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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

#531

Post by al_borland »

shuntress wrote: post #267
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…

> They simply have a better product This is the key. I'm not saying Google couldn't be better. But if it were possible to build a better index of the Internet, Google would do it. Spam garbage overrunning the web is the underlying issue.

Google is an ad company first. It stands to reason than their results optimize for ad profitability, not to have the best index.

If the goal was to have the best index, they would actively punish sites that use SEO to push sites that are nothing more than auto-generated affiliate links to Amazon products. I quit using Google a while ago, because that’s all I was getting. I use Kagi now, which had no ads. Without this conflict of interest, I find things go better.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#532

Post by shiroiushi »

stephenr wrote: post #466
cletus wrote: post #203

Earlier 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.

>What "golden egg" do Google have besides an ad-selling business?

Google search, Maps, and GMail are the big 3 web services. These don't bring in revenue all by themselves, but they bring users to look at ads which is where they make all their money. There's also Chrome (directs people to Google services and facilitates their use of those services). Finally, there's Android, which is a little different but like Apple, they get revenue from the Play Store on it, and again push users to use their own search engine and browser.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#533

Post by al_borland »

_3u10 wrote: post #485
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…

I tried to switch to DDG, I even gave myself 90 days. On day 91 I immediately switched back.

I never had good luck with DDG, and found myself using !g to jump over go Google a lot.

I switch to Kagi about a year ago and had a much better experience. My browser defaulted itself back to Google one day, and I didn’t notice the heading but when I looked at the results I recoiled in disgust at how bad it was. I looked at the top of the page and saw it was Google. That was the last time I used Google and it wasn’t even on purpose.

Several times now at work, I’ve joined a call where people had been troubleshooting for hours trying to find an answer to some issues, presumably using Google a lot in the process. I end up using Kagi, finding an answer, and the call wraps up 15 minutes later. This has happened at least 3 times now, and I’m not on these types of calls often.

It’s so nice to be the customer and not the product.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#534

Post by nick__m »

elevatortrim wrote: post #338
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.

That’s because Chrome is vastly better than Edge and that is an exceptional situation. In most other places you look, you will see people using defaults all the time, because defaults are incredibly powerful.

How is chrome vastly better than Edge ? They feel pretty similar but Edge support uBlock Origin on manifest V2.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#535

Post by paul7986 »

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…

Google I use 40 percent of the time vs. 60 percent chatGPT. Google is definitely on the start of a decline!

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#536

Post by shiroiushi »

shagie wrote: post #491
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though Apple hasn’t been sued for Apple Maps, they are not safe from such antitrust charges. The antitrust cases move slowly so it’s possible that they just haven’t gotten to there.

Apple Maps is now on the web ( https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24205449/apple-maps-web-b... ) So far, Company + Map hasn't caused any problems with even bigger players and tighter interegration (Google + Google Maps and Microsoft + Nokia ( https://news.microsoft.com/2013/09/03/microsoft-to-acquire-n... )).

Interestingly, Apple Maps' new beta doesn't work on Linux at all, even with Chrome, so I can't see it. They say it works on Chrome on Windows or Mac, but apparently Apple doesn't like Linux very much.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#537

Post by al_borland »

langsoul-com wrote: post #530

Rip Mozilla. That google money was necessary to fund whatever increasingly dumb project Mozilla was working on. What now? Actually focus on Firefox? Impossible.

If Firefox dies, the antitrust case against Chrome is sure to follow. The only thing really stopping Chrome from full domination right now is the iPhone, and the EU is going to move that stumbling block out of the way, if they haven’t already. I don’t live there, so I didn’t commit the current state to memory.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#538

Post by stephenr »

shiroiushi wrote: post #532
stephenr wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>What "golden egg" do Google have besides an ad-selling business? Google search, Maps, and GMail are the big 3 web services. These don't bring in revenue all by themselves, but they bring users to look at ads which is where they make all their money. There's also Chrome (directs people to Google services and facilitates their use of those services). Finally, there's Android, which is a little different but like Apple…

> These don't bring in revenue all by themselves Thus they're not eggs at all, either golden or otherwise

> but they bring users to look at ads which is where they make all their money Ad sales is their golden egg. Practically everything else is an egg truck to sell that one thing.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#539

Post by shiroiushi »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #527
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…

I had a coworker insist on using ddg for privacy reasons and he was a bit smug about it even though meetings where he was presenting while searching the web always started with a ddg search and ended with him sighing and giving up by using !g to switch to google. I think, even in it's less than ideal state, people still underestimate how much time google's tailored search can save you when you train it to figure out…

I've frequently found better results by using the !g when searching for technical docs and other programming-related stuff.

But for more everyday, non-programming things, I've frequently found the regular DDG results (from Bing) actually better and less filled with SEO crap than Google's.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#540

Post by lolinder »

Spivak wrote: post #507
utopcell wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't know why people keep speculating that this would be the ruling.

Paying for default placement is a simple commercial transaction that only becomes problematic when you're already a monopoly and can spend 10% of your billions in revenue to stay on top and keep smaller contenders out. Is there anything in what the judge has said that would suggest that they view the simple act of having a paid default as being anti-competitive in and of itself?

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