[HN Gopher] Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
___________________________________________________________________
Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
Author : rvz
Score : 546 points
Date : 2024-08-05 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| sva_ wrote:
| This could be bad for Mozilla?
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Yes it could very well be although I expect Google to appeal
| this ruling.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Yes. And seat belt laws are bad for hospitals and undertakers.
| notatallshaw wrote:
| Can you please expand or explain on this analogy.
|
| I'm struggling to connect how Google's last major browser
| engine competitor potentially losing it's funding due to a
| separate monopoly issue is similar to laws being passed to
| reduce death and hospitalizations.
| aednichols wrote:
| The DOJ is concerned with moving the needle on one specific
| issue (search monopoly a.k.a. seatbelts) and is not
| concerned about the side effects on related entities
| (Firefox a.k.a. undertakers).
| cvhc wrote:
| FOF P 334. Google's default placements on Firefox generate
| 80% of Mozilla's overall operating revenue, demonstrating
| that the vast majority of query volume on Firefox goes
| through defaults.
|
| Ref: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25032745/045110
| 819896...
| bagels wrote:
| The analogy is: Sometimes the one negative outcome (Mozilla
| & hospitals losing money) is a price well paid for another
| positive one (regulating monopolies & reduced deaths).
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Not using a seatbelt is unhealthy. Using Google search as
| the default is unhealthy as well.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| Bad for _Firefox_ , which still relies exclusively on Google
| sponsorship.
|
| _Thunderbird_ , on the other hand, takes user donations.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Thunderbird, on the other hand, takes user donations.
|
| And it depends on Firefox, sadly.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| Fair enough. In any case, _now_ would probably be a good
| moment for Mozilla to reconsider user donations on Firefox.
|
| Just my EUR50 of course isn't going to change the future by
| itself. But I'd happily give it to them if they'd let me.
|
| (And I don't even mind manually removing Google and
| replacing it with DDG.)
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've long been baffled at the inability to contribute to
| Firefox development. It seems crazy to me that this isn't
| possible.
| mozempthrowaway wrote:
| Just so you know, the money users donate goes towards
| political causes not towards Firefox.
|
| When you are donating, you are donating to the Mozilla
| Foundation (which is a non-profit). All Firefox
| development is done through Mozilla Corporation (which is
| a for profit entity). There is no way to donate to
| Firefox.
| zbentley wrote:
| Do you mean it depends on Firefox for money and staff from
| Mozilla inc/fdn? Or that it uses a Firefox-based browser
| engine for HTML emails?
|
| If the latter, I don't imagine this will have too terribly
| much impact. Email clients often lag behind browsers in
| what they can display.
| asadotzler wrote:
| It's not just the "rendering engine" it's the entire
| software stack from down at the bottom with the IO and
| networking libraries to mid-layers of JS and core
| rendering, to very top with the UI toolkit. There's not
| much in Thunderbird that isn't Firefox and it's almost
| all custom Mozilla code, about 20 million lines of it,
| and not heavily reliant on major OS libs like so many
| other large-scale apps.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _could be bad for Mozilla?_
|
| Just skimmed the ruling [1]. A pillar appears to be that
| "Google's distribution agreements are exclusive." So if Mozilla
| _e.g._ auctions off the next N installs default-search engine
| designation, it might work? (Also, the ruling doesn't ban
| exclusive distribution agreements in general.)
|
| [1]
| https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25032745/045110819896...
| dwallin wrote:
| IMO, this is the best think that could happen for Firefox.
| Mozilla as an organization has been thoroughly corrupted by
| huge buckets of money being thrown at them by Google. "The
| Resource Curse" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)
| doesn't only apply to countries.
| yesco wrote:
| While they are certainly dependent on Google funding, I believe
| this dependence is a net negative for the long term health of
| Firefox development. It implicitly skews the incentives of
| Mozilla leadership, making them comfortable with getting lots
| of money they didn't really work for and giving them some funny
| ideas on where their priorities lie.
|
| Presumably a proper non profit would be more incentivized to
| stick to the projects ideals so they can brag about it in their
| fundraising activities (with perhaps a little too much of that
| money going into administrator pockets on the down low).
| Meanwhile Google's funding creates a status quo where it's
| pretty much fine with anything so long as Firefox continues to
| exist as a scarecrow to anti-trust suits. It effectively
| muscles out all the potential well meaning donors which could
| have helped steer things in a more positive direction, and acts
| like a sword of damocles floating over Mozilla's head,
| engorging the organization in addictive cash they don't
| deserve, and implicitly discouraging them from ever stepping on
| Google's toes lest the money hose gets turned off.
|
| These days I'd call Firefox "good enough" from a privacy & open
| source perspective. It checks the boxes, and while I'm actually
| pretty open to the UI changes they have made over the years,
| I've gotten the sense that top Mozilla leadership don't really
| care about Firefox anymore, even distancing themself from it in
| certain respects. These days Firefox doesn't really seem to be
| going anywhere, it does the bare minimum by implementing web
| standards but all efforts to distinguish it from Chrome seem to
| be gradually extinguished. I wouldn't even be surprised at this
| point if they eventually turned off Mv2 support in a few years
| from now, despite all promises to the contrary, citing
| complexity or perhaps even "security" like Google's been doing
| as the reason.
|
| If in the "worst" case Mozilla shutters down or abandons
| Firefox development after losing their money hose, perhaps the
| mindshare of the community they have been hoarding away all
| these years will coalesce around a healthier fork with an
| organization structure closer to the Linux foundation, maybe
| then Firefox would actually have a future again.
|
| One can only dream.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Long overdue ruling.
| rbera wrote:
| At the very least, I hope the Apple-Google ~~exclusivity~~
| default agreement is revoked. I suppose it'll take another year
| to figure out the actual remedies though.
| lvzw wrote:
| I think a year for the remedies is optimistic - could drag on
| for a while. Also worth mentioning that it is not an
| exclusivity agreement - it is a default agreement.
| rbera wrote:
| You're right, my bad on the terminology. A year is definitely
| optimistic, I just hope that's the first draft pending
| appeals. the longer it stretches on, the greater chance there
| is of directives being changed, lobbyists influencing
| politicians, etc.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| This could surely open the door for Apple Search as the silver
| lining.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Yes the silver lining is the other monopolist getting their
| share of the pie.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > other monopolist
|
| Ha ha. I know what you're saying though.
| largbae wrote:
| Wouldn't this just hot swap one monopolist policy for
| another?
| kelnos wrote:
| Pretty much. And just push Apple customers further into
| Apple's walled garden.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The door was open the whole time
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Apple doesn't allow you to switch search engines on iPhone?
| linotype wrote:
| They for sure do. Takes 30 seconds, just go to Settings then
| Safari.
| Tumblewood wrote:
| they do allow you to switch - maybe it refers to google
| paying to be the default search engine?
| dwighttk wrote:
| seems like these days most of the payment is 36% of ads in
| Google searches, but maybe there is also some money sent
| specifically for it to be the default.
| asadotzler wrote:
| They get paid a share of ad revenue their users generate
| _if_ they make Google the default in all of their web
| search entry points. These are not separate. The deal is
| 1) "make Google the default" and then 2) "there's a
| revenue share". No 1 then no 2.
| ein0p wrote:
| On iOS it's only from a pre approved list. Want to use a less
| censored search like Brave? Nope, unless you use something
| other than Safari.
| linotype wrote:
| What browser allows you to specify a custom search engine?
| I just checked Chrome and it doesn't on desktop.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426?hl=en&co=G
| ENI...
| efsavage wrote:
| It's confusing, but if you add a "Site search" and then
| set it to your default, it becomes a "Search engine".
| linotype wrote:
| Ah got it, thank you.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Firefox, for what - 20 years now?
|
| You can make any search field on any web site your
| default search engine.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| My idea is that they could auction off the right to be the
| default search engine separately in each state. So google could
| still win most of the auctions but if some other smaller
| provider wanted a chance they could concentrate their whole bet
| into a smaller market like Rhode Island or whatever.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| https://archive.ph/cqPWM
| rvz wrote:
| Remember folks, it isn't over yet, I'd expect Google to appeal
| this one and this is just about their search dominance.
|
| There is another one on the way with the DOJ going after their
| Ads business. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-
| googl...
| nilptr wrote:
| While not over they have a tough battle ahead. This was a case
| brought by the Trump Admin and carried on under Biden. I don't
| see a conservative Federal judge gutting this ruling any more
| than I do a liberal one.
| NotPractical wrote:
| > 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?
| warkdarrior wrote:
| It's "free market capitalism and deregulation" for
| corporations WE like.
| babelfish wrote:
| Has the full opinion been published yet?
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| Yes. Viewable here:
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us...
| perihelions wrote:
| (PDF, 286pp)
| https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25032745/045110819896...
|
| via
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us...
| howard941 wrote:
| IMO this item should point to the Verge's piece rather than
| the paywalled Bloomberg thing
| richwater wrote:
| How does this finding actually help consumers, in real life? They
| get to choose a search engine (spoiler alert: it will be Google),
| and life moves on. Except, smaller browser projects now miss on
| that default search revenue, potentially entrenching Chrome as
| the dominant browser.
| eastbound wrote:
| So, smaller browsers can't help entrenching Google Search? Is
| that a bad thing? Aren't all of those using the WebKit engine
| anyway?
| m_ke wrote:
| It gives people room to try, especially now with new entrants
| like perplexity that might offer better results.
|
| Google search went to shit and ruined most of the web with it,
| by creating an SEO industry that's 100% focused on optimizing
| for their ranking signals.
| causal wrote:
| Yup. Google is king because it's the default, not because
| it's the best. Take away the bribed default position and
| suddenly better search engines stand a chance - and that's
| great for consumers.
| diogofranco wrote:
| > by creating an SEO industry that's 100% focused on
| optimizing for their ranking signals.
|
| The SEO industry will optimize towards ranking on whatever
| search engine people are using
| m_ke wrote:
| It would be a lot harder to do if the market had more
| viable competitors. In a world with 5-6 dominant options
| and a long tail of niche search engines you'd probably have
| options that penalize blog spam, aggregators like pinterest
| and sites with paywalls or millions of ads / affiliate
| links.
| krackers wrote:
| >spoiler alert: it will be Google
|
| With the recent LLM stuff, I'm not so sure. Maybe OpenAI will
| have searchGPT as an option. After all, for a mobile user
| interface that seems more appropriate since I'm not going to be
| banging out a complex query.
| hugh_kagi wrote:
| 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 an extension can do one thing and one thing
| only, and recently removed our extension on account of that [1].
| We rebuilt it to meet their needs but had a lot of back-and-forth
| because we included 'search by image' on a context menu item and
| the first reviewer felt that was a bridge too far. You'll note
| that Chrome provides such a context menu item for Google Image
| search out of the box.
|
| 3. On Chrome for Linux, the default search engine API is not
| available, so Linux users have to configure it manually through a
| series of silly steps [2]. This is at least in keeping with most
| Linux experiences.
