“WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation in a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world’s best-known companies…”
I sincerely hope they get broken up.
Thoughts and prayers. (I don’t even know if I’m being sarcastic anymore)
Betchu they’ll just send a check of 1 B to the FTC and say “that should pay the fine + interest” then go on with their day. Happened in a similar fashion before.
Happy cake day. Yes, I‘m afraid that could happen. We‘ll see.
breaking up Facebook is in the general interest of the fediverse, but how is the question.
In a perfect world, they would be cut into pieces not allowed to go over 999 mil usd but since that feverdream of mine is not becoming reality soon, I‘ll say they make them cut out departments that are not supposed to be vertically integrated like search engine and ad business. They pose a conflict of interest just by being in the same company.
This is based on older evidence but the exclusive deal Google just signed with reddit makes it pretty clear the monopoly is planned and ongoing.
The funny thing is that this probably screws Reddit more than anyone. Obviously fuck 'em but funny either way.
It depends on the conditions of the agreement and how much they are being paid. Google’s worldwide market share is above 91% so reddit isn’t actually losing out on much site traffic by going exclusive.
Sure, but if the argument is that Google is paying to be a monopoly then they’re going to have to stop payment.
Google allegedly paid $60 million for access to Reddit for AI purposes. Reddit then disallowed access to all other providers, unless they can promise they won’t use the data for AI purposes.
Technically Reddit is the one disallowing access, but if the argument is that Google is paying for special access I don’t see why I wouldn’t extend to AI.
Reddit now needs to either argue their data is some special intellectual property worth $60 million or is at a price point more accessible and it sure as shit won’t be $60 million.
Reddit then disallowed access to all other providers, unless they can promise they won’t use the data for AI purposes.
That’s what they said publicly, but even search providers like Mojeek that have no AI capabilities appear to require some sort of “commercial agreement” to allow reddit scraping moving forward. It seems to me that Google was attempting to further distance itself from the competition with the agreement and that reddit went along with it because, in some way, it makes financial sense for reddit too.
That’s what I find so interesting about this result.
For example Apple is paid ~$20 billion, or arguably charges that amount, to be the default search engine. That’s REAL money when compared to the Reddit deal.
The punishment will be less big than the profit, they won’t stop, as usual.
If the fine is not large enough to impact their business then breaking the law will be a normal business decision and fines a simple business expense. It’s already like that.
Shatter the company like glass.
They are insanely huge. They should be 10 different companies.
At least ten, and maintain no logs on their users. All previous logs must be purged and rendered irrecoverable.
Or even better, Google could buy the US government
Never say never.
Alphabet is 10 different companies. Google is one of them.
Google is Alphabet.
This distinction is meaningless. It is like arguing that Facebook isn’t a company anymore and Meta is a totally new institution.
It’s Facebook. It’s Google.
Its FAANG companies not MAANA companies.
Even if the punishment is largely symbolic and Google only pays a tiny (compared to it’s massive size) fine; I’d still call that a significant win.
- Google can be REQUIRED to give users A CHOICE of Search Engines.
- Google can be FORBIDDEN from giving their OWN ENGINE an advantage in search results or advertising
- Google can be FORCED to ALLOW THIRD PARTIES access to the SAME APIs used in Chrome and Chromium.
- Google can be FORBIDDEN from BLOCKING THIRD PARTY FRONTENDS from using Google Search, Youtube and more.
Google can be REQUIRED to give users A CHOICE of Search Engines.
Don’t they, err, already do this?
I mean a search engine is literally just a website and absolutely nothing prevents you from just going to duckduckgo.com or bing.com or wherever. Don’t think Chrome prevents you from accessing other search engines in general, and last time I used it (admittedly a while back) it had a setting to change the search engine used by default if you just typed something into the address bar.
Don’t they, err, already do this?
No, They don’t. They have stolen that initial choice from you by paying companies to be the “default” choice. They do this to capture those who are lazy or indolent about their choices, or to entrap those who are too un-savvy to change the preference.
You do know there’s a big difference between a “default” option and a “mandatory” setting, right? Specifically that you do, in fact, have a choice to change a default?
Not forcing the user to proactively make a choice is not the same thing as denying the user the ability to choose.
Your argument is irrelevant.
Websites and articles that have nothing to do with search or Google have to be designed specifically for Google’s search algorithm. I think that’s pretty crazy.
Search Engine OptimizationGoogle OptimizationNot to mention googles push for an identification standard that would effectively ban any non chromium browser from all major websites.
Interestingly, SEO is increased with semantic HTML which benefits people who need screen readers since it is easier to parse. But, also. Fuck google
Unfortunately, people play a lot of weird tricks with semantic tagging for SEO, making them less useful to screen reader users. Not to mention that Google has a very specific, very limited interpretation of the tags, so a lot of tags that would be useful for accessibility are unused or misused.
My information must be old, but what you are talking about still better than just span of div of div of span of div right? People still try to have any amount of meaningful structure?
