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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

#471

Post by fuzztester »

notatoad wrote: post #457
fuzztester wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how are they a monopoly, as I asked another person in this same thread, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41166997

>how are they a monopoly they are because a judge just ruled they are. answering questions like this is the reason the courts exist, and they just answered this question. or they might not actually be a monopoly, there's still a possibility of appeal, but there's really no more definitive answer than a judge's ruling. antitrust law is fuzzy, and depends a lot on the courts to interpret it.

>they are because a judge just ruled they are.

but they are not a monopoly according to the Wikipedia definition that I cited in another subthread, and linked to above, though.

and courts can be packed, which, i have been reading, has happened with the us supreme court.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#472

Post by foobarding »

foobarding wrote: post #470
asddubs wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 an extension can do one thing and one thing only, and recently removed our extension on account of that [1]. We rebuilt it to meet their needs but had a lot of back-and-forth because we included 'search by image' on a context menu item and the first reviewer felt that was a bri…

Yes this is exactly right. There is an industry of chrome extensions that exist to change the search engine to something truly unwanted (yahoo search anyone?) so that the extension author can extract rev share. They often advertise the extension as something else to trick people into installing. The target is often kids. As someone who worked at Google, I was surprised / shocked to see how many kids get targeted by t…

Also in case you were curious what tipped me off was seeing just how common it is for Chromebooks to not have Google as their default search engine. Totally not the intended outcome of Google creating Chrome OS.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#473

Post by hedora »

throwaway88222 wrote: post #283
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…

As someone who worked at Mozilla, on Firefox browsers, I can guarantee you that none of this is a coincidence. I have never seen the search contract so I don't think I am breaking any kind of NDA but I have been close enough to engineering and browser planning and product management to know that Google dictates (negotiates?) in great detail every aspect of search in the browser. This is not a simple "you can use Goog…

Back when I switched to google, I remember having to type “http://google.com/?q=” into a Firefox dialog, and that was it.

So, yeah. The current friction (on it and other browsers) feels pretty intentional to me.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#474

Post by coldpie »

worksonmine wrote: post #355
coldpie wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's also a privacy problem. Can you describe how? What information is that query parameter providing to an attacker that is not being provided in 50 other ways?

Your question is assuming they're not already locking down as many of the 50 other ways as possible. Yes there are other bad things but that doesn't mean we should add #51 to that list.

OK, so it's not actually a privacy problem. Thanks.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#475

Post by trelane »

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…

[flagged]

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#476

Post by [deleted] »

trelane wrote: post #475
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…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#477

Post by immibis »

usr1106 wrote: post #332
immibis wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Choice seems to be an euphemism for everything related to private IT: For PCs there is Microsoft vs Apple. (I use Linux, but that's not for the broad masses currently.) For phones you either pay a premium to enter the Apple walled garden or you prostitute your digital life and get spied on by Google and its advertising cancer. What would we say if there were only 2 car makers, 2 grocery chains, 2 companies building h…

If the choices are substantially different, you have a choice. Windows or Linux or Mac is a real choice - just because you'd prefer Haiku doesn't mean you don't have a choice. There's a huge range of android phones, and many of them have been reverse engineered enough to run non-google versions of Android (find out before buying). I have a PinePhone, but I don't use it regularly. It runs nearly-mainline Linux. Even things like Apache and X11 if I want it to.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#478

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#479

Post by [deleted] »

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).…

[deleted]

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#480

Post by immibis »

mmh0000 wrote: post #432
callalex wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

I can think of one way to test if Apple is scanning for CSAM, but I wouldn't recommend it.
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