|
| There are other issues, but I say all this to highlight how
| surprisingly difficult it is to change this setting in a
| practical, consumer friendly way. It is most certainly this
| difficult by design, that's a lot of revenue to protect.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41028924
|
| 2:
| https://github.com/kagisearch/chrome_extension_basic?tab=rea...
| hintymad wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Wouldn't this be the fault of Apple as it is Apple that
| controls the list?
| srcreigh wrote:
| Apple could be getting paid off by google to keep this aspect
| of search difficult to change.
| bn-l wrote:
| $20 _billion_ in 2022 according to the verge via court
| docs: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/2/24147007/google-
| paid-apple...
| lupire wrote:
| If these hypothetically had no impact on the rest of the
| business, and were just an arbitrary payment, they would
| be the difference between Google having more profit than
| Apple, and vice versa.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, absolutely not -- that says _nothing whatsoever_
| about making the default difficult to change.
|
| It's just about what the default _is_.
| srcreigh wrote:
| The "make search difficult to change" is more obviously
| anti trust worthy, and if they did make this deal I would
| not be surprised if they were careful to not write
| anything down.
|
| (Not to mention google deleting chats against court
| orders)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| sure, but every change away from that default means
| having the default is that much less valuable. So it sort
| of seems like it might make financial sense not devoting
| dev time to making it easy to switch.
| pydry wrote:
| That last part requires a nudge and a wink, just like
| those OEMs who didn't "need" to make it annoying as fuck
| to turn off secure boot under the terms of their contract
| with Microsoft but did it anyway because they knew what
| was good for them.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| It "says nothing whatsoever" only if you fell off the
| turnip truck yesterday, or have a vested interest in
| defending a massive corporation.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| When you are committing a crime, do you put it in
| writing, sign it and send it to a judge?
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| If the rate Google pays is in some way set per usage/rev-
| share, then Google is indeed paying to make the setting
| difficult to change.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > If the rate Google pays is in some way set per
| usage/rev-share
|
| Rule number 1 of commiting a crime, is don't create
| evidence and then sign it yourself and send it to lawyers
| maximus_01 wrote:
| The deal with Google is not a fixed amount. It has a
| revenue component (ie a share of Google revenue from that
| user). So the motivation for Apple to make it difficult is
| clear - a user switching browser costs Apple money as it
| does not have revenue share deals with others
| causal wrote:
| Important context is that massive sum of money Google pays
| for such exclusivity.
| SllX wrote:
| Google pays to be the default, not for exclusivity as
| evidenced by the list of SEs Apple provides to swap to.
|
| I never knew what the hell Apple was doing with the
| extremely limited set of search engines with the only means
| to change it being to choose one of the others Apple has
| included on a static list which cannot be modified by the
| user.
| jsnell wrote:
| It's because the only way to get on that list at all is
| to pay Apple (as revealed in this very case).
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's false.
|
| Google paid Apple to be the default.
|
| There is no reporting whatsoever that there is any other
| payment to be in the list of alternatives. There is no
| evidence that Microsoft pays Apple to include Bing in the
| list of alternatives.
|
| So nothing whatsoever like that was revealed in the case.
| jsnell wrote:
| Dude, given you don't have any evidence to the contrary,
| the correct response here is "wow, I hadn't heard of
| that, please tell me more", rather than to assume that if
| you haven't heard of something, it must be false.
|
| I don't know why there was no reporting of this, but it
| is what Gabriel Wineberg testified to under oath. See the
| trial transcripts, 2023-09-21, 1:36pm[0].
|
| > Q. And since this agreement was signed in 2014,
| DuckDuckGo has been one of the built in options that a
| user can select as their search engine in Safari, right?
|
| > A. Yes.
|
| > Q. DuckDuckGo agreed, through this service integration
| agreement, to pay Apple a share of the revenue that
| DuckDuckGo receives from certain search traffic
| originating from Safari, right?
|
| > A. Yes.
|
| You see how that is DDG paying for being in the list of
| alternatives, right? And that it was revealed in this
| case?
|
| [0] https://thecapitolforum.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/10/2023....
| meiraleal wrote:
| There is proof (not just evidence) that Google paid to be
| on the list. There is evidence that to be on that list,
| one needs to pay; therefore, there is evidence that
| Microsoft also paid to be there.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You think Ecosia pays any substantial money to Apple?
| SllX wrote:
| We don't actually know that. I do sometimes wonder if
| that's the case, but you shouldn't state something as a
| fact without anything to back it up.
| jsnell wrote:
| We actually know it. I told you how we know it, and you
| ignored it. If that wasn't enough for you, you could have
| asked for details rather than scold me about not
| providing tedious details on something that was public
| knowledge.
|
| Anyway, I've provided said tedious details in a sibling
| comment.
| init2null wrote:
| There's no excuse for not making search engine management as
| simple and flexible as Firefox does, especially on the desktop,
| but I appreciate the hoops you jump through to keep hacks
| available for browsers with less user choice.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| This would be the same Firefox that changed my default search
| from Kagi to Google after a routine update?
| init2null wrote:
| I've never had that happen and wouldn't appreciate it.
| Corrupted configuration maybe?
| sitkack wrote:
| Kagi on Firefox requires an extension, which is ridiculous.
| I am about to find a more user friendly browser. Session,
| bookmarking and history search haven't seen any meaningful
| improvement in 15+ years.
| mrob wrote:
| Firefox makes you jump through hoops too. To enable the UI
| for adding custom search engines you need to set the
| undocumented preference
| "browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh" to true.
| init2null wrote:
| I meant changing it in Preferences though, and not a drop-
| down like it used to be. You can add completely new
| engines, change defaults, and even give them keywords for
| quick searches without any undocumented change.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| If I was a government party with subpoena power I'd be
| really interested in the email chain around that decision.
| yorwba wrote:
| The code review comments indicate they had an in-person
| meeting: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D86987
|
| (My impression is that the feature is hidden behind a
| setting because it's half-baked and not yet ready to
| replace opensearchdescription xml, add-ons, and bookmark
| keywords as the official way to add search engines.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you were a government party with subpoena power, you'd
| think the internet was made of tubes. You'd have no idea
| how tech works, and only rubber stamp things tech
| companies provide you. Otherwise, you'd be over qualified
| and too focused on things other than raising money,
| kissing babies while stealing their lollipops.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| To be fair to some of my former colleagues in government,
| there are some folks who do know about tech in Congress
| and smattered across federal agencies and the White
| House. While politicians themselves may not know how the
| internet works, if they listen to their staffers (which
| many do on the actual technical part of a topic if not
| the political or other implications of an issue), they
| are probably at least somewhat informed.
|
| For those with tech knowledge who want to try to change
| things, I recommend checking out
| https://www.techcongress.io/,
| https://horizonpublicservice.org/ (they both have a
| cohort they're recruiting for right now) and USDS.
| zufallsheld wrote:
| At least on mobile Firefox for Android, that's not true.
| It's there by default.
| Twirrim wrote:
| You can change between ones that you have a search tools
| extension for, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/extensions/category..., but you can't just put
| your own custom search engine in.
|
| That said, keyword searches are awesome and I use them
| for a whole lot of things, including effectively custom
| search engines. I have keyword searches against, e.g.,
| internal confluence docs so I only have to enter "con
| <thing I'm searching for>" and firefox will load the
| confluence search page, or "people <name>" to bring up
| our internal phonebook with a search for the employee. I
| don't think I've ever needed to add my own entirely
| custom search engine to the browser.
| XMPPwocky wrote:
| I have UI to enter a custom URL for search in Firefox for
| Android, with no extensions beyond Privacy Badger,
| Unhook, and uBlock Origin- interesting.
| lcouturi wrote:
| This is not really true. The about:config flag you
| mentioned does add a button in the Settings page allowing
| the addition of custom search engines, but that's only
| because the intended method for adding search engines is
| different. The normal way doesn't require setting anything
| in about:config, but it might be a little hidden (still
| found it on my own though, so I dunno).
|
| The regular way is to visit the homepage for the search
| engine you want to add and click the URL bar. This will
| show the usual search drop-down with the "This time, search
| with:" row at the bottom. If you're on the homepage for a
| search engine which hasn't been added to Firefox, there
| will be an additional button on that row allowing you to
| add the site as a search engine, which will make it
| accessible from the regular settings page like every other
| search engine.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| Even Firefox has its issues - they don't sync search settings
| along with everything else, and the reason is they're worried
| about interfering with paid search defaults on new installs.
| isomorphic wrote:
| The last time I checked (this may have changed), Firefox
| also tags the default search engines with URL query
| parameters indicating that the search came from Firefox.
| When I tried to change this it would not let me edit the
| default URLs. I had to add entirely-new versions of Google
| and DuckDuckGo, with custom names and stripped-down URLs in
| order to avoid the tagging.
|
| No doubt it is revenue-related, but it's also a privacy
| problem.
| coldpie wrote:
| > it's also a privacy problem.
|
| Can you describe how? What information is that query
| parameter providing to an attacker that is not being
| provided in 50 other ways?
| worksonmine wrote:
| Your question is assuming they're not already locking
| down as many of the 50 other ways as possible. Yes there
| are other bad things but that doesn't mean we should add
| #51 to that list.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying
| customers change their search engine:
|
| I use Kagi's extensions to maintain Kagi as default search
| across many devices and browsers. It's been seamless across
| Firefox/Waterfox/etc instances.
|
| IIRC, Kiwi and Brave were fairly agreeable (I avoid Chrome,
| Edge). Opera was a pain because Opera is a pain about
| everything.
|
| I appreciate the effort you+team have put into this.
| prophesi wrote:
| I did have issues on Linux regarding the extension working in
| private windows due to the official Firefox extension being
| out-of-date. Using the latest Github release of their
| extension fixed it, and they promptly submitted the new
| update for it to propagate through the extension store after
| a ticket on their feedback forum asked about it[0].
|
| Github releases with .xpi's to install have been removed[1]
| which is odd but hopefully they keep up with their Firefox
| extension submissions if this is the route they're going
| down.
|
| As for Chrome, I only use it for automated/manual testing
| since that's what everyone uses.
|
| [0] https://kagifeedback.org/d/2234-kagi-extension-api-key-
| not-p...
|
| [1] https://github.com/kagisearch/browser_extensions/releases
| hugh_kagi wrote:
| We're definitely keeping the extensions going, just need to
| prioritise a few parts internally.
|
| You can just git clone the new chrome extension and 'load
| unpacked' if that's of any use. It's extremely simple.
|
| https://github.com/kagisearch/chrome_extension_basic
| jd3 wrote:
| I'm surprised Kagi Search wasn't mentioned once in the ruling
| given that it's the most compelling Google competitor on the
| market.
| mbreese wrote:
| Specifically, it's the most compelling competitor that isn't
| included in the default iOS search engine list...
| dartos wrote:
| I think openai is the most notable org taking swings at
| Google.
