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Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

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Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#611

Post by harmmonica »

lazide wrote: post #609
harmmonica wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, nice, thanks so much for actually sticking around to reply. I mean, I get what you're saying, and I know I won't be able to convince you otherwise, but I'll repeat that structural engineering can be complex, but it's not always and a lot of it is prescriptive. The only other thing I'll add is the ideal vs. the reality. What percent of structural projects done to single-family construction, in particular, do you t…

Of course - but if you’ve gone behind 99% of people doing their own electrical, you’ll also understand why I’m saying what I’m saying. Everyone thinks they are the exception. Occasionally, one of them is even right, eh?

Think I've done that and I'll raise you an "and yet barely any houses burn down due to their electrical!" I actually jest. But electrical is one of those things that anyone can do, but ought to be done with the utmost care (and in the US many jurisdictions allow DIY electrical if you're doing the work for your own place).

And just to clarify I don't think I'm the exception. I was actually making the opposite argument. Almost anyone can and should attempt to deconstruct complexity because doing things is not always as difficult as it would seem (or as difficult as we've been told).

Appreciate the dialogue, lazide!

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#612

Post by supernova87a »

dboreham wrote: post #552
gnz11 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of rightly deserved criticism of the media but the OP describing journalists as conspiring to keep links out in the fear of being fact checked by readers is simply false and indicative of not having any experience at a large news organization.

But there has to be some reason for original source links never appearing in journalist articles.

Is it because journalists think of their special talent as talking to people to get information (which is a scarce and priviliged resource), versus reading and summarizing things that we all have access to?

So they rarely are forced to do anything but state the name of who they interviewed, and that's it. And puts them in the habit of not acknowledging what they read, as a source?

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#614

Post by BrenBarn »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #584
shmeeed wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Search, Chrome, Android each are market leaders in their domain. You seriously consider that "tiny pieces"?

I personally would not like chrome, or some of these other things to exist on its own. Google operates some of these things mostly like a charity. Obviously there are serious incentives to have control but imagine what Chrome would be doing without Google… you think your privacy is at stake now? Some private equity companies were drooling over the idea of buying chrome a few weeks ago

Private equity companies should also be destroyed.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#615

Post by komali2 »

Ray20 wrote: post #588
komali2 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company. What's wrong with that?

> What's wrong with that? The absence of a clear objective boundary of what can be taken and what cannot. And without such a boundary, such a practice could be quite widespread, with the poorest and smallest actors being the first to be subjected to it, simply because it is easier to take from them and they do not have sufficient influence on the distributing bodies. This is like theory of building socialism 101

> The absence of a clear objective boundary of what can be taken and what cannot.

I don't understand why this is an obstacle - this issue already exists with writing laws and various countries have different solutions, all of which seem to be working kinda ok. There's the USA's constitution which isn't working so well in most cases but working great in others (free speech for example, though this is now failing), whereas other countries depend on histories of case law for example (UK).

It seems to me that if a government specifically sought to target the largest and richest actors it could avoid the issue you're speaking of. Of course this would require removing the ability of capital to influence politics, maybe that's the issue you mean?

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#616

Post by dabockster »

skinkestek wrote: post #445
IshKebab wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is a competitor. You know how StackOverflow is dead because AI provided an alternative? That's happening in search too. You might think "but ChatGPT isn't a search engine", and that's true. It can't handle all queries you might use a search engine for, e.g. if you want to find a particular website. But there are many many queries that it can handle. Here's just a few from my recent history: * How do I load a share…

> You know how StackOverflow is dead because AI provided an alternative? That's happening in search too. Stack Overflow isn’t dead because of AI. It’s dead because they spent years ignoring user feedback and then doubled down by going after respected, unpaid contributors like Monica. Would they have survived AI? Hard to say. But the truth is, they were already busy burning down their own community long before AI show…

> Stack Overflow isn’t dead because of AI. It’s dead because they spent years ignoring user feedback and then doubled down by going after respected, unpaid contributors like Monica.

