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Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

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Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#431

Post by 10tacobytes »

lozenge wrote: post #329
everfrustrated wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only easy now because Microsoft had a lot of runs in with the US and EU regulators on this specific issue in the past.

And because MS wants to increase its userbase on IOS and macOS. Meanwhile Windows Start Menu is locked to Edge and Bing.

Correct. Minute userbase equals no leverage to extract tolls. If they ended up with the sort of dominant position they had at one point with IE on Mac they'd do this very thing and more.

There aren't many shenanigans that MS didn't pioneer in the 90s.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#432

Post by mmh0000 »

callalex wrote: post #380
immibis wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Android devices can be de-Googled. Also, let's not pretend Apple isn't spying on your iCloud account to protect the children.

Which store can I buy these de-google’d phones at with support? Also your second statement is just factually incorrect.

I don't know about "factually incorrect" I believe this[1] is what the OP was vaguely referring to.

Apple says they're not doing CSAM scanning anymore, but there's no way to verify they're being truthful. And given everything known about corporate America, it would be foolish to believe them.

[1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#433

Post by g15jv2dp »

j_maffe wrote: post #350
g15jv2dp wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is ever going to happen. Google, Apple etc are the US's international economic arm that ensures competing countries never develop a threatening IT sector. They're very happy to let any foreign startup be gobbled up, for example. Negative consequences on the domestic market are just an unfortunate byproduct.

I think in this case it could, simply because all of the competitors are American, none are foreign.

No, there are non-US competitors. Qwant, Mojeek, Seznam... You might reply, "but they're small" or "I haven't heard of them". Well, how do you think that came to be?

Besides, I'm replying to a comment about the wider trust case against google. It's not just about search engines.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#434

Post by dehrmann »

nabla9 wrote: post #121
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…

> So what's going to happen? Apple might make their own search engine. Apple has a team that's been creating a next-generation search engine codenamed Pegasus under John Giannandrea. They already have search engines for App Store, Maps, Apple TV and News and Spotlight. Apple web search development worked as bargaining chip in pricing negotiations with Google. Google paid them $20 billion per year to not compete as mu…

> [Apple] already have search engines for App Store, Maps, Apple TV and News and Spotlight.

This is completely different than a general-purpose search engine.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#435

Post by fallingknife »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #321
fallingknife wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody who has read the contract. What are you alleging?

Antitrust breach, market manipulation, collusion, wage suppression - basically the usual stuff they do. Oh, and when they agreed to suppress wages through an anti-poaching agreement, was that explicit in the contract? https://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/

WTF does that have to do with the default search agreement? You just listed a bunch of unrelated bad things companies did.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#436

Post by radley »

lovethevoid wrote: post #195
crazygringo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Defaults are incredibly powerful, Safari and Edge are the second and third most popular browsers next to Chrome. Chrome itself is a default on a lot of android devices. Speaking of android devices, Samsung Internet is 4th/5th most popular as it comes default on Samsung devices. To say defaults don't matter because Chrome is used on Windows is a bit absurd. Chrome in 2012-2014 was still trading blows with IE even afte…

I think you're confusing defaults with lock-in. Safari, Edge, and Chrome are native browsers tightly coupled to their operating systems. They can't be removed.

Further, anytime a user has to connect to an account for email, calendars, and other essentials, the OS will direct them through the native browser app. This means the so-called "popularity" reflects little more than the number of active devices: Android > iOS > Windows.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#437

Post by dehrmann »

prng2021 wrote: post #419
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…

The problem is that when you bundle products, you can maintain your market dominance even when competitors have a better product. Microsoft has shown this to be true countless times, most recently with MS Teams (vs Slack). Furthermore it doesn’t cut it to be marginally better than Google Search when they’re the default search engine. You have to completely blow them out of the water and for that you likely need long…

> it doesn’t cut it to be marginally better than Google Search when they’re the default search engine. You have to completely blow them out of the water.

More than that, it's the de facto default for anyone who can be bothered to change it. It also reminds me of the Dvorak keyboard. It's somewhat better than the competition, but not better enough to justify changing. Google's search competitors are trying, but they're not obviously much better.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#438

Post by omeid2 »

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…

> This is at least in keeping with most Linux experiences.

I guess, all that we get from Google, we deserve it.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#439

Post by dehrmann »

belorn wrote: post #425
legitster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People use Google because it's the default, not because they will go out of their way to keep using it. Is this actually true? Microsoft has bent over backwards trying making it inconvenient to get Chrome + Google on any new device. There's even the whole "Edge is the #1 browser to install Chrome" meme. Normies just really like Google.

How many stories have you seen with "I search for X, and all the top results are advertisements"? The latest that I recall that I saw on HN was "Now all results above the fold are ads". Its not uncommon to search for product X, only to find product Z being ranked above the official store of X. Google search is advertisement first, quality second. Bing may be equally crappy too. Microsoft "welcome to edge" page is a b…

> Its not uncommon to search for product X, only to find product Z being ranked above the official store of X.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action racketeering charge brought. And this is exactly how a protection racket works. You wouldn't want some other brand in the top position when they search for your brand term. You should just pay us to make sure that doesn't happen.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#440

Post by kaba0 »

immibis wrote: post #375
malfist wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But you do. You get to choose to buy into the other platform, which is significantly more open. If for some reason you choose not to, then you obviously don't value openness very much.

Yay, capitalism working as intended. The rational buyer can choose to get kicked in the head or in the groin! Vote with your money!

That’s why even Adam Smith himself said that it only works in well-defined markets! It’s the job of governments to define these, and phones are so essential to our lives that they should be thought of as roads, instead of as an average private company.

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