|
| At least Google seems to feel that way. Might just be the
| Silicon Valley bubble
| jd3 wrote:
| While true, it is also notable that ChatGPT is not a search
| engine, SearchGPT is not live yet, and that AI results have
| only further diminished the quality of search results in
| Google Search.
|
| If anything, OpenAI has only served to further exacerbate
| and accelerate the inevitable decline of Google Search.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Tell me you live in a tech bubble without telling me you live
| in a tech bubble.
| jd3 wrote:
| I do deep research for a living and it's the only search
| engine I've tried that returns superior results over Google
| Search.
| dagmx wrote:
| I don't believe they're questioning the quality of the
| product but rather the broad market knowledge of it.
|
| It may be great or not, but it's largely unknown outside
| of a tech bubble, and therefore is unlikely to be
| mentioned.
|
| There should be absolutely no surprise there.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| I use Orion exclusively because Kagi is the default search
| engine. It does have a few more bugs than chrome / safari, but
| they're well worth putting up with to get native Kagi support.
| Thank you.
|
| It's interesting though - what is Apple's vested interest in
| only having native support for certain search engines? I now no
| longer use their browser because of this - I would think that
| is _some_ kind of loss for them. Maybe not, since I'm on macOS
| anyway.
| mandevil wrote:
| According to sworn testimony, Apple got over 20 billion
| dollars from Google in 2022.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-.
| ..
| matwood wrote:
| That's to have Google be default. It doesn't explain why
| it's impossible to add others to the list.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I can think of 20 billion reasons.
| trentnix wrote:
| I think the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to
| figure it out.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Are we supposing that Google made their payment
| conditional on obfuscating the ability to switch search
| engines?
| mminer237 wrote:
| Even if not explicitly conditioned, which I don't believe
| came out as being the case in this case, there's still an
| inherent motivation. Google will pay more for a default
| on an OS where it's hard to switch the default than it
| will for a default where it's easy to switch away. Google
| might pay $20 billion for defaults on iOS as-is where 99%
| of people stick with Google, but if Apple started asking
| users if they were sure and offering alternatives and
| Google only remained the default for half of people, they
| logically would only offer maybe $10 billion to remain
| default on the same actual terms.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It seems plausible. Mostly I think people should be
| explicit and clear about their accusations.
|
| Something that doesn't make a ton of sense to me in this
| theory is that, despite it being hard to add a new engine
| (which is not great), it is easy to switch away from
| Google on iOS. And the big search engines are in their
| pre-populated list. So it seems Google and Apple have
| engaged in a conspiracy to keep people from switching...
| just to the niche engines? That doesn't make a ton of
| sense, right? Google is probably not more scared of Kagi
| than Bing.
|
| My first guess is that Apple lived through the era of
| confused non-technical people adding a bunch of scam
| search engines and didn't want a repeat of that.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| As long as it's an ongoing relationship nothing needs to
| be said. Apple knows that if more users swap away from
| the default then the default setting is less valuable.
| bee_rider wrote:
| If that is what the (vaguely described) conspiracy is, it
| doesn't really make a ton of sense, because the pre-
| populated list of search engines already includes most of
| Google's main competitors.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is one of those "a wink is as good as a nod to a
| blind person" situations so that plausible deniability is
| maintained while getting the desired results
| bee_rider wrote:
| I get that sometimes conspiracies are not explicitly
| written down in contracts. But _we_ can still describe
| them in clear terms.
| mandevil wrote:
| Under these circumstances, it is appropriate to ask who
| is the customer. Then presume that the company is trying
| its best to make the customer happy.
|
| Apple has clearly defined that the customer for the
| "default search engine selection" option is Google and
| not the users. There is obviously some mediation by
| regulators in Europe and elsewhere (hence Google's major
| competitors being included on the list), but the customer
| is Google. I think that from that fact flows two further
| inferences: A) the customer might not want to write down
| everything, or even communicate in any non-deniable way,
| all of their preferences (due to those regulators), but
| can presume that Apple understands their preferences B)
| The customer is happy to the tune of 20 billion dollars
| with the current set-up.
| rdsnsca wrote:
| That doesn't mean all Apple users use it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, it means Google paid Apple and Kagi didn't.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| 1. That sounds like an Apple issue, not a Google issue
|
| 2. That sounds perfectly reasonable. Google doesn't want people
| to bundle other things for users who want to install just a
| different default search (and not "your hotbar" like the
| Netscape days).
|
| 3. I'm not sure what you're talking about, is Chrome on Linux
| default search configured differently than Chrome on Windows?
| currysausage wrote:
| _> That sounds like an Apple issue_
|
| True. But guess who's paying Apple good money in order to
| remain the default search engine. Who knows what else might
| be part of this deal?
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Moving the goalposts? This is about the list of allowed
| baked in search engines, not what the default is.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Everybody who has read the contract. What are you alleging?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Antitrust breach, market manipulation, collusion, wage
| suppression - basically the usual stuff they do.
|
| Oh, and when they agreed to suppress wages through an
| anti-poaching agreement, was that explicit in the
| contract?
|
| https://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/
| asddubs wrote:
| >2. That sounds perfectly reasonable. Google doesn't want
| people to bundle other things for users who want to install
| just a different default search (and not "your hotbar" like
| the Netscape days).
|
| I suspect it's the other way around. They don't want random
| extensions to mess with your search engine because they get
| kickbacks from yahoo or whatever. Though if the extension is
| named for a search engine I don't think it should apply.
| milofeynman wrote:
| Lets not kid ourselves. This wasn't a random reviewer giving
| you a hard time, your extension is definitely being "reviewed"
| way up the chain in order to find any menial reason to not
| allow you.
| asddubs wrote:
| >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 an extension can do one thing and one thing
| only, and recently removed our extension on account of that
| [1]. We rebuilt it to meet their needs but had a lot of back-
| and-forth because we included 'search by image' on a context
| menu item and the first reviewer felt that was a bridge too
| far. You'll note that Chrome provides such a context menu item
| for Google Image search out of the box.
|
| I guess this is so that unrelated extension X can't also change
| the default search while it's at it, like in the good old IE
| days, so it kind of sort of makes sense. though if the
| extension is named after a search engine it should probably get
| a pass, and the context menu thing obviously is also related to
| search.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| I'm one of the paying Kagi customer who wants to make Kagi my
| default iOS search engine, but cannot. It's maddening that even
| though I paid for both my iPhone / iPad and for Kagi, Apple for
| some reason makes it impossible for me to make this choice
| (that I already made by paying for Kagi).
|
| On Chrome at least this is possible, even if it's additional
| steps (I have not used the extension though there.)
| te_chris wrote:
| Some few billion reasons*
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I too am a paying customer. Surprisingly -- at least to me --
| it's easy to do with Microsoft's Edge browser on iOS. I use
| it as default on both iOS and macOS.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| It's only easy now because Microsoft had a lot of runs in
| with the US and EU regulators on this specific issue in the
| past.
| lozenge wrote:
| And because MS wants to increase its userbase on IOS and
| macOS. Meanwhile Windows Start Menu is locked to Edge and
| Bing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I'm one of the paying Kagi customer who wants to make Kagi
| my default iOS search engine, but cannot_
|
| FYI, there is a workaround [1]. It's trash that Apple makes
| us do this. But you _can_.
|
| Granted, it nudged me to switch to Orion as my main desktop
| browser.
|
| [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-
| default.h...
| immibis wrote:
| 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.
| usr1106 wrote:
| 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 houses?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Compromise on your computing freedom, compromise on your
| attention and privacy, when both providers are out to fuck
| you it doesn't really feel like you have a meaningful
| choice to make. Asking for an environment where fucking
| your customers isn't allowed feels like the only option.
| immibis wrote:
| Many Android devices can be de-Googled. Also, let's not
| pretend Apple isn't spying on your iCloud account to
| protect the children.
| malfist wrote:
| That's the power of monopoly, or in this case duopoly. You
| don't get to choose to not buy into the platform
| immibis wrote:
| But you do. You get to choose to buy into the other
| platform, which is significantly more open. If for some
| reason you choose not to, then you obviously don't value
| openness very much.
| Malp wrote:
| I recommend trying out Quiche Browser on iOS, or Orion from
| Kagi- both will support Kagi as a search option. Spotlight
| search still goes to Google, but I find that acceptable.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| "for some reason" (the reason was 20 billion per year in
| cash)
| layer8 wrote:
| Since you are also operating in the EU, it sounds like you
| could bring these issues up with the Commission.
| otterley wrote:
| Have you engaged Apple about registering your search engine?
| How's that process going?
| throwaway88222 wrote:
| 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
| Google Search" deal, instead Google is basically the product
| manager and ux designer for the browser and they spell out in
| the contract how search works, how the navigation works, what
| the UX looks like, what is allowed and not allowed in terms of
| competing search engines. On mobile it goes further than that
| and they also dictate how the browser integrates with Android
| features related to search and voice search.
|
| Mozilla can't surive without Google cash and I fully believe
| they negotiated hard for a good fair deal that puts users and
| choice first but I am also sure that Google got the better hand
| and that is why Search in Firefox has been largely "product
| managed" / micro-managed by Google.
|
| Apple probably had much more freedom becsuse of their size and
| power and I don't really understand why it is not possible to
| add a custom search engine. There is no advantage for Apple to
| not allow this. Other than .. Google probably force a good deal
| in their advantage? Apple taking more money by allowing less
| choice, or even being forced to accept a new deal?
|
| Not having a search deal is simply not an option. Mozilla would
| die. Apple would have to explain billions of revenue loss to
| shareholders. Both are impossible.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It used to be pretty common for computer-illiterate people to
| add a bunch of extra search bars and other weird hotbars,
| often of ill-repute, by accident. Maybe Apple just didn't
| want to repeat that.
| fantasybuilder wrote:
| I use only Kagi on all my devices. Thank you for building a
| phenomenal search engine.
|
| On iOS my Safari browser is always in private mode. I never use
| non-private tabs. Kagi integration via the Safari extension
| works most of the time - but was broken for several months
| (required re-logging into Kagi when opening a new private tab
| after a delay). It looks like you fixed it just a couple of
| weeks ago, so I appreciate that.
|
| I am raising this just so you are aware of this use case -
| always staying in private mode.
|
| (The fact that iOS doesn't allow setting the default search
| provider in Safari to anything other than half a dozen of pre-
| selected partners is abysmal.)
| cletus wrote:
| 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 and Google is saving a bundle.
|
| I get the thinking that you have to prevent lock-in (eg
| Ticketmaster and venues) but Google didn't buy its way into
| dominance annd maintain their dominance through exclusivity
| deals. They simply have a better product and I don't expect
| anyone to match them anytime soon (cue the DDG "I switched from
| Google to DDG 78 years ago" crowd).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Most users will probably still use Google, nobody is getting
| paid and Google is saving a bundle_
|
| The ruling doesn't say exclusive distribution agreements are
| illegal. It says Google can't enter into them.
