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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

#641

Post by SuperNinKenDo »

majewsky wrote: post #621
websap wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gross over simplification.

Out of Google's 2023 revenue of 305.63e9 US-$, 77.8% (237.86e9 US-$) was advertising revenue. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven... They are obviously not only an ad company, but GP only claimed that they are an ad company "first". Can you please clarify which part you consider oversimplified?

Consider the case of a YouTuber who gets most of their revenue through superchats. They regularly upload videos, a couple times a week, and receive ad revenue and the od sponsorship deal. Once a week they do a livestream Q&A which is where the bulk of that superchat revenue comes from.

Are they a livestreaming "first" business-man/company/sole trader?

Revenue sources are not necessarily the be all and end all of determining what your key business concern is, or what your business should put first.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#642

Post by account42 »

throwaway88222 wrote: post #283
hugh_kagi wrote: post #21

We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: 1. On iOS the list of allowed search engines is simply baked into OS, we have a fiddly extension that hooks outbound calls to /search and redirects them but I wish we didn't need to. 2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such a…

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 [Corporation] would die.

And Firefox would be better off for it.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#643

Post by latexr »

SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #641
majewsky wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of Google's 2023 revenue of 305.63e9 US-$, 77.8% (237.86e9 US-$) was advertising revenue. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven... They are obviously not only an ad company, but GP only claimed that they are an ad company "first". Can you please clarify which part you consider oversimplified?

Consider the case of a YouTuber who gets most of their revenue through superchats. They regularly upload videos, a couple times a week, and receive ad revenue and the od sponsorship deal. Once a week they do a livestream Q&A which is where the bulk of that superchat revenue comes from. Are they a livestreaming "first" business-man/company/sole trader? Revenue sources are not necessarily the be all and end all of dete…

> Are they a livestreaming "first" business-man/company/sole trader?

Maybe, it depends on what they do next. Will they start uploading fewer videos and live-streaming more because they realised that’s where the money is?

> Revenue sources are not necessarily the be all and end all of determining what your key business concern is, or what your business should put first.

Agreed. But Google does put ads first. All the tracking, web proposals, Chrome, it’s all in service of ads. Perhaps you’re using an ad blocker and that’s making you forget, but Google’s services, like search and YouTube, are huge blobs of ads with a few bits of content sprinkled throughout and the ratio is getting worse in the ads’ favour. So yes, Google is an ad company. Not because it makes the most money from it, but because most of its effort is in expanding and defending their ad revenue. Heck, they literally spend billions of dollars just to make sure you search with their engine to see their ads.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#644

Post by account42 »

jl6 wrote: post #237

It’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.

You worry about that? I'm hoping for it!

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#645

Post by account42 »

Zuiii wrote: post #543
troad wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

This. Mozilla is a giant dead tree in the middle of the forest depriving any saplings from the sunlight needed for them to take its place. If the corporation can't exist without Google funding, then it's effectively a department of Google and should be killed off so that other _independent_ orgs take its place.

Exactly. Mozilla CEO salaries might require the Google deal but development of Firefox or alternative browsers does not. Mozilla Corporation was a mistake and I look forward to a time where the leading open browser is developed as a public good again instead of as a product used to sell ads.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#646

Post by account42 »

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.

Good, less pointless UI changes and extension API breakages.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#647

Post by account42 »

mrweasel wrote: post #612
mozempthrowaway wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Wikimedia is often criticized for asking for donations, while having millions in the bank, but this is exactly why.

You are omitting the part where Wikimedia spends large parts of that donation money on things barely related to Wikipedia. Not to mention inflated salaries throughout the organization.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#648

Post by greenthrow »

kortilla wrote: post #566
greenthrow wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A car is definitely not easier than a search engine. Also they canceled the car.

It absolutely is much harder to make a search engine (at least a good one). The dominance of Google in that space for so long should have made that obvious.

or it makes it obvious that Google has had a monopoly for reasons other than the difficulty of making a search engine (this is the truth.)

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#649

Post by majewsky »

riscy wrote: post #584
meiraleal wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An independent Chrome App Store would easily achieve profitability. There are more than 3 billion chrome users.

Are Chrome plugins capable enough to sustain a paid store model? I thought they were becoming more restricted to stifle ad blockers.

In this scenario, if Chrome were a separate business from the rest of Google, they would not be incentivized to stifle adblocking.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#650

Post by meiraleal »

jonny_eh wrote: post #570
meiraleal wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome, Android and the Play Store being separated companies would be great.

How would Chrome make money? Accepting $1B a year to make Google the default search engine?

App store. The plug-in ecosystem is huge but Google makes more money using Chrome as an ad dump
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