Google has a Monopoly!

[Monknot]

Summary

 

Google has a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.  

 

Quotes

Quote

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,”

 

My thoughts

Even though Google plans to fight this, which is not surprising at all, it's still progress. I wonder if this will help search become useful again.

 

Sources

 https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us-doj-v-google-antitrust-search-suit

[Monknot]

On a personal note I can't wait to watch the next WAN show. I wonder if this will be significant enough to make it as the title lol.

[Beskamir]

Wow! Water is wet. Never would have guessed.

[Monknot]

Just now, Beskamir said:

Wow! Water is wet. Never would have guessed.

LOL.

[Skipple]

I use DuckDuckGo.

 

Huh. 

[emosun]

Someone blow the dust off of this revelation

[Monknot]

1 minute ago, emosun said:

Someone blow the dust off of this revelation

Apparently the DOJ is finally. At least we didn't have to wait for the EU on this one. 

[StDragon]

They're a monopoly because frankly, all other alternatives suck in comparison. So all you going ducks and Bing-ers can live in delusion. Once you've got Google-fu, nothing else compares.

That said, exactly will this ruling force everyone to use an alternative search engine? What means or instruments will be used to force them to give up market-share? I don't think anyone addressed that elephant in the room.

[Spotty]

Quote

“The market reality is that Google is the only real choice as the default GSE,” Mehta wrote, referring to an acronym for general search engine. He cited a quote from Apple SVP Eddy Cue, who said during the trial that there’s “‘no price that Microsoft could ever offer [Apple] to’ preload Bing.”

Lmao, burn. 

 

I'm sure Microsoft would be worse than Alphabet if Bing held the dominant position that Google has. Or at least no better.

 

Quote

One of the most significant revelations from the case was the size of Google’s payments to Apple to secure the default search engine spot on iPhone browsers. An expert witness for Google let slip that the company shares 36 percent of search ad revenue from Safari with Apple. In 2022, Google paid Apple $20 billion for the default position.

Erghh. I guess that's why Apple wants you to use Safari so badly. 

 

Other than deals like this, how would browser developers make money though? 

[Uttamattamakin]

Google is the Kleenex of search.  It is the measuring stick against which all future search or search like tech will be measured.  

Thank God they didn't invent a decent LMS to drive their tech. 

[StDragon]

9 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Google is the Kleenex of search.

When your name is mentioned more of a verb than a noun, it's because you've dominated. Think "Xerox".

[Monknot]

14 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Other than deals like this, how would browser developers make money though? 

Wouldn't this tie into the advertisement monopoly they have as well? I would imagine that's how most would make their money at least. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

When your name is mentioned more of a verb than a noun, it's because you've dominated. Think "Xerox".

Either that, or they've totally Britta'd it.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, Spotty said:

Other than deals like this, how would browser developers make money though? 

That was my first thought. 

More than 500 millions out of Mozilla's 600 millions of revenue comes from their deal with Google to be the exclusive search engine. 

 

This ruling might kill Mozilla. Over 80% of their revenue will dissappear. 

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

That was my first thought. 

More than 500 millions out of Mozilla's 600 millions of revenue comes from their deal with Google to be the exclusive search engine. 

 

This ruling might kill Mozilla. Over 80% of their revenue will dissappear. 

I wonder how many people actually use Google in Firefox though. After all, if you're using Firefox, you're probably not a pleb normie, you use it for a specific, more privacy focused reasons and it's very unlikely you'll be using Google with it. And since Firefox isn't the majority user share browser, it's actually a bad deal for Google I'm guessing and good for Mozilla since they pocket the money and users just use something else like DuckDuckGo or Startpage or something.. But this is just me speculating.

[porina]

IANAL but I used to work at a company that was the worldwide leader in a particular tech market. Everyone got training on how to avoid being seen to be "anti-competitive". Being in a leadership (monopoly) position is not illegal in itself. It is how you behave that is scrutinised. 

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

As for consequences, I bet Google might be fined 1000$ for the monopoly. It's not like USA regulators have the authority to punish violations. It would stifle innovation!

[Doobeedoo]

I thought they were a small indie company.

[Spotty]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I wonder how many people actually use Google in Firefox though. After all, if you're using Firefox, you're probably not a pleb normie, you use it for a specific, more privacy focused reasons and it's very unlikely you'll be using Google with it. And since Firefox isn't the majority user share browser, it's actually a bad deal for Google I'm guessing and good for Mozilla since they pocket the money and users just use something else like DuckDuckGo or Startpage or something.. But this is just me speculating.

I use Firefox and Google search. I remember during the mid to late 2000s when Firefox was the browser people used because it was [subjectively] the better browser, not because it was counterculture. I liked it and never made the switch away from Firefox. I also don't consider Firefox to be particularly privacy focused (though, maybe slightly better than chrome or edge). 