| skissane wrote:
| > What's more, no one else can pay to be the default either (eg
| the short-lived Mozilla Bing deal).
|
| Not sure if that is true-competition laws often prohibit the
| dominant market player from doing certain things, yet still
| allow smaller players to do the same thing.
| the_duke wrote:
| I assume OP meant in terms of money. Apple will not accept
| scraps (like tens of Millions) for the default search engine,
| after getting billions from Google. And no-one else will have
| the financial resources or be willing to burn these amounts
| (Microsoft) to offer similar numbers.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| They don't need to offer similar numbers? If this ruling
| prohibits Google, the dominant search engine, from buying
| their Safari defaults, then Apple has a choice of:
|
| - Zero dollars
|
| - More than zero dollars from a smaller search competitor
| (Bing? New AI player?)
|
| I suspect Apple will want more than nothing. They also have
| quarterly financials to report.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > They also have quarterly financials to report.
|
| one of the biggest brands in the world, with how many
| billions in CASH .. needs the money.. This is the same
| nonsense that WSJ peddles everyday.. "greed is good" and
| makes the world go around, details are just in the way.
|
| No, actually.. there are other parts of society that are
| touched by this, and their children btw.. Apple and
| Google and whomever are now bumping against the edges of
| Big Society. There is no predicting what will come out of
| the woodwork on this IMHO
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Apple's biggest disincentive to continue the practice is
| that they _themselves_ end up in the monopoly crosshairs
| from time-to-time, and it doesn 't look good in terms of
| the DOJ targeting them if they continue a practice that
| was ruled monopolistic with another company. It isn't
| necessarily monopolistic if they do, but it raises
| suspicion.
|
| (Personally, I wish monopoly law didn't seem so much like
| "vibes". It's really hard to answer whether the rule is
| fair when the same actions have different legal
| consequences depending on some vaguely-defined categories
| like "market sector").
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Apple creating their own search engine will likely raise
| more eyebrows than letting an existing Google competitor
| buy their way into the iPhone ecosystem. In fact the DOJ
| may prefer a smaller player turn into a bigger competitor
| to Google, even if that's Microsoft's Bing.
|
| As others have pointed out, these types of deals haven't
| been ruled illegal, they only apply to Google for abusing
| its monopoly.
|
| Apple will want more than zero dollars.
| causal wrote:
| Disagree. People use Google because it's the default, not
| because they will go out of their way to keep using it. The
| minute Apple changes the iPhone default, all but a few iPhone
| users stop using Google.
| chadash wrote:
| Chrome is not anyone's default browser, but it still has
| dominance. People will be bothered _a little_ under some
| circumstances.
| acdha wrote:
| Chrome is a complicated case in general because Google
| poured money into promoting Chrome and had some of the most
| popular sites on the web promoting it heavily and actively
| sabotaged Firefox at several key points. I respect a lot of
| the Chrome team's early work but it's very hard for me to
| see that as a story about fair competition alone.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yeah, this is the thing that gets me. Chrome is the
| (rare) exception when we're talking about defaults
| generally winning, not the rule.
|
| An interesting thought experiment might be to imagine if
| Chrome was actually somehow the default browser on
| Windows and/or macOS. I think we could expect Edge's
| and/or Safari's market share numbers to be much lower
| than they are now if that were the case.
| jfoster wrote:
| So, to summarize: defaults are powerful, but advertising
| is more powerful.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Specifically, Google was leveraging their existence as
| "THE web" to push their web browser. Every single Google
| property aggressively displayed banners and reminders and
| nag prompts ensuring you "Gmail is best in Chrome" and
| other nonsense that "Just one click here to fix".
|
| Yes, putting a single button with vague words in front of
| users almost always gets a lot of clicks, which we've
| known for decades, and it turns out, if you have the
| attention of nearly the entire web-browsing world, you
| can put that button in front of people's faces way more
| than your competitors. It should have been considered
| billions of dollars of free advertising for Chrome that
| should have been assessed against them somehow.
|
| It's blatantly unfair and should have been shut down in
| literally days, but nooooooooo we aren't allowed to have
| regulation here in the states.
| acdha wrote:
| Not just advertising: Mozilla could not have put a
| "better in Firefox" button on Gmail or YouTube at any
| price, or forced Google to follow through on their
| promise around H.264, etc.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Mozilla could not have put a "better in Firefox"
| button on Gmail or YouTube at any price_
|
| Microsoft is literally doing this, and yet...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/microsoft-edge-
| will-...
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| For factual correctness, I'll point out that Chrome is the
| default on (Pixel) Android and ChromeOS.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| For those disagreeing, the power of defaults is _incredibly
| powerful_ , most users are blissfully unaware on how to, or
| why they might want to change them. Sure, plenty will change
| it back, but many won't. We've seen this play out with Apple
| Maps already -- Something that may get Apple in trouble too.
|
| Remember that Google was paying Apple _20 BILLION_ for the
| privilege, and a key reason they had an antitrust case
| against them!
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, defaults _aren 't_ incredibly powerful.
|
| Chrome utterly dominates Edge on Windows, despite Edge
| being default.
|
| How do you explain that?
|
| The reality is that people know what they like, and most
| will switch to the thing they like most. _Especially_ when
| it costs nothing.
| talldayo wrote:
| On top of that, the mindshare of "Googling it" dominates
| users brains just as much as Kleenex branding does. I'm
| sure most of us have watched someone use another search
| engine to look up Google before.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| 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 after the tremendous
| shortcomings during the Windows 8 and 8.1 era. This was a
| time when everyone was telling people to not use IE, and
| yet it retained ~20% use. Nothing like now where Chrome
| dominates ~70%.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Google: Hands _20 billion_ to Apple to keep defaults to
| Google.
|
| You: No, defaults _aren 't_ incredibly powerful.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Yeah I mean obviously people here in the forum know how
| to spend 20 billion dollars than the dumb executives
| there...
| Trompair wrote:
| Simple: All they know is Google.
|
| Launch Edge > Search "Google" > Bing displays Google
| Search link > Click > Google Search tells user to install
| Chrome > User installs Chrome > Google maintains browser
| and search engine monopoly
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| a lot of that is from past intertia. if the default
| becomes good enough then newer people who don't know what
| they like will use defaults unless it's so bad/people
| recommend that they switch
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| Edge still makes up more than a fifth of Chrome's share
| on Windows. Without being the default, I expect it would
| be close to zero.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| That's because Chrome is vastly better than Edge and that
| is an exceptional situation. In most other places you
| look, you will see people using defaults all the time,
| because defaults are incredibly powerful.
| uabstraction wrote:
| Google leverages their monopoly search position to push
| people towards Chrome, using messages that, to lay
| people, imply a lot of websites won't work correctly
| unless they install Chrome. This is the most charitable
| reading, assuming they don't deliberately impede
| compatibility with third party browsers.
| legitster wrote:
| > 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.
| causal wrote:
| Fair point, but I wasn't able to verify the claim that most
| Windows users are not using Edge since its release. I am
| curious what the actual % is for new Windows PC installs
| that are not governed by a corporate policy.
| apexalpha wrote:
| Not just normies, its just the best search engine...
| j_maffe wrote:
| It's funny you say that because as an Edge user, I
| constantly get bombarded with popups on Google websites
| asking me to switch to Chrome. It's all about who's on top
| and how to keep it that way, not quality.
| Maxatar wrote:
| Perhaps, but it's worth noting that Chrome became the
| dominant browser on Windows even though Internet
| Explorer/Edge is the default browser and comes preinstalled.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's more the exception that proves the rule, though.
| Chrome originally came out when IE was still a steaming
| pile of garbage, and Google spent lots of marketing money
| promoting it as a better, faster alternative. (Something
| that Mozilla had been previously somewhat succeeding at,
| more or less, but they didn't have the same resources and
| eventually lost their gains and fell behind.)
|
| These days Chrome just has so much mind-share that it
| overcomes the defaults on Windows. This is by no means a
| common outcome. This is anecdotal, but I know far more
| people who use Safari instead of Chrome on macOS than who
| use Edge instead of Chrome on Windows; Microsoft just has
| such a bad reputation when it comes to browsers that Chrome
| is able to get over that defaults hump on Windows. But a
| lot of people genuinely like Safari, and trust Apple in
| general, so the effect is (somewhat) lessened on macOS,
| even though IIRC Chrome still does have the lead in market
| share there. Just less of one, percentage-wise.
| Maxatar wrote:
| You're right on some points, other points don't match up
| with my understanding of the issue.
|
| Chrome was a much better browser compared to the default
| that came installed on Windows, and certainly if someone
| is going to switch away from the default they will do it
| towards a much better alternative, on that we agree.
|
| However, despite how much I think Google as a search
| engine has declined in quality, I still find them to be
| significantly superior to the alternatives, such as Bing
| and even DuckDuckGo (which I believe predominantly makes
| use of Bing) and that people will switch from whatever
| default search engine Apple sets to Google.
| troupo wrote:
| Because it was helped by already nearly ubiquitous Google
| search shoving it down everyone's throat on every page
|
| And then ubiquitous Youtube dealing the killing blow:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05/ex-youtube-
| engineer-...
| Maxatar wrote:
| But your article argues the opposite of your claim.
|
| Your article says that Microsoft themselves were working
| to move people away from Internet Explorer 6 and
| encouraging people to upgrade to a modern browser by
| declaring IE 6 to be at its end of life.
|
| The article says that Youtube displayed a banner
| recommending users to upgrade to either Firefox, IE 8, or
| Chrome and that due to concerns by Google's lawyers, the
| order of the browsers was to be randomized so to avoid
| the appearance of giving undue prominence to Chrome.
| Finally the article ends by noting that each of the three
| options Youtube recommended were chosen equally as
| opposed to Chrome being the option picked by most people
| who saw the banner.
|
| This sounds like the exact opposite of shoving it down
| peoples throats and instead trying to be very careful to
| move people away from a browser that Microsoft themselves
| had declared was dead, and onto an alternative option by
| trying to be as fair as possible.
|
| The significance of your article isn't that Google shoved
| Chrome down everyone's throat in order to kill off a
| competitor, it's that due to its popularity and dominant
| position, Youtube was more effective at getting people to
| stop using Internet Explorer 6 than Microsoft was, but
| both companies had the same objective.
|
| Here is an article about Microsoft's own "Friends don't
| let friends use Internet Explorer 6." which discusses
| Microsoft's own efforts to get people to stop using IE 6.
| It's about the same period of time as the article you
| mentioned.
