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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

#611

Post by lostlogin »

jonhohle wrote: post #495
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.

The problem isn’t that Google has search and makes Android. It’s that they have search and paid android phone makes and Apple oodles of money to make Google search the default. Apple would not need to pay anyone to make their search (or maps or browser) the default. It would be the default on Apple devices and not used much outside of that.

> It would be the default on Apple devices and not used much outside of that.

Would that bother Apple? Their platform is the most valuable to advertise on. They’ll make money. The question is, will it make as much as Google was paying?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#612

Post by mrweasel »

mozempthrowaway wrote: post #288
layer8 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe Mozilla will focus more on Firefox again.

No we won’t. We all knew this gravy train was coming to an end. In terms of revenue it’s ~500M per year/~80-something %. Once this stops, there’s no way for us to keep funding operations at the level they’re at.

Wikimedia is often criticized for asking for donations, while having millions in the bank, but this is exactly why. Mozilla should have taken all the money they could from Google and others, focused on Firefox and MDN (and perhaps Thunderbird) and just continuously saved and invested whatever was left. If/when donation dry up, Wikimedia will hopefully have saved up enough to fund Wikipedia for decades. Once Mozillas income is gone, there's no backup.

Mozilla spend all the money they could each fiscal year (I don't actually know, I didn't check their budgets), trying to build products that would fund the project into the future. It's just that none of those projects made much sense, nor where they ever going to bring the the amount of money required, which really seems obvious from the outside. I can see the VPN maybe bringing in a bit of money, but no where near enough.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#613

Post by fsflover »

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…

> 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

There is also a GNU/Linux option here. Sent from my Librem 5.

> I use Linux, but that's not for the broad masses currently

Unless "broad massses" require some unique MS Office or Photoshop functionality, they can easily switch to Linux. My relatives did and are happy.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#614

Post by dialogbox »

unethical_ban wrote: post #521
legitster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People use Google because it's the default, not because they will go out of their way to keep using it. Is this actually true? Microsoft has bent over backwards trying making it inconvenient to get Chrome + Google on any new device. There's even the whole "Edge is the #1 browser to install Chrome" meme. Normies just really like Google.

Yes it is true. The company I currently work at is 95% Bing users because they all use Edge and Bing is the default. It's a medium sized company of normal non techie people. The default matters.

But can Bing the default for Edge after this suit? I believe even Edge needs to ask which search engine to be used in the beginning. If that happens, possibly even more non techie's may use Google.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#615

Post by fsflover »

callalex wrote: post #380
immibis wrote: post #374

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.

Which store can I buy these de-google’d phones at with support? Also your second statement is just factually incorrect.

> your second statement is just factually incorrect

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#617

Post by threatofrain »

layer8 wrote: post #370
threatofrain wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe based on cold economic merits, Firefox simply doesn't deserve to exist.

Maybe, but a lot of software exists regardless of cold economic merits, because they have merits for their users.

Browsers are a special tier of software difficulty. All the recent browser efforts have a non-open source funding model behind it. Which means people believe it takes interesting $ to sustain a promising browser project.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#618

Post by account42 »

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…

> Mozilla and Apple will lose significant revenue from having Google as the default search engine

This would be a great thing for Firefox. That Google money is toxic in more ways than one.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#619

Post by lupusreal »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #608
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I expect this to be bad for everyone except Google if the ruling holds." If the decision will not be bad for Google, then why would Google spend so much money and time to defend against it.^1 Why not just stop making the anti-competitive payments and terminate the agreements. Money saved. Problem solved. We can now safely say it is not a defense to claim "Google is the best" and that's why people choose it. Anti-com…

HN commenters defending Apple have stated many times that iOS installations do not comprise a majority share of the "smartphone" market. Can we assume that if Microsoft paid Apple to be the default search engine in iOS instead of Google then Microsoft would have market share, or some other source of monopoly power, sufficient to allow the DoJ and state AGs to bring essentially the same antitrust case against Microsof…

Reminds me of the "If I don't steal your home, somebody else will" incident. Classic scumbag mentality.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#620

Post by websap »

theshrike79 wrote: post #606
alvah wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They simply have a better product" I disagree. 100% they had a better product, but they have absolutely mangled it over the last few updates. Honestly, if I wanted the opinion of randomnumbers45123 on Reddit, I'd just search Reddit. Google achieved dominance ~25 years ago by being better than the alternatives, and the other search engines pretty much withered away rapidly. They (Google) are in a very precarious posi…

People always _always_ forget that Google today is an ad company first. They do search, phones and mobile operating systems as side projects.

Gross over simplification.
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