They also devolved into a work friendly variant of 4Chan's /g/ board. "Work friendly" as in nothing obviously obscene, but the overall tone and hostility towards newcomers is still there (among other things).

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#617

Post by keeda »

crazygringo wrote: post #591
keeda wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is missing in this discussion is the fact -- explicitly called out by the court in the opinion, see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45109999 -- that Google Search is so good because it gets so much search traffic and, critically, user interaction data such as clicks, dwell time and even hovers on search results, which it mines to figure out better rankings. Unless competitors get that kind of traffic A…

> that Google Search is so good because it gets so much search traffic and, critically, user interaction data If Bing's market share is 4%, then Bing still gets tons of user interaction data. Bing gets something like 100M queries per day . That's more than enough data. Microsoft has all the choice. They have the money. They can invest, like Google has invested and continues to invest . You don't get these things for…

> That's more than enough data.

Is it? I'm no expert, but while it may seem enough in absolute numbers, I can imagine more nuanced criteria like diversity of queries, results and users may matter more than just volume, and that kind of signal only comes from truly ubiquitious data collection (like say being default on the most popular browser AND on the duopoly of mobile platforms -- which, by the way, also collect tons of location data about the users that is not available to anybody else.)

But as I'm no expert, all I can do is look at the circumstantial evidence:

1. Google paid about 54.9 BILLION in 2024 -- "traffic acquisition costs" or "TAC": https://abc.xyz/assets/77/51/9841ad5c4fbe85b4440c47a4df8d/go... -- to hold on to that traffic and data. The 20 billion going to Apple gets a lot of airtime but it does not tell the whole story.

2. As somebody else said in this thread, MSFT did burn billions on their attempt at smartphones and other markets, so it's not like they're afraid to pour money into big, risky bets.

That really tells us a lot about the realities about the search market.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#618

Post by dabockster »

judge2020 wrote: post #43
stackskipton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like judge was looking for any excuse not to apply harsh penalty and since Google brought up AI as competitor, the judge accepted it as acceptable excuse for very minor penalty.

I mean, it’s a legitimate concern. Google is bleeding so hard right now from Gen Z and especially Gen Alpha deciding to use ChatGPT first and foremost when asking questions that Google would’ve answered previously. Whether or not that means they should keep Chrome as a product is up for debate.

Or by people like me with LM Studio, a lightweight GGUF from Hugging Face, and maybe some kind of vector database MCP tool.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#619

Post by dabockster »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #181
Hansenq wrote: post #31

This seems like a very sensible and logical conclusion by the judge to me. An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The b…

> Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it t…

Chrome is the "best" because all of the other browsers continue to fail at real world marketing. The best ads and marketing continue to be real life stuff - billboards, bus signage, people handing out flyers, etc etc etc. You can't just hype a browser on social media or web forums, and you can't hype it solely to those who are tech savvy.

A solid example of this right now is all of the Mullvad VPN ads I've seen on the Seattle Light Rail lately. Google used to have ads everywhere for Chrome. The only time I saw Firefox stuff was the rare t-shirt at a tech conference.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#620

Post by dabockster »

ankit219 wrote: post #378
Workaccount2 wrote: post #10

Firefox can still get money, and maybe Apple too. The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity. Google also must share search data with competitors, but it's not totally clear what this is. The ruling mentions helping other engines with "long tail" queries. All in all this seems like a pretty mild ruling, and an appeal can generally only help Google from a not to bad ruling at this point.

The problem for the judge seems to be that there is no alternative at this point. No other company can bid for or credibly pay Apple/Mozilla as much as Google did. Apple testified they would spend less on innovation if the payment goes away, Mozilla said they wont survive. So the alternative for the judge is to create a market in the next five years where people invest in search, there are more credible products that…

> Mozilla said they wont survive

Entirely their fault, tbh. Mozilla's C suite has knowingly enriched themselves off this money for over 15 years now. If they were serious about surviving, they would have found alternative funding sources a long time ago.

Firefox isn't a true project. It's Google paying off someone to make Chrome appear not to be a monopoly at first glance.

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