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-friends-dont-let-
| fri...
| troupo wrote:
| > But your article argues the opposite of your claim.
|
| It's not. The article talks about Youtube nailing the
| final nail in IEs coffin, which it did.
|
| As for shoving Chrome down everyone's throats I'm amazed
| no one remembers the ancient history of just 15 years
| ago:
|
| - showing it on search pages:
| http://www.webandsay.com/archives/google-is-actively-
| pushing... - prominently showing it on Youtube:
| http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-google-
| promotes...
| Maxatar wrote:
| Fascinating how two people can read the same article and
| take away two opposite conclusions from it. If anything
| what Youtube did helped Firefox far more than it helped
| Chrome, but I suppose from your point of view it's the
| opposite.
|
| Ah well, c'est la vie!
| troupo wrote:
| > If anything what Youtube did helped Firefox far more
| than it helped Chrome
|
| Let's see:
|
| - huge ad banners promoting Chrome
|
| - literally almost singlehandedly killing IE 6.0
|
| - sabotaging Firefox: https://archive.is/tgIH9
|
| This... this is not ancient history. It happened 10-15
| years ago. Unless you're very young, and I've fallen
| under the curse of the old age:
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| One disorienting thing about getting older that nobody
| tells you about is how weird it feels to get a really
| passionate, extremely wrong lecture from a much younger
| person about verifiable historical events you can
| personally remember pretty well
|
| --- end quote ---
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Not from what I've seen - I often see people searching Bing
| for Google then searching on there, not knowing how to change
| the default.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Of course defaults mean very little for tech-savvy people.
| An average 50 year old who just got a new laptop isn't
| going to change the search engine because Bing was the
| default.
| dijit wrote:
| if that's true, expect another antitrust lawsuit soon after.
|
| Using market dominance to enter other markets is the
| problem...
|
| I say this as a heavy apple user myself btw.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Most users will probably still use Google
|
| Most users will probably use the default. And there's zero
| reason (zero dollars) saying it will be Google.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > but Google didn't buy its way into dominance annd maintain
| their dominance through exclusivity deals
|
| This is a huge claim. Do you have any evidence to back it up?
| dmazzoni wrote:
| I think they're saying is that in Google's very early days,
| they gained market dominance against a dozen other search
| engines simply by being better. It wasn't until years later
| that they started paying to be the dominant search engine.
| j_maffe wrote:
| > It wasn't until years later that they started paying to
| be the dominant search engine.
|
| I agree but I that's not what the GP said.
| glzone1 wrote:
| Google is not the default search provider on Windows. It is
| not the default search provider in Edge. Microsoft prompts at
| varying levels of annoyingness to get you to stay with their
| solutions. Historically it was even harder with IE. Despite
| all this, folks often switch to chrome and google search.
|
| IE was so bad and Chrome so much better that Microsoft gave
| up on IE on their own platform and switched to Chrome as the
| engine for edge.
| ankit219 wrote:
| I fail to see your reasoning. The court's argument is Google
| is maintaining this dominance via these default deals, not
| that it got there through them.
|
| Given the last 25 years of history, Google's product has
| gotten worse after these default deals. Previously it
| established the dominance because it found whatever a user
| searched for. Arguing otherwise just feels unrealistic. They
| never had any exclusive deals with any provider.
|
| Edit: Changed exclusive to default.
| crazygringo wrote:
| There are no exclusivity deals.
|
| These are deals around defaults, _not_ exclusivity.
|
| Google never paid Apple to remove Bing from the list of
| choices. That's what an exclusivity deal would do. But it
| didn't happen, because this doesn't have anything to do
| with exclusivity.
| ankit219 wrote:
| Oh yeah, i thought the previous user used them
| interchangeably. I messed it up. I think it's exclusive
| in a way that no one else could make the same deal. Not
| explicitly locking others out, but in a significant way,
| it implicitly did.
|
| The point was they became a monopoly cos they had a good
| product, and now the product is not as good after these
| default deals they made with Apple, Samsung etc.
| asadotzler wrote:
| It is exclusivity. I've been involved in some of these
| contracts going all the way back to the Summer of 2004
| and they absolutely involve exclusivity. If Safari or
| Firefox product managers added a new search access point
| and their business people tried to sell default placement
| for that new search access point, they'd violate their
| contract. That's exclusivity. Opera used to do that kind
| of thing, they had three different search defaults for
| three different access points in the 2000s but by 2010
| Google was no longer allowing that in their contracts
| because _exclusivity_.
| magicalist wrote:
| That might just be overloading the term in a way that
| clouds the issue though? The exclusive default search
| provider for a browser vs the exclusive search provider
| for a browser is pretty different.
| cletus wrote:
| Google started when the tech sector considered the search
| problem "solved". You had the likes of Altavista, Yahoo and
| AskJeeves. There was some variety (eg Yahoo's directory) but
| no one thought search was going to be a big business.
|
| Then Google came along and ripped them all to shreds from
| 1998-2006 or so. The most important platform was Windows and
| Google gained dominance there without paying anyone. Sure,
| you can argue Microsoft didn't take it seriously (because
| they didn't).
|
| Then Microsoft did start taking it seriously and the
| smartphone revolution happened. If you were around at the
| time, you may remember that many networks simply couldn't
| handle the anticipated (and actual) Internet traffic from
| iPhones. IIRC I saw figures that an iPhone user used >8x as
| much data as the most recent Nokia phone user with Internet
| connectivity. Why? Because using a browser on an iPhone was a
| quantum leap forward in terms of power and usability.
|
| Bing was really the only serious threat here simply because
| Microsoft had deep pockets. So Apple was able to extract
| (extort) Google to keep it as the default search on iOS.
|
| Bing tried exclusivity deals, most notably with Bing but it
| was short-lived. Google also pays Firefox but it's less than
| they earn from that user and no one else can afford that. If
| no one else can do the same Google wins.
|
| But the main point is that when given a choice, the majority
| of people choose Google because it is better for most people.
|
| Where exclusivity typically hurts is where it's used to push
| an inferior product or at least a product where the product
| isn't preferred.
|
| Now the DoJ could argue that we want to avoid getting to the
| point where Google has an inferior product but has the market
| domination and deep pockets to keep out competitors. Maybe
| that's valid. But I think in the short-to-=medium term, this
| has simply saved Google billions of dollars a year.
|
| Also, for smaller search engines like DDG, they can never
| afford the billions Google could Billions was material, even
| to Apple. What DDG could pay isn't. It's not worth taking.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Google started when the tech sector considered the search
| problem "solved". You had the likes of Altavista, Yahoo and
| AskJeeves. There was some variety (eg Yahoo's directory)
| but no one thgouth search was going to be a big business.
|
| I don't think the search problem was considered solved.
| More like unsolvable. Some new search engine would show up
| every so often and be good, but fall into the same terrible
| abyss of mediocrity as all the others in 6-12 months. Thus
| the meta-search engines like DogPile that would search
| "all" the search engines and give you a blended result.
|
| Google disrupted that by continuing to be good for at least
| 10 years before it fell into mediocrity. Unfortunately, the
| web has gotten so big that developing a new search engine
| is very expensive, and (IMHO) there hasn't been a new good
| search engine since Google. I've moved to DuckDuckGo, but I
| think it's only good enough, not good. I was at Yahoo when
| they launched their self-hosted search in 2004 and it was
| good, but they couldn't get enough marketshare to keep
| investing in it.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| > Thus the meta-search engines like DogPile that would
| search "all" the search engines and give you a blended
| result.
|
| There was a brief window where people would look at me
| like I was some kind of crazy wizard when they saw me use
| DogPile.
|
| Prior to that, I used Watson[1] to accomplish something
| similar.
|
| [1](http://www.karelia.com/watson/)
| macintux wrote:
| Discovery in the mid-90s was excruciatingly bad. Google
| really did rescue the web in that regard.
|
| I remember searching AltaVista for GNU's website (at the
| time, they didn't have their own domain, or weren't using
| it) and I'm pretty sure I had to go to page 2 or 3 of the
| results to find it.
| gessha wrote:
| > Google didn't buy its way into dominance annd maintain their
| dominance through exclusivity deals
|
| That's just a waste of money then. Why are they paying bilious
| to Mozilla and Apple? Because they're good buddies? Wouldn't
| people use Google anyway?
|
| Just imagine the Google CFO looking through the finance
| spreadsheets last year and instead of going "let's layoff a
| whole bunch of people" they go with "let's stop paying Apple
| and Mozilla" for default search.
| octodog wrote:
| Not necessarily. At least some of the benefit for Google is
| that they prevent a competitor from paying to be the default
| search.
| nabla9 wrote:
| > So what's going to happen?
|
| Apple might make their own search engine. Apple has a team
| that's been creating a next-generation search engine codenamed
| Pegasus under John Giannandrea. They already have search
| engines for App Store, Maps, Apple TV and News and Spotlight.
|
| Apple web search development worked as bargaining chip in
| pricing negotiations with Google. Google paid them $20 billion
| per year to not compete as much as keeping other competitors
| away.
| philistine wrote:
| Yeah, the calculus is simple. You just lose 20 billion in
| potential pure profits. Google is paying you 34% of all
| search revenue originated by you. You have all the financial
| structure of your own search engine right there.
|
| Just make your own damn search engine. You could even put
| Google's own ads on it to make some money that way.
| talldayo wrote:
| God forbid their advertising looks anything like it does in
| Apple News. But with their recent Taboola deal it would
| seem like their standards are falling, not rising.
| mucle6 wrote:
| If apple wanted to or thought they could make a profitable
| search engine, wouldn't they have already done it?
| nabla9 wrote:
| Not as profitable as monopoly. Sharing monopoly profit with
| Google is more profitable for both and loss for the
| consumers.
|
| Both Apple and Google make less profits if they compete
| against each other, but consumers benefit from two search
| engines trying to compete against each other.
| voiceblue wrote:
| Apple does not like to compete. They would rather call it
| spatial computing and price their product in an
| astronomical band than risk being seen as yet another VR
| headset competitor.
|
| They will never make a search engine.
|
| On the other hand, they have already made a search
| engine. Which you don't think of as one, and which
| provides a boost to their ecosystem tie-in.
| morepork wrote:
| The question is not whether Apple could make a profitable
| search engine. The question is whether they could make a
| search engine more profitable than the billions they are
| getting paid each year by Google to make Google search the
| default.
| cletus wrote:
| We forget that there was at least a decade of several "Google
| killers" a year [1]. It's a graveyeard. That was 2009 too.
| The volume slowed down but people are still trying (and
| failing) [2].
|
| Microsoft has of course tried but Bing is only really propped
| up by Microsoft's deep pockets. It's not a profitable
| enterprise (AFAIK). And this is with Microsoft using every
| trick they can to bypass EU and US consent decrees and
| legislation to trick users into Bing. Microsoft has poured
| _billions_ into Bing.
|
| Apple rejected Google Maps and launched their own Maps
| product in 2012. Obviously they consider this core to their
| business so I get it. But even with Apple's resources, it's
| taken more than a decade for Apple Maps to reach _some_
| parity with Google Maps.
|
| It's really hard for a goose to lay a second golden egg. With
| Microsoft, it's their Windows/Office monopoly. With Apple
| it's the iPhone. Google is an outlier among outlier because
| they do have several golden eggs but one is much bigger than
| all the others (ie search).
|
| Think about it. If Apple makes $300 billion in revenue
| selling iPhones (made up number), how would as an internal
| leader try and build a search engine? The iPhone will always
| take absolute priority, mainly because your search engine is
| such a drop in the revenue bucket. But without these
| resources and this priority it'll never grow big. It becomes
| a self-fulfilling prophecy.
|
| Sometimes just throwing money at a problem just isn't enough.
|
| [1]: https://technologizer.com/2009/05/19/a-brief-history-of-
| goog...
|
| [2]: https://searchengineland.com/neeva-shutting-down-427384
| epictluren wrote:
| > [Bing]'s not a profitable enterprise
|
| It makes $10+B per year, pennies next to Google of course,
| but non-negligible. https://backlinko.com/bing-users#
| j_maffe wrote:
| > We forget that there was at least a decade of several
| "Google killers" a year [1]. It's a graveyard.
|
| Yes, that's called a monopoly.
| SpacePortKnight wrote:
| Apple could make a search engine but by the same logic, they
| wouldn't be able to make it default on their devices.
| otterley wrote:
| Why not? They did it for Maps.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Apple will lose significant revenue from having Google as the
| default search engine and Google will no longer have to pay
| those billions.
|
| there is also Android ecosystem, where DOJ may ask google to
| prompt user with Search Egnine selection dialog, and Google can
| easily lose some significant share of traffic to
| Bing/ChatGPT/etc.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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.
| mozempthrowaway wrote:
| Working 10 hours per week was nice while it lasted.
