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Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

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Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#511

Post by dwaite »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #488
avidiax wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's payment to Apple isn't advertisement. It's to prevent Apple from rolling their own search engine, or selling the default to the next highest bidder.

Putting their search in front of people instead of others is advertisement. It doesn't prevent apple from doing anything.

Apple has a business agreement to use Google search, and it seems it is a similar agreement to what they made to OpenAI - we as Apple will use your service by default, we pay you nothing, and we take a percentage of your monetization.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#512

Post by dwaite »

sahila wrote: post #412
__loam wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is so critically important to the infrastructure of the internet itself that I really struggle to understand why a for profit entity with incentives that are not aligned to the public should be in charge of the most important search engine.

Because they created the search engine, and truthfully profit motives produce better products at lower costs than non-profits generally across the board. The alternative is having government creating software and it’s hard to point to any public US website/app where I’m amazed.

True, but the ramifications can be really harmful.

We have two generations now who have born thinking online services and software are supposed to be outrageously cheap or free, just because of companies who have used such services as loss leaders while operating off of their main business or bootstrapping off of VC funding.

We have small businesses who have chosen their revenue model based on what lets them work best within the simplistic financial model of mobile app stores. This is even more apparent now with the EU DMA, where Apple is pushing for a core technology fee that creates a huge financial risk for the freemium product tiering that customers now expect.

Google has the most popular search engine because creating such a thing defends their contextual advertising business. Being the most popular destination allows for higher rates than any incumbent could typically charge. Thus money doesn't exist to fund a competitive commercial search engine from scratch - it needs to being funded by another company as a loss leader (see: Bing) or as part of some other VC-backed product.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#513

Post by danielmarkbruce »

chairmansteve wrote: post #508
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't have an advertising monopoly. Facebook all by itself does about half of Google's revenue in ads. Then you have twitter, amazon, snap, all kinds of stuff. Google would be lucky to have 40% of online ads, and then once you include all advertising they are way down, maybe 15-20% or something.

They have a search monopoly, therefore are the gateway to internet

That's at least close to the truth. It's not strictly a monopoly though. And there is a very real chance it's all about to blow up given LLMs.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#514

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

bamboozled wrote: post #405
cogman10 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because people choose to use it. Incorrect. Google spent ungodly amounts of money to make sure that their search engine was the default in as many places as possible. People didn't "choose" to use it, they use the defaults. And in some cases, like my Android phone, google is the only option for integrated searches. I cannot use another search engine without opening a browser then opening up the search engine of cho…

I used DDG for a long time, it's crap, I switched back to Google, I suspect a lot of people would do the same. There isn't a lot of competition. I tired Kagi, it's good too, but I didn't feel like the cost was justified when Google is free. I will probably try Kagi again someday though, I did like it and I think their mission is pretty cool.

Worth retrying now. I tried again recently and the results are so much better. Combine that with the domain block/raise/pin feature and the search engine is way ahead.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#515

Post by carlosjobim »

JohnMakin wrote: post #481
carlosjobim wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's customers are ad companies, and for them, switching away from Google is impossible. Billions (probably trillions) of dollars are spent every year on advertising through other channels than Google, including online. Let's stick to reality.

Yes, let's stick to reality - one (1) company has a quarter of ad revenue among ad companies. Seems like quite a lot, yes?

It sure is a lot, and it sure is easy to switch from Google.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#516

Post by NoPicklez »

hbn wrote: post #464
NoPicklez wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Basically no one uses Windows by choice" Uhh not really, I use it by choice, because it provides functionality that other brands don't. That operating system provides functionality, compatibility and services that other manufacturers don't.

No idea what functions or services Windows has that doesn't exist on other platforms in an equal or superior way. PowerShell maybe? "Compatibility" is exactly what I'm referring to as being the issue. I use Windows because it has compatibility with my Steam library. But if I could play those games hassle-free on another platform then I'd love to never boot up that dark-pattern-riddled adware dumpster fire excuse for…

But the fact that you have all of that compatibility is partly why the OS has its flaws

Aside from any adware…

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#517

Post by bradknowles »

nine_k wrote: post #409
t0mas88 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is offering a free browser, while making a good browser costs money. They are subsidising that by their huge ad-business. And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. That browser is competing with someone like Opera (used to be a paid for product) and Mozilla in an unfair way, becau…

There was exactly the same kind of lawsuit in France some years ago: free Google Maps insidiously put paid cartography companies without any special features out of business. The antitrust legislation protects consumers, not businesses. If Linux provides for free what a proprietary software offered for money, it's a net win, even if that company goes out of business. The problem with Chrome is not that it's free. The…

But there is no Pepsi cola to compete with it. And there’s the problem.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#518

Post by bradknowles »

sushid wrote: post #367
t0mas88 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is offering a free browser, while making a good browser costs money. They are subsidising that by their huge ad-business. And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. That browser is competing with someone like Opera (used to be a paid for product) and Mozilla in an unfair way, becau…

But Opera and Firefox and others are all free browsers as well. I agree with the parent commenter that its not exactly a monopoly in the traditional sense. It's not even the default browser on Mac or Windows.

Opera is based on Chrome, and therefore does not belong in this comparison.

Safari would be a better example.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#520

Post by webninja »

The obvious and least painful change for Google is to make the top 3 most popular browsers on any platform have to allow any search engines supplied by the user. The user has to paste a custom url into a text box supplied by their favorite search engine’s website. That way people can use meaningful search engines like Marginalia, Kagi, or others. It’s such a simple change that would have a massive impact in forcing meaningful competition in the search sphere.

Google funds Apple for search dominance and Firefox for reasons I don’t know of. Neither Safari (on mobile nor desktop) nor Firefox allow custom user supplied search engines. The presets they supply appear to be controlled opposition.

I want to be able to use Marginalia, Kagi, Yandex, MWMBl and SearXNG by default after a few settings changes.

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