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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

#661

Post by n4r9 »

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.

The product is more than just the index! The UI has become cluttered with ads that are barely distinguishable from genuine results. The functionality around using quotation marks for exact-match results has now become broken and confusing.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#662

Post by carlosjobim »

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…

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Kagi should stop blaming Apple or Google and make your own app already. People love apps and would be very happy to search by opening your app instead of using weird and suspicious hacks.

As a for-profit company you cannot fall back on the comfort of blaming outside factors for your problems. You have the best search engine in the world already, so don't make it so difficult for people to become your (paying) users.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#663

Post by ants_everywhere »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #583
ants_everywhere wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Bing really isn't bad. And LLMs are basically search engines for most use cases. I think Mozilla should just run an ad auction to choose the search engine. Bing/MS would pay to capture market share, and Google would pay to prevent Bing from gaining ground. So let them fight it out.

> I think Mozilla should just run an ad auction to choose the search engine This is not exactly what’s happening? Google is just willing to pay more.

An exclusive deal is different from an auction.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#664

Post by immibis »

usr1106 wrote: post #563
immibis wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the choices are substantially different, you have a choice. Windows or Linux or Mac is a real choice - just because you'd prefer Haiku doesn't mean you don't have a choice. There's a huge range of android phones, and many of them have been reverse engineered enough to run non-google versions of Android (find out before buying). I have a PinePhone, but I don't use it regularly. It runs nearly-mainline Linux. Even t…

I am typing this on a phone running SailfishOS. Still that's hardly a real choice for me who has worked 20 years as a phone or Linux developer. No banks, no public transit tickets, no city bike, no you name it. Not an option for the wide public.

So the actual lack of choice here is not the phone, but the apps. No different from having to install Windows to run your apps in 2003.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#665

Post by mrkramer »

shiroiushi wrote: post #545
nick__m wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>They feel pretty similar but Edge support uBlock Origin on manifest V2. For now. Don't expect it to last: Edge is just a re-skin of Chromium, so after V2 support is completely removed by Google, Edge will have to follow along or fork the code.

That's their opportunity to differentiate from Chrome; they need to support V2 Chromium and fork away from Google's dominion over Chromium.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#667

Post by uhtred »

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…

> Most users will probably still use Google

Stupid them then. I don't and now I won't have to see Google defaulted to everywhere.

This is great news. If Mozilla can't afford to provide Firefox anymore then they could ask for donations or provide a paid product. I'd pay for firefox if they stripped out the google and pocket crap.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#668

Post by highcountess »

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?

Considering that the recent Google code leak only substantiated that Chrome is the honey pot for surveillance and data harvesting that people long suspected, even any supposedly not ad related work is technically also ad related work.

It’s something people have a really difficult time preaching logically, the veil of deception of many things. Another big example is TV, which are ad sales companies, not TV show distributors, even if they’ve successfully swindled people into a mindset where they actually pay the providers, for the privilege of being sold advertisement.

It’s really a rather interesting and eye opening segment of largely the US society that is both extremely dominant and has effectively been extremely damaging, and yet, people simply cannot see that they are like mindless drones, being programmed and reprogrammed with TV shows and advertisement.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#669

Post by sensanaty »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #135
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…

Really, really curious how this all plays out WRT Mozilla. Mozilla receives on the order of 80% of their revenue from making Google the default search engine on Firefox. They're going to have to layoff the majority of their employees.

That's entirely on Mozilla and the slew of incompetent CEOs who did nothing but pocket millions and buy out useless products like Pocket instead of directing funds where they should've gone, the development of their browser.

If I could donate to Firefox development, I would've a long time ago for a generous monthly sum, but since I know it's just going to be squandered by becoming another advertising company [1], then I'm not too bothered by it.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#670

Post by wildrhythms »

latexr wrote: post #640
blauditore wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, any product/organization that generates revenue mainly through ads would be an ad company. Search is the product that (probably) carries most of the ads revenues, so that's the main product, and ads are the means for generating revenue around it.

> By that logic, any product/organization that generates revenue mainly through ads would be an ad company. What logic? The person you’re replying to didn’t explain their reasoning, so any logic you’re seeing is being constructed in your own head and projected onto someone else. In other words, you’re likely responding to an argument you’ve seen (and disagreed with) before instead of what that poster had in mind (whi…

Last I checked Google doesn't 'sell your information to people', but it does offer hyper targeted ads; the ethics of both scenarios are deeply rotten to me.
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