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's like you didn't understand what this case was about at
| all. Google isn't paying to be first, _Google is paying so
| nobody bothers making a competitor_.
| fsckboy wrote:
| people keep bothering to make competitors, they simply have
| no chance at success having kept getting locked out by
| Google's anticompetitive practices
| j_maffe wrote:
| ITT: People not understand the basics of a monopoly.
| woopsn wrote:
| Google seemed to think the many billions of dollars spent
| annually to insert Google into other products was necessary in
| order to maintain dominance in the search market. This wasn't
| disputed right? I doubt they are relieved now that Bing, OpenAI
| and others have charismatic products that appear to threaten
| their core competency right as the business is declared a
| monopoly.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _in order to maintain dominance in the_ search market....
|
| ...advertising market, i.e. selling the users of search to
| advertisers
| greg_V wrote:
| With how the market is looking as of today, the next YC batch
| might have a promising carrier pigeon startup and a ridesharing
| blip services that monetizes with ads!
| shuntress wrote:
| > 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.
| j_maffe wrote:
| > But if it were possible to build a better index of the
| Internet, Google would do it.
|
| Not when it's detrimental to their sources of income, i.e. Ad
| Sense.
| shuntress wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to assume that google would favor
| the Ad Sense customer given two results that are otherwise
| of equal or near equal quality but the notion that google
| would _exclude_ good results from domains that do not serve
| Ad Sense ads is absurd.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Why is it absurd? If it's still considered the go-to
| option by most users, they could afford the slightly
| worse quality for the extra revenue, no? That's the end
| result of monopolies, the provider starts to compromise
| on the service to capitalize on the user's lack of viable
| options.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| We got some chromebooks at (totally un-tech) work. Some are set
| with quant, some duckduckgo and some other misterious (to me)
| search engines. When you open the browser for the first time it
| gives you a list of ~10 to choose. Knowing the constant days
| cadence, delay and stress we handle I can easely picture my
| colleagues picking the closest to mouse to access the web
| without loosing a second.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| > 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 about what to actually do to fix that monopoly. It'll
| take a while to get the answer and to work through all the
| appeals to this ruling and whatever remedy the court will put
| forth, and it's not clear or really possible to know ahead of
| time whether the courts will put forth small, medium or huge
| changes to the search engine market. Exciting times!
| tootie wrote:
| I can envision a gnarly Venn diagram of search, ads, AI,
| analytics, Chrome. You could easily make this 5 separate
| companies (ads and analytics were acquired), but you probably
| just need to split it somewhere in the middle.
| pklausler wrote:
| "easily?" Which one would own Platforms? Which one would own
| the google3 monorepo?
| tootie wrote:
| Haha, I mean they could easily survive as separate
| companies. Not that separating them would be easy.
| coliveira wrote:
| This is not the courts problem. Google needs to solve this
| before the split.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It is always the court's problem. A judge does not have
| arbitrary or absolute authority. If Google can convince
| an appeals court that the judge has imposed an impossible
| or unreasonable remedy it will be overturned.
| fallingknife wrote:
| But this verdict only involves the search business. All that
| other stuff is out of scope. And breaking it up like that
| leaves the search monopoly intact anyway.
| o-o- wrote:
| I always thought that the idea behind antitrust laws was that
| if an entity reaches total market dominance and uses that
| dominance to keep other out of the game, the entity should be
| split into competing entities.
|
| What I'm seeing however is nothing more than toothless,
| political pointing sticks.
|
| Both IBM, Microsoft and Google have clearly at some point
| obtained total domination of their markets. Consequently
| they've all found themselves at the antitrust chopping blocks,
| however these companies have become so important to the economy
| that actual verdicts are reduced to a "carry on, just don't
| exert your dominance too much".
|
| Or have I misunderstood antitrust laws?
|
| Edit: s/excert/exert
| taeric wrote:
| Splitting companies that have physical presence is something
| that is a bit easier to do? That is, my gut would be that the
| examples you have in your mind for how companies that hit
| market dominance were split, are dominated by markets that
| required a bit more physical connection to the consumers they
| were serving.
|
| You could also see easy ways to force a company that is using
| a dominant position in one industry to gain an upper hand in
| another to divest from that expansion.
|
| Most of that falls apart with the nature of these markets,
| though?
| singron wrote:
| The original Sherman Act specifies imprisonment for 1 year, a
| $5,000 fine, and the seizure of property due to the violating
| behavior. It also gives courts the authority to "prevent and
| restrain such violations". It makes no specific note of
| splitting up corporations.
|
| Obviously this isn't the modern understanding, and the act
| was later amended.
| groovecoder wrote:
| Do you know which will happen first? Specifically, will the
| court put forth its remedies before the appeals begin? Or will
| those actions happen in parallel? Or what?
| shuntress wrote:
| The issue is that there is no direct fix.
|
| It depends instead on the overall health of the Internet.
|
| We are moving away from open commerce and into walled gardens.
| Once Google makes deals similar to their Reddit deal with Meta
| and Bytedance, it's going to become basically impossible for an
| upstart search engine to index anything competitively.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I'm not really sure how you fix it. Considering it specifically
| calls out being the default option on iOS, we can assume that's
| going to change. However, I could also see Chrome's market
| dominance challenged. Maybe they'll be forced to somehow split
| that off and Chrome will need to be funded through some
| combination of donations or selling its own ads/data.
| g15jv2dp wrote:
| Nothing is ever going to happen. Google, Apple etc are the US's
| international economic arm that ensures competing countries
| never develop a threatening IT sector. They're very happy to
| let any foreign startup be gobbled up, for example. Negative
| consequences on the domestic market are just an unfortunate
| byproduct.
| j_maffe wrote:
| I think in this case it could, simply because all of the
| competitors are American, none are foreign.
| hintymad wrote:
| > Google's payments to make its search engine the default option
| on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal
| judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice
| Department.
|
| I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't
| companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids
| higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this
| time?
| causal wrote:
| If it creates a monopoly then no, it's not okay, no matter how
| normal.
| legitster wrote:
| Not necessarily - as it is written, the Sherman anti-trust
| act and all of the amendments distinguishes between
| "innocent" and "coercive" monopolies. But the definitions are
| very loose and hard to pin down.
|
| It's hard to even consistently distinguish a monopoly - is it
| market share? Earning power? Barriers to entry?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > It's hard to even consistently distinguish a monopoly -
| is it market share? Earning power? Barriers to entry?
|
| "I know it when I see it," as it is difficult at best to
| rely on distinctive actions or indicators considering the
| fluidity of business dynamics and the market landscape.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
| ssl-3 wrote:
| The definitions mean whatever the judge says they mean.
| svnt wrote:
| As soon as they formalized a metric to distinguish a
| monopoly, it would become something deliberately managed by
| entities who wished to wield monopolistic power.
|
| It would change the shape, but not the definition.
| j_maffe wrote:
| > But the definitions are very loose and hard to pin down.
|
| So are a lot of laws and regulations. Doesn't make them any
| less valid.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Damn, someone tell the Justice Department that Nvidia exists.
| pnt12 wrote:
| Does Nvidia negotiate deals for all gaming + crypto + AI
| companies to use their cards, or do they just provide good
| hardware + software that consumers want to use?
|
| That would be the difference of an anti-competition
| monopoly vs just a monopoly.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Exactly. Google capitalized on its monopoly status.
| That's what matters.
| robpco wrote:
| Its different in this case because they were just declared a
| monopoly by the court.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I feel like the more blatant monopoly abuse by Google is how
| they use the Google search homepage to shill their other
| products. They effectively give themselves billions of dollars
| in free advertising
| fuzztester wrote:
| how is that abuse, though?
|
| is it against the law?
|
| IANAL, but I would think not.
|
| I mean, many people put links to their other products or
| services on the web page of one of their products or
| services.
| TheCleric wrote:
| It is, if you are leveraging one monopoly to attempt to
| gain more. This is what happened with Microsoft and
| Internet Explorer (via the Windows monopoly)[1]
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
| _Cor....
| magicalist wrote:
| Had Microsoft merely provided advertised IE with Windows
| there never would have been a suit. Even bundling alone
| would have been a hard case to make. They did far more
| than just ship IE with Windows.
| ncruces wrote:
| Because it's much better for the consumer to search for a
| city, get an interactive map right there on the search
| results, but no link to jump to Google Maps so they can get
| an estimate on how long it takes to get there, because that'd
| be bundling.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Search term: "Detroit"
|
| Search results include: "Explore maps of Detroit on
| HERE[0], Google Maps[0], OpenStreetMap[0] [...]"
|
| [0] insert link
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I'm talking more about them posting new product launches,
| I/O livestream, gmail pinned to the top, etc. Embedded
| stuff in search results is fine for the most part, although
| their intent their is primarily to prevent click throughs
| to other sites and increase the chances of an ad click
| fuzztester wrote:
| >They effectively give themselves billions of dollars in free
| advertising
|
| how the _heck_ is google 's " 'giving' _themselves_ something
| for free ", considered wrong? even if it is billions of
| dollars?
|
| in which alt world is it wrong of you to 'give' yourself a
| 100 dollars? or even billions? of your own money? or even
| billions worth of advertising space? both the giver and the
| receiver are you, right? you are not stealing anything from
| anyone.
|
| then what the heck is the problem? maybe I am dumb, but I
| fail to see it.
|
| in your own words, they are giving it to themselves, right?
|
| they are not taking that money away from anyone else.
|
| and note: I am not a Google shill. I criticized them, with
| some justifications that I gave, roughly about a day ago.
