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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

#441

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.

I have a Pixel with Graphene on it. It's not de-Googled though, because Google successfully entrenched their services as a dependency of the majority of apps on the platform. Graphene makes yet another compromise by installing Play Services in a sandbox, which still lets it spy on you (but less) in exchange for enabling most (not all) Android apps to run. You can't really escape the compromises if you want a capable…

Big fan of Graphene! The balance I personally prefer is to use Shelter to create a "work profile" and install Play Services in there along with any apps that must have Play Services. Then, I only enable the work profile when I need to use those apps.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#443
post #203
post #121

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> 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…

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…

The big difference is that at that point of time Google search used to be really good but now Google search is really bad so if there is a chance for another competitor in the market, that time is now.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume OP meant in terms of money. Apple will not accept scraps (like tens of Millions) for the default search engine, after getting billions from Google. And no-one else will have the financial resources or be willing to burn these amounts (Microsoft) to offer similar numbers.

They don't need to offer similar numbers? If this ruling prohibits Google, the dominant search engine, from buying their Safari defaults, then Apple has a choice of: - Zero dollars - More than zero dollars from a smaller search competitor (Bing? New AI player?) I suspect Apple will want more than nothing. They also have quarterly financials to report.

Millions might as well be zero to Apple. There is overhead when it comes to dealing with another company, combined with the potential of damaging your brand. If the number is not in the billions I doubt they would bother. The only companies capable of paying the amounts that would make it worthwhile would be excluded from this option.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#445

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> 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.

So far (only an occasional user) it's been solid for me. Though I've only been using it in depth every few weeks, and that's mostly to read manga online while waiting for stuff.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#446

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…

Have you engaged Apple about registering your search engine? How's that process going?

Apple might ask for that in(famous) 30% cut. Or is it 40 now?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the courts problem. Google needs to solve this before the split.

It is always the court's problem. A judge does not have arbitrary or absolute authority. If Google can convince an appeals court that the judge has imposed an impossible or unreasonable remedy it will be overturned.

All monopolies try this old scheme, that's why they became a monopoly in the first place. No reasonable judge will fall for this.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#448

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.

In what sane healthy market is two choices enough?

Imagine saying that about everything else in your life. Don't want to buy a Ford car? You can buy a Toyota. There are no other car brands in the entire world. IHG, Hyatt, Choice Hotels, Best Western, Wyndham, Radisson, they don't exit.

Don't want to stay at the Hilton? You're in luck, you can go to the Mariott, that's it.

Don't want to buy a t-shirt at Target? Well, Walmart sells t-shirts, and nobody else sells any t-shirts.

This would be astoundingly ridiculous anywhere else but technoloy. Even credit card processing networks have four options (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express).

As an example of how this works in other industries, US antitrust regulators automatically decline any merger/acquisition US airlines that would put their marketshare above 20%. And that's after deregulation!

IMO any market that has less than ~3-5 viable purchase options for customers needs to have extensive government intervention to keep the market fair and innovative.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

pardon me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

>A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell'), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular thing.

how is Google a monopoly according to the above definition in Wikipedia?

they have competitors like bing, duckduckgo, kagi, and some others that i have read about here on hn recently.

and I do not know about the others, but at least bing and duckduckgo have existed for many years.

so again, how are they a monopoly?

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