I wonder if this has ramifications on the OpenAI IPhone deal too.
Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
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Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#502> Mehta’s decision is expected to trigger a separate proceeding to determine what penalties Google will face – and the company is also likely to file an appeal As a Google antitrust watcher, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with what remedies the court will actually recommend to correct this monopoly. If you ask 20 experts, who all otherwise agree that Google is a monopoly, you might get 40 different answers ab…
The issue is that there is no direct fix. It depends instead on the overall health of the Internet. We are moving away from open commerce and into walled gardens. Once Google makes deals similar to their Reddit deal with Meta and Bytedance, it's going to become basically impossible for an upstart search engine to index anything competitively.
On the flip side once you leave the dark forest you stop needing search engines as much since you're contributing to a community you exist on the inside of.
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 b…
Depending on the metric, Google has 90% of the search engine market. Yes they have competition in a literal sense, but not in a meaningful sense.
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is, if you are leveraging one monopoly to attempt to gain more. This is what happened with Microsoft and Internet Explorer (via the Windows monopoly)[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... .
Had Microsoft merely provided advertised IE with Windows there never would have been a suit. Even bundling alone would have been a hard case to make. They did far more than just ship IE with Windows.
Oh I agree. I merely meant that they were leveraging an existing monopoly to try to create another one via unfair practices.
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
if you want to beleive a wikipedia definition based on historical caselaw, instead of an actual judge's decision, then i guess sure, do whatever you want.
if you're asking how they're a monopoly, i answered you. if you want to debate whether the judge was right or wrong, maybe phrase your question less like a question.
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#506Earlier 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…
> Google is an outlier among outlier because they do have several golden eggs but one is much bigger than all the others What "golden egg" do Google have besides an ad-selling business? Last time I looked into it ads of various forms accounted for basically all of their revenue, somewhere around 85% or more.
Yeah, less golden eggs, and more golden funnels (Chrome, Android).
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Mozilla would die. Mozilla changed its default search engine to Yahoo during Marissa Mayer times and Mozilla didn't die -- it probably made more money by doing so. Mozilla could switch its default to Bing if Microsoft paid more.
If the ruling is that no one can pay to be the default search engine then… welp.
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#508I 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…
Really, really curious how this all plays out WRT Mozilla. Mozilla receives on the order of 80% of their revenue from making Google the default search engine on Firefox. They're going to have to layoff the majority of their employees.
There is no one to blame but the leadership at Mozilla for the position they are in. They had a decade+ to try to create additional revenue streams but botched every attempt.
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought that the idea behind antitrust laws was that if an entity reaches total market dominance and uses that dominance to keep other out of the game, the entity should be split into competing entities. What I'm seeing however is nothing more than toothless, political pointing sticks. Both IBM, Microsoft and Google have clearly at some point obtained total domination of their markets. Consequently they've a…
How would you split Google? Any type of split would kill that which makes Google so great.
Chrome, Android and the Play Store being separated companies would be great.
Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
#510It’s called out that Google pays Mozilla to have Google be the default search engine in Firefox. I worry this ruling will lead to Google ceasing those payments, effectively killing Mozilla as a going concern.
Mozilla is effectively being subsidized by Google for the sake of an illusion of browser competitions. If the remedy enforces "a reasonable level of bid" for these kinds of auctions, Mozilla may go bankrupt within 5 years. I hope the court won't include Mozilla in scope since it doesn't really make a dent on the market dominance.
> Mozilla is effectively being subsidized by Google for the sake of an illusion of browser competitions. If the remedy enforces "a reasonable level of bid" for these kinds of auctions, Mozilla may go bankrupt within 5 years. I hope the court won't include Mozilla in scope since it doesn't really make a dent on the market dominance.
Maybe the death of Mozilla, the family of corporate entities, could breathe new life into Firefox, the open source browser. They haven't exactly been great stewards for the last few years. I'm not exactly sure how those vast amounts of money from Google have translated into much tangible progress for the browser.