 

DDG and Bing both suck. AI search answers has only made Bing worse in my opinion. Google search results have fell off a cliff in recent years, but that's at least partly due to all the garbage SEO spammy websites which is affecting all the search engines. With Google there's just too much convenience with maps, translate, image search, reviews... 

Google has such a head start and so much momentum that it's hard for others to even compete. I think the only way that Google gets dethroned as the search king is through an alternative to search engines. I very much doubt SearchGPT would be it but who knows.

[Franck]

11 hours ago, StDragon said:

They're a monopoly because frankly, all other alternatives suck in comparison

Well you most likely haven't tried other alternative. Just pick Brave search for example. No ads search result. You get only what you search for, no bump up from their own platform like Youtube. No Sponsored link, Try to search anything in google image/video and try find a non Youtube link and once you find one (if you find at all) half of everything that come before is unrelated to your search parameters.

[Mark Kaine]

12 hours ago, StDragon said:

They're a monopoly because frankly, all other alternatives suck in comparison

yeah, but frankly that's because alphabet is abusing their market position,  and they do that from the get go... think google/reddit connection but on the largest scale.  it worked for them, but according to anti trust laws that is illegal, and that's the problem. 

 

Do you really think others couldn't do something similar or better than google? its not exactly rocket science,  it's just that google early on put itself in the leading position and did everything to keep that position  (again,  understandably, but likely not exactly legal either) 

 

i guess you know all this, but it has to be said *why* the alternatives suck (they really do lol)

[Spotty]

39 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, but frankly that's because alphabet is abusing their market position,  and they do that from the get go... think google/reddit connection but on the largest scale.  it worked for them, but according to anti trust laws that is illegal, and that's the problem.

The Reddit thing is a little more complicated. Google didn't pay Reddit to prevent other search engines from crawling/indexing Reddit. Reddit decided they wanted search engines to pay Reddit to index their site. Google was the only one that agreed to the deal. Bing or other search engines could pay Reddit to licence the rights to index the site if they wanted to.

It's not even really about web search. Reddit is trying to get some compensation from all the companies that are scraping Reddit for their AI. Web search is just caught in the crossfire.

[Obioban]

2 hours ago, Franck said:

Well you most likely haven't tried other alternative. Just pick Brave search for example. No ads search result. You get only what you search for, no bump up from their own platform like Youtube. No Sponsored link, Try to search anything in google image/video and try find a non Youtube link and once you find one (if you find at all) half of everything that come before is unrelated to your search parameters.

Brave search is genuinely good-- better results than google, IMO. I've been using it as default for a while now. 

 

... Not sure it's better than google used to be, but google search seems to get worse every year. Brave have the best results of what's currently out there, IMO. 

[RejZoR]

5 hours ago, Spotty said:

I use Firefox and Google search. I remember during the mid to late 2000s when Firefox was the browser people used because it was [subjectively] the better browser, not because it was counterculture. I liked it and never made the switch away from Firefox. I also don't consider Firefox to be particularly privacy focused (though, maybe slightly better than chrome or edge). 

 

DDG and Bing both suck. AI search answers has only made Bing worse in my opinion. Google search results have fell off a cliff in recent years, but that's at least partly due to all the garbage SEO spammy websites which is affecting all the search engines. With Google there's just too much convenience with maps, translate, image search, reviews... 

Google has such a head start and so much momentum that it's hard for others to even compete. I think the only way that Google gets dethroned as the search king is through an alternative to search engines. I very much doubt SearchGPT would be it but who knows.

Not sure, I used to use Google years ago and have exclusively went to DuckDuckGo (DDG) out of spite and now I'd never go back to Google. I've even tried it when DDG didn't find something super specific and turns out, neither did Google so I just stopped even trying. Also Google Image search suuuuuuucks. Browsing of images is so bad I almost rage quit at work when I had to find specific image of a product. Found the image I needed in seconds in DDG.

 

I literally see no reason to use Google when DDG finds me everything I need.

 

I wonder how Swisscows is, it's suppose to be very private and all that, but I never really used it. I do like DuckDuckGo. Startpage looks nice and uses Google as core engine, but company behind it makes me not want to use it.

 

 

[TetraSky]

23 hours ago, StDragon said:

They're a monopoly because frankly, all other alternatives suck in comparison. So all you going ducks and Bing-ers can live in delusion. Once you've got Google-fu, nothing else compares.

Pretty much this.

There are plenty of alternative search engines. But they all just suck. Though Google is becoming worthless every day as well ever since they changed the way search works. Barely ever find what I am looking for anymore these days.