| check my comments. I try to be objective, though of course I
| may sometimes fail at that.
|
| interested to hear what you have to say about all this.
| j_maffe wrote:
| They're giving themselves money by abusing their monopoly
| status. Sure, in a totally free market, it looks innocent.
| There are laws against this because monopolies are damaging
| to any market it's in and ends up hurting the end user.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Normal companies can do this, but monopolists cannot. A
| monopolist may not use a monopoly to create another monopoly.
|
| You can legally have a monopoly, but your hands will be tied in
| certain aspects, given the power that you could purposely or
| accidentally wield.
| TheCleric wrote:
| When you are the primary player in the industry, you're
| creating a massive, unscalable monopolistic wall that no one
| else can climb.
|
| They pay Apple alone around 20 billion per year. There is no
| way anyone else can even think about competing with that. It's
| not because they happened to get the highest bid. It's because
| they're paying for the elimination of anyone else getting a
| foothold.
| eli wrote:
| This is explained in quite a bit of detail in the judge's
| ruling:
| https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rZ1UlL.0...
| Starting about page 197.
|
| > Google understands there is no genuine competition for the
| defaults because it knows that its partners cannot afford to go
| elsewhere. Time and again, Google's partners have concluded
| that it is financially infeasible to switch default GSEs or
| seek greater flexibility in search offerings because it would
| mean sacrificing the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of
| dollars that Google pays them as revenue share.
|
| [...]
|
| > That was the key takeaway from the testimony of Neeva's
| founder and former Google Senior Vice President of Ads and
| Commerce, Dr. Ramaswamy. The court found him to be a
| particularly compelling witness. He put it best. When the court
| asked why Google pays billions in revenue share when it already
| has the best search engine, he answered that the payments
| "provide an incredibly strong incentive for the ecosystem to
| not do anything"; they "effectively make the ecosystem
| exceptionally resist[ant] to change"; and their "net effect . .
| . [is to] basically freeze the ecosystem in place[.]" Tr. at
| 3796:8-3798:22 (Ramaswamy). No one would ever describe a
| competitive marketplace in those terms. When the distribution
| agreements have created an ecosystem that has a "strong
| incentive" to do "nothing," is "resist[ant] to change," and is
| "basically [frozen] in place," there is no genuine "competition
| for the contract" in search. It is illusory.
| w10-1 wrote:
| The court is plain silly if it's concluding that multi-
| billion-dollar deals create resistance or diminishes
| incentives. If anything, it creates incentives by proving
| that another search engine could make billions from
| smartphone fees alone.
| eli wrote:
| It's an exclusive deal that prevents anyone else from
| offering a similar deal. Of course it reduces competition.
| The only question is whether it also violates the monopoly
| law.
|
| I'd encourage you to read the decision, I just pulled two
| paragraphs from a pretty exhaustive document.
| j_maffe wrote:
| I highly encourage you to read about monopolies and their
| mechanisms. Competitors can be incentivized with a
| monopoly's profits all they want, the amount of money it'd
| take to enter the space is unfeasible.
| ryeights wrote:
| >another search engine could make billions from smartphone
| fees alone.
|
| I'm not following... the search engine would be the one
| paying the billions.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Yeah, they aren't allowed to pay billions anymore. Which begs
| the question:
|
| What about of money _are_ they allowed to pay?
|
| Will there be a state-run auction?
| nabla9 wrote:
| > Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time,
|
| Companies with monopoly power must work with different rules.
|
| Having monopoly power is not illegal, abusing it is.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| If you and I, a couple of presumed nobodies, agree to have our
| respective companies work together exclusively on a thing and
| maybe trade some money and services, then that's something that
| can usually be legally just fine.
|
| But if you or I are operate a monopoly (whether a natural
| monopoly or an artificial monopoly) and we make the same kind
| of exclusive deal, then: That may not be fine. We have laws
| (like the Sherman Act) that can restrict this sort of thing
| _only if_ a monopoly becomes involved.
|
| And to be clear: It's generally OK to have a monopoly (good
| fuckin' job, mate! you totally own your market! all the spoils
| for you!). But it's generally not OK to use that monopoly
| status in an anticompetitive way.
| ankit219 wrote:
| This would have been fine if Google was not a monopoly. The key
| part of the ruling is that judge agrees Google is a monopoly.
| And it's behavior is maintaining the monopoly illegally.
|
| Because it's a monopoly, and paying over the odds for these
| placements, it does not allow for a competitive marketplace.
| These payments create significant barriers to entry for other
| companies to even try and increase their market share given all
| the frictionless access points are blocked by Google not
| because of superior product but payments. These payments from a
| monopoly have a disproportionate impact on the market by
| limiting opportunities for everyone else in a significant
| manner.
|
| (Kind of, in a competitive market, a company can block 1-2
| pathways. Here google pretty much blocked every entry point.)
| devrand wrote:
| Presumably these deals with Google will be nullified, but can
| the various browsers just make new deals with someone else?
| Can Microsoft just just swoop in and make a deal with
| Apple/Mozilla/Samsung? Mozilla is going to be desperate to
| find a new partner...
| ankit219 wrote:
| Dont think Apple would make a deal with any other engine.
| They basically used Microsoft to get a good deal with
| Google, but never had any intention to use Microsoft.
|
| The thing is the deals are a revenue sharing deal - Google
| gives 1/3 of the revenue to Apple. With microsoft, the
| number could be 100% and would still not reach a
| significant number for Apple. Mozilla would jump at it, and
| I hope Google still invests in them as part of a grant or
| something while not getting anything in return.
| devrand wrote:
| At least in the short term they probably would. Why not
| take the basically free money?
|
| Longer term, yeah they'll probably just make their own
| search engine.
|
| I highly doubt Google would give Mozilla anything. The
| only reason I think they would would be to appease Chrome
| monopoly concerns, but I don't think Chrome is even at
| risk of that. It's not the default browser on any
| platform other than ChromeOS and some Android devices.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers
| violate US antitrust law
|
| Interesting that they limit the case to mobile browsers. I
| guess MS share is significant enough on desktop.
| dwallin wrote:
| Scale and context matters. No one else could afford to pay
| anywhere remotely near what Google is paying Apple. If it was
| truly competitive bidding Google could just offer some small
| reasonable percentage more than the nearest competitor could
| afford and Apple would take it. The reason google is paying so
| much over where a market price would be is because they want to
| discourage anyone, particularly Apple, from even thinking about
| competing with them. Google is paying Apple 36% of the revenue
| (not profit) generated by those users.
|
| A pretty good argument could be made that Apple would likely
| have built up and/or acquired it's own search engine by now if
| Google wasn't paying such obscene amounts. Apple was previously
| involved in talks with Microsoft to purchase Bing, and even
| acquired an ai search startup founded by ex-googlers
| (LaserLike).
| woopsn wrote:
| They spent billions of dollars putting their product into other
| products by default, and meanwhile conglomerate interests make it
| a worse product every year, while they do in fact maintain a
| monopoly.
| ls612 wrote:
| The big loser from this ruling is Mozilla. The Firefox search
| deal gives them a big chunk of their money and they are already
| financially not in great shape.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Nothing prevents them from donating to Mozilla.
| riku_iki wrote:
| For-profit corp needs some incentives for such donation.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And just like when we force AT&T to do a bunch of stuff,
| that incentive should be "encourage and fund a healthy and
| competitive market or be dismantled with prejudice".
|
| We made AT&T basically give away patents to anyone and open
| up their network to compatibility. People regularly talk
| about the innovations that came from the labs funded by
| that agreement. Then they turn around and dismiss
| government regulation of industries as "stifling
| competition", as if a monopoly has any desire to compete if
| they do not have to.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > People regularly talk about the innovations that came
| from the labs funded by that agreement.
|
| Do you have some examples?
| fragmede wrote:
| UNIX and the C programming language were first released
| before the agreement but continued to be worked on by the
| labs after the agreement was signed and took force. C++
| had it's first commercial release in 1985 (agreement took
| force in 1985). Fiber optic transmission which powers the
| Internet also came from those labs. DSL technology is
| another one you might have heard of.
| alberth wrote:
| Warren Buffet recently sold ~55% of his Apple stock.
|
| I wonder if this was related.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41155376
|
| ---
|
| Granted, Buffet also invested $40B and it's worth 9x today.
|
| When you have $320B in _gains_ , it's only prudent to begin to
| take some of those gains off the table.
|
| https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/6-words-explain-why-warren-bu....
| fuzztester wrote:
| that point also appeared recently in The Guardian, although
| under a different title.
| poooooog wrote:
| I hope searchgpt or perplexity takes advantage of this and try to
| gain some momentum, gonna be a sad day if perplexity sells out to
| some incumbent.
| xpe wrote:
| After the DoJ vs. Apple suit was mentioned in March, I did some
| research before about what the DoJ views unfavorably in this
| arena. My bullet points were useful to a lot of people here then,
| so perhaps it can help inform some of the conversation here too.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39782290
|
| After some research, the practices below may capture much (though
| not necessarily all) of what the Department of Justice views
| unfavorably:
|
| * horizontal agreements between competitors such as price fixing
| and market allocation
|
| * vertical agreements between firms at different levels of the
| supply chain such as resale price maintenance and exclusive
| dealing
|
| * unilateral exclusionary conduct such as predatory pricing,
| refusal to deal with competitors, and limiting interoperability
|
| * conditional sales practices such as tying and bundling
|
| * monopoly leveraging where a firm uses its dominance in one
| market to gain an unfair advantage in another
|
| Any of these behaviors undermines the conditions necessary for a
| competitive market. I'd be happy to have the list above expanded,
| contracted, or modified. Let me know.
| svnt wrote:
| Some of these are a bit different in scope to some of your
| points, but here a few things I believe aren't really covered:
|
| Predatory hiring: Hiring key employees from competitors
| primarily to weaken them rather than to benefit from the
| employees' skills.
|
| Patent abuse: Using a large portfolio of patents to stifle
| competition rather than to protect legitimate innovations.
|
| Regulatory capture: Using influence to shape regulations in
| ways that benefit the monopolist and create barriers for
| potential competitors.
|
| Killer acquisitions: Buying potential competitors primarily to
| eliminate future competition rather than to integrate their
| technology or talent.
|
| Data hoarding: In digital markets, collecting and refusing to
| share data that is crucial for competitors to enter or compete
| effectively in the market.
|
| Self-preferencing: In platform markets, giving preferential
| treatment to one's own products or services over those of
| competitors.
|
| Vaporware: Announcing nonexistent or deliberately suboptimal
| products or features to discourage customers from switching to
| competitors' existing products.
| w10-1 wrote:
| > what the DoJ views unfavorably in this arena
|
| I think he meant to add `...for anti-trust purposes`
|
| Data and acquisitions (and maybe platforming) might be
| considered under anti-trust. Others not so much.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Most of these don't make much sense:
|
| Predatory hiring - banning this would be preventing
| competition in the labor market and be extremely bad for
| workers. Also unproveable.
