prior: that "AI is a threat to search"... ... without even a nod to the fact that by far the best LLM-assisted search experience today is available for free at the Google prompt. And it's not even close, really. People are so set in their positions…

If Google went all-in on the AI overview and removed search results and invested more heavily in compute, it could be pretty good.

But as it stands, it's a terrible user experience. It's ugly, the page remains incredibly busy and distracting, and it is wrong far more often than ChatGPT (presumably because of inference cost at that scale).

It might be good enough to slow the bleeding and keep less demanding users on SERP, but it is not good enough to compete for new users.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#419

Post by baq »

ninkendo wrote: post #346
chneu wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol if you aren't blocking those popups by default. Lots of extensions will take care of that for ya.

No, my policy is to just not go to websites that don’t respect me. It basically means I don’t use the web very much, but it’s probably better for me in the long run anyway, at least that’s how I see it.

I started buying paper journals, dismissing ads by flipping pages is much better UX

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#420

Post by trymas »

Hansenq wrote: post #31

This seems like a very sensible and logical conclusion by the judge to me. An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The b…

Regarding Chrome - don’t forget Google used it’s market leading position of their products to block other platforms/browsers (from the top of my head - Windows Phone). Or develop their web apps (or browser APIs) deliberately in such a way that they work best only on Chrome.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=windows+phone+google

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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