Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones • Hacker News Board

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#721

Post by lovethevoid » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 9:13 PM UTC

radley wrote: post #436

lovethevoid wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defaults are incredibly powerful, Safari and Edge are the second and third most popular browsers next to Chrome. Chrome itself is a default on a lot of android devices. Speaking of android devices, Samsung Internet is 4th/5th most popular as it comes default on Samsung devices. To say defaults don't matter because Chrome is used on Windows is a bit absurd. Chrome in 2012-2014 was still trading blows with IE even afte…

I think you're confusing defaults with lock-in. Safari, Edge, and Chrome are native browsers tightly coupled to their operating systems. They can't be removed. Further, anytime a user has to connect to an account for email, calendars, and other essentials, the OS will direct them through the native browser app. This means the so-called "popularity" reflects little more than the number of active devices: Android > iOS…

Not all browser marketshare statistics are sourced the same way, but often those native redirects aren't included, likewise for things like electron and CEF use.

Also Edge use being far lower in Desktop use indicates that there's little difference between defaults and lock ins functionally.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#722

Post by NotPractical » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 9:50 PM UTC

warkdarrior wrote: post #345

NotPractical wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see a conservative Federal judge gutting this ruling any more than I do a liberal one. Can you explain how free market capitalism and deregulation of corporations is compatible with lawsuits like this one?

It's "free market capitalism and deregulation" for corporations WE like.

Who is "we"? Big Tech?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#723

Post by ImJamal » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 10:05 PM UTC

asadotzler wrote: post #719

ImJamal wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These default search deals are only on new installs though. How often will those users reinstall Firefox?

No. You are wrong, either confused or lying. These deals are a revenue share for ad engagement on search results. Stop the lying.

I think you are replying to the wrong person?

If I set my search engine to DDG and Firefox has a deal with Google, then my browser is going to change my search engine to Google? Of course not. When you install Firefox it defaults to Google. In the past when Firefox had a deal with Yahoo it defaulted to Yahoo.

Are you suggesting that is incorrect because all of that happened?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#724

Post by alvah » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 11:42 PM UTC

hot_gril wrote: post #589

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…

This doesn't seem like a disagreement. They still have the best search engine at the moment.

It absolutely is a disagreement. I don't agree they have the best search engine at the moment. They did until they crippled it with the last 2 big updates.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#725

Post by alvah » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 11:43 PM UTC

delfinom wrote: post #671

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…

>I'd just search Reddit. You forget something. Reddit's search engine has historically been absolute dogshit. In fact there was a short time period it just opened a google window back in the day because they struggled to get it to work. It's gotten better in recent years but it's relatively meh compared to just having google search the reddit domain. Lol

It's not really the point I'm making though. Google search has become defacto Reddit / Quora search, and they haven't been transparent about this to the public. While they did have to do something about all the AI-generated unedited spam, replacing it with random Reddit commenters doesn't seem like it's necessarily any better.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#726

Post by shiroiushi » Wed, Aug 07, 2024, 12:00 AM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #665

shiroiushi wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Why? What's in it for MS? The only people who will notice are people running ad-blockers, and the intersection of those people and people who willingly use Edge is quite small I think. And ad-blockers still work with MV3, just not as well, so this really only appeals to hard-core ad-blocking people who insist on having the full capabilities of uBO and not uBO Lite. People like that are more likely to just use Firefox, rather than migrating from Chrome (by Google) to Edge (by Microsoft).

What you're proposing just sounds like a lot of extra work for MS, without any measurable gain. Sure, it'd be nice, in the broader interest of reducing Chrome's dominance and promoting browser diversity, but I don't see how there's any incentive for MS to do it.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#727

Post by SuperNinKenDo » Wed, Aug 07, 2024, 12:12 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #693

SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Yes. And if you press them economically, it will show. The only difference is that most people do not optimize their lives for profit.

Not at all. In the hypothetical, without getting into the weeds of a business that doesn'tactually exist, if they stop producing the non-livestream content they could quickly find their livestream revenue dry up.

They could perhaps pivot, but at that moment, the superchats only exist because of the non-live content they put out.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#728

Post by wcfields » Wed, Aug 07, 2024, 2:05 AM UTC

wildrhythms wrote: post #670

latexr wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Reposting this to counter the narrative that they don't sell your information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40636844#40642672

First-hand account from me that this is not factual at all.

I worked at a major media buyer agency “big 5” in advanced analytics; we were a team of 5-10 data scientists. We got a firehose on behalf of our client, a major movie studio, of search of their titles by zip code from “G”.

On top of that we had clean roomed audience data from “F” of viewers of the ads/trailers who also viewed ads on their set top boxes.

I can go on and on, and yeah, we didn’t see “Joe Smith” level of granularity, it was at Zip code levels, but to say FAANG doesn’t sell user data is naive at best.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#729

Post by imichael » Wed, Aug 07, 2024, 4:48 AM UTC

What seems to be missing is discussion of the fact that Google's customers are the advertisers. The search engine users are the product. To what extent does Google monopolize the sales of eyeballs to the advertisers?

And, if Google can't pay to be the default any more, and given that users are the product, maybe the solution is for the search engines to somehow pay us to select them as the default.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#730

Post by arendtio » Wed, Aug 07, 2024, 6:56 AM UTC

knuckleheads wrote: post #37

> Mehta’s decision is expected to trigger a separate proceeding to determine what penalties Google will face – and the company is also likely to file an appeal As a Google antitrust watcher, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with what remedies the court will actually recommend to correct this monopoly. If you ask 20 experts, who all otherwise agree that Google is a monopoly, you might get 40 different answers ab…

An aspect often overlooked is that the tech giants have an enormous advantage because they have harvested information for decades. In addition, highly targeted advertising creates all kinds of troubles for democracy when done on a scale like Google and Meta.

So, a powerful solution would be to make targeted advertising illegal. This would make it easier for new competitors to enter the market and make it visible if someone abuses the ad industry to push political agendas.