|
| Regulatory capture - the government regulators are not going
| to sue themselves
|
| Killer acquisitions - already illegal to engage in
| acquisition to form monopoly
|
| Data hoarding - the government can't force you to share
| things for free. That violates the takings clause
|
| Self-preferencing - this is such a long standing and legally
| permitted practice that it is not plausible to make illegal.
| e.g. every grocery store has a store brand that they favor.
|
| Vaporware - if this is a provable lie it is already covered
| by fraud statutes, and it would be such a stupid move by the
| company that I don't believe it actually happens
| jd3 wrote:
| A couple passages of note:
|
| > 112. The integration of generative AI is perhaps the clearest
| example of competition advancing search quality. Google
| accelerated and launched its public piloting of Bard one day
| before Microsoft announced BingChat, the integration of ChatGPT's
| generative AI technology into Bing to deliver answers to queries.
| Id. at 8272:4-7 (Reid); id. at 2670:10-2671:9 (Parakhin).
| (describing BingChat).
|
| Perhaps a normative assertion on my part, but AI results have not
| "advanc[ed] search quality" by any metric that I am familiar
| with; in fact, AI results in Google mark the first time I have
| ever encountered incorrect or patently untrue information at the
| top of a Google query.
|
| > This quality-reduction experiment correlated with only a 0.66-
| 0.99% decline in global search revenue. UPX1082 at 294. In short,
| this study demonstrates that a significant quality depreciation
| by Google would not result in a significant loss of revenues.
| larubbio wrote:
| I remember this article from 2017 about the google snippet for
| how long it takes to caramelize an onion.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-...
|
| The gist of the story is the author wrote an article debunking
| the recipe myth that you only need 5 minutes. In their tests it
| was 25 - 45. Google snippet would report "about 5 minutes" and
| link to the article as a reference.
|
| I think the information summaries at the top of searches have
| been wrong for a while.
| pradn wrote:
| It's certainly wrong, but its not out of place w/ the sheer
| number of recipes and blogs saying the same thing. It's
| parroting "common wisdom" which is wrong.
|
| It's not as egregious as some of the generative AI results
| spewed out by the lowest-cost-inference LLMs they hooked up
| to Google search a few months back.
| nox101 wrote:
| It was still a common occurrence for google to display
| incorrect results that weren't common wisdom.
|
| I had tons of such experiences. One I remember was
| searching for "healthy body weight for x of age y" where x
| was man,woman and y was my age. Google said 50lbs higher
| than I expected. I clicked through to the article. The
| article said the average was this high number, not a
| healthy weight.
| pradn wrote:
| Yes, totally. Automated, fallible systems.
|
| Ultimately it's a cost issue. If they wanted to, they
| could fact check the top million question queries - but
| they don't want to spend on that.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| The idea that a 0.66% decline in revenue would be insignificant
| made me snort. Increasing revenue that much would make many
| careers - it would justify the existence of a substantial
| origination. That's billions of dollars annually.
| vdfs wrote:
| "It's only a $2B decline"
| singron wrote:
| In a very competitive market, reducing quality slightly could
| drastically reduce revenue.
|
| E.g. if there were two brands of apple at the grocery store
| and one started putting a tiny worm in each apple, you would
| expect the worm apples to lose nearly 100% of their revenue.
| otterley wrote:
| That's an interesting example of a "slight" quality
| reduction. In apples, a slight quality reduction might be a
| bit of discoloration or a small bruise. The presence of a
| worm, on the other hand, causes the apple to be perceived
| as unsafe or inedible.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| Yeah, a worm in Apple the company would be their phones
| blowing up randomly.
| asddubs wrote:
| google had plenty of incorrect information at the top of the
| page before then, just instead of AI it was some algorithm
| pulling sentence fragments out of a page where the context was
| often the opposite of what you're asking
| Sakos wrote:
| I think there is a clearly anti-competitive component in this,
| demonstrated by the recent AI training deal between Reddit and
| Google. The one that went hand in hand with preventing any
| search engine but Google from indexing Reddit:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41057033
| jcfrei wrote:
| Google's main game is not serving better and better results:
| It's generating more clicks for advertisers on the first couple
| of results. The antithesis to Google's business model is
| someone asking an AI a question and receiving a bunch of direct
| answers for a monthly fee. Google's business model is people
| trying a bunch of queries (essentially shopping around),
| clicking on a whole set of links (each time costing the
| advertiser money without leading to a sale) until they get what
| they were looking for. It's the modern equivalent of confusing
| supermarket layouts with all the essential products stowed away
| in the back.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > AI results in Google mark the first time I have ever
| encountered incorrect or patently untrue information at the top
| of a Google query.
|
| Google search ads have been rife with scams for a while[1]. I
| think that counts as patently untrue information at the top of
| a google query.
|
| [1] https://searchengineland.com/google-search-ads-brands-
| fraud-...
| retskrad wrote:
| According to the judges ruling, Google's internal data indicated
| that they would lose up to 80% of searches on Apple devices,
| resulting in a $30 billion revenue loss, if they gave up their
| default search position.
| adeelk93 wrote:
| to whom? Bing? Yahoo? Baidu?
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe the payment was to stop Apple from developing their own
| search engine?
| prossercj wrote:
| https://archive.ph/cqPWM
| zombiwoof wrote:
| The original "deal" has Eric Slimy Schmidt vibes all over it
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Google is getting more terrible by the day. They've been fudging
| results for political reasons. But aside from that, they just
| make it harder to find what you need, to sell ads and misdirect
| to paid landing pages. So in a way, they're stifling human
| progress. Even if they just waste a billion people's time for one
| minute every day. It's like 1900 lost years, or 23 lifetimes.
|
| Compare it to ChatGPT which just gives a really good answer right
| away.
| smugma wrote:
| https://archive.ph/3iNOe
| aristofun wrote:
| I don't like google and I don't like the way their shitty search
| is stuck in every hole.
|
| But denying by court a company a right to honestly pay to another
| company for distribution of their services has much worse long
| term consequences and is wrong.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > But denying by court a company a right to honestly pay to
| another company
|
| Considering this is an antitrust case, those payments are not
| honest.
| aristofun wrote:
| That is my point - they _are_ honest (i.e. not stolen or tax
| evaded, not earned on illegal drugs etc).
|
| But a short sighted court decided otherwise for whatever dumb
| reason they had.
| bionhoward wrote:
| Just when we thought reading multiple double-digit page count
| terms of service was bad enough, this madlad takes it to the next
| level with a 277 page legal opinion.
|
| What a time to be alive!
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It's Apple who is using their market power in smartphones to
| dominate search. Apple makes 10's of billions a year out of
| search. In the search business, they are a distributor. Google
| doesn't _want_ to pay this money, they are forced to.
| j_maffe wrote:
| No body is forced to do anything. Google can just not pay that
| money and lose that share of the market. They're not doing that
| because they want to preserve their monopoly status.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| I wonder if their exclusivity deal with reddit contributed at all
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| They should just dismantle those super corporations. They are
| already too big to tame.
| spidermonk wrote:
| That's why we are developing an alternative to big web search
| comapanies with our community based search engine at
| https://beta.mwmbl.org (main site is currently a bit slow due to
| dev upgrades). Feel free to join our Matrix.
| slater wrote:
| FYI the .woff fonts on that site don't load for me in Firefox,
| with a "ns_binding_aborted" error in the JS console.
| jl6 wrote:
| 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.
| hrpnk wrote:
| Maybe they will allow a level-playing field and allow bids like
| in a marketplace?
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Why would anyone bid for being the search engine in a browser
| with <4% market share and falling? Everybody will want to be
| on iPhone/Safari, Android/Chrome, and Windows/Chrome or Edge.
| meiraleal wrote:
| And at least 50% of this 4% (myself included) use ad
| blockers. Well, too bad Mozilla put itself in this
| situation. If it doesn't kill it, it will make it stronger.
| uabstraction wrote:
| 4 percent of the browser market is still well over a
| hundred million users.
| layer8 wrote:
| Or maybe Mozilla will focus more on Firefox again.
| mozempthrowaway wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| You don't need $500M per year, by far, to continue
| developing a web browser. Mozilla is conducting all sorts
| of operations that have little to do with that core task.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Or maybe based on cold economic merits, Firefox simply
| doesn't deserve to exist.
| layer8 wrote:
| Maybe, but a lot of software exists regardless of cold
| economic merits, because they have merits for their users.
| jacooper wrote:
| And nothing of value will be lost. Mozilla is not an
| alternative to Google, never was. It's more of a controlled
| opposition.
| xyst wrote:
| Google didn't payoff the right public sector employees. The
| Christian and O&G lobbyists were able to buy off politicians and
| judges to get the right rulings so they can continue to ruin the
| country (ie, defang regulators so O&G can continue polluting
| without hurting their bottom line, none to minimal punishment for
| pushing anti-climate propaganda, pushing "white christian values"
| to children without consequence, the presence of religion
| throughout government ranks, abuse of religious tax exempt
| status, no enforcement on donations to political entities from
| religious orgs)
| fallingknife wrote:
| O&G are allowed to do their jobs because the consumers (the
| real polluter) are also the voters, and there is just about
| nothing that pisses them off more than high gas prices. And
| most of that other stuff you complain about is just an
| insignificant thing we call "free speech."
|
| It's not a big conspiracy where everybody is buying judges and
| politicians.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| This is a good start but all the tech giants need to broken up.
| Their size alone, and their access to capital, lets them do any
| number of anti competitive things. The deals/partnerships they
| make, the acquisitions, the bundling (like Teams and Office),
| loss leading, reliance on network effects, patent portfolios /
| giant legal teams, all of it. There isn't really a great
| innovation landscape when these companies can just copy your idea
| and go scorched earth. We also need to regulate some of their
| products as general public utilities. For example there is no
| reason YouTube, a basic video hosting platform, should have
| content that only Google can train AIs on. I really hope Harris
| and Trump double down on Lina Khan's direction and not succumb to
| corporate bribery...I mean lobbying.
| zakki wrote:
| And when we talk about walled garden, fans always said customer
| chose it.
|
| No, customer is dictated. For walled garden owner billion
| reasons.
| convivialdingo wrote:
| Finally? Google has basically turned search and news into a
| political-corporate mouthpiece. Android is essentially a vacuum
| for surveillance capitalism. I rarely even use google to find
| anything beyond Chinese food and such.
|
| If we could go back to Google 2010 that would be fantastic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I have never used the URL/location bar as a search. I once was
| looking over the shoulder for someone that does, and the list of
| previous searches that popped up was quite revealing. This just
| reinforced my not wanting to ever use that feature. I'm sure this
| must look suspicious to anyone that would ever "look into" my
| machine. My default search therefore is which site I decide to
| use at the time, but rarely is it ever Google.
|
| I hope the $0.000000001 that the Googs paid for my default
| setting is worth it. /s
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