Not really - what they’ll do is put in the date tag some much more recent date than the date of publication to try and push the content towards search engines to make it more likely to show up, lie about stock levels (say some product is in stock in the metadata, but say on the page it isn’t in stock), cram keywords into metadata, stuff like that. I don’t think it’s really an improvement.
Good, fuck Google. Break up that site.
Never going to happen. Remember when the same thing happened to Microsoft in the 90s?
Unfortunately yes… I also remember when windows 98 crashed in a demonstration.
I hope windows will be next
what? split up windows home and pro editions?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
Google gained their initial position fair and square. They had the better search engine, and despite the likes of Bing being actually pretty good they were never able to compete.
All Google had to do was to follow its initial mantra of “don’t be evil”. That’s literally all it needed to do. Sadly, they were evil, and these are the seeds of that evil. I maintain today that Chrome, YouTube, Maps, and Search would still be dominant if Google were to welcome third-parties to compete and take space on their devices.
This, IMO, is a case that is damaging to their CEO above anything else. It shows that over the last few years many of the steps taken that have alienated fans and employees have actually damaged the company too. The exec actions have damaged them, and as such the execs should pay the price or course-correct.
But… Aren’t all of those things still very much dominant?
They’re saying that google services are dominant and anticompetitive, but not dominant BECAUSE they’re anticompetitive.
Even if they were playing fair with competitors, they would still be #1 because they were that good. But because they weren’t okay with giving competitors a fair chance, they resorted to anticompetitive practices that hurt consumers, and now this ruling is going to hurt google in return. They could have played nice and everything would have been better for everyone, but they didn’t so here we are
That makes sense, thanks for explaining! I saw “makes space” as what’s happening right now, since Android does let you install alternatives for all those, including third party app stores, but it does go farther than that.
Yeah…almost like that’s the problem. XD
Many people use the example of Steam to say “well, they’re doing things right”, because they offer a better service to everyone else.
My point is that Google could have welcomed competition and still stayed at the top. Instead, they created walls that welcomed this ruling, and damaged themselves and customers in the process.
The judge said it was a monopoly but there does not seem to be any consequences at this time if ever.
Mehta’s conclusion that Google has been running an illegal monopoly sets up another legal phase to determine what sorts of changes or penalties should be imposed to reverse the damage done and restore a more competitive landscape.
The potential outcome could result in a wide-ranging order requiring Google to dismantle some of the pillars of its internet empire or prevent it from paying to ensure its search engine automatically answers queries on the iPhone and other devices. Or, the judge could conclude only modest changes are required to level the playing field.
Today was not about determining consequences / repercussions. It was only about deciding yes or no on the monopoly issue. The next step in the legal process is determining repercussions for Alphabet, and it seems like there are some pretty dramatic options on the table.
It already hobbled itself by letting the results quality slide for 15+ years…
Google search is a monopoly? It is losing market share. They really should go after Chrome and its clones
Just because it’s losing market share doesn’t mean it’s not a monopoly, let alone an illegal one.
True I suppose
I just don’t like how Chrome is the “standard”
I agree but that is a different problem
Then you should also not like how Google has a history of making their sites, which are market leaders in many cases including search, perform worse on browsers other than Chrome. That is considered anti-competitive behavior.
Google is the best internet search according to Bing.
It might not be much but it’s still legal precedent that will hopefully help it reach critical mass. Like getting Al Capone on tax evasion
I may be misunderstanding but why are people saying take down chromium? Please correct me if I’m wrong but chromium is open source and only invested in largely by Google. Chrome is chromium with proprietary code implemented and in no way (as far as I can tell) do they own the chromium project. I quite like chromium just the de-googled version. I think people may be mistaking Chrome and Chromium for being the same or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe someone can explain if I’m missing something
Also I’d love to see the downfall of Google but nothing will change the power they have. The names too recognizable it doesn’t matter if given a choice , Grandma or Grandpa or whoever that doesn’t care about this sort of thing is picking Google because out of the common options they’ll probably only recognize Bing or Google maybe some Yahoo too lol
Edit: I don’t understand why I’m being downvoted , I was asking a question and explaining what I understood about the project but that’s the internet I suppose haha
Chromium is open source but not free (as in freedom). In fact, it is developed by Google and only Google has the power to accept or refuse a PR.
As an example: Manifest V2 is going to be discontinued in favor of V3 on Chromium (and consequently Chrome) despite the outrage of the users and developers.
I thought it was not a licensing issue but rather that it if someone wanted to maintain the engine with MV2, it would get increasingly hard to do independently because of the sheer complexity.
Yup. Nobody denies you from forking Chromium and maintaining an updated version with MV2, but good luck doing that
I don’t think anything you said makes it not free, as long as you can fork it. The same can be said about most FOSS, since somebody, usually the creator, is in control of the repository.
That’s the point of FOSS - your repository isn’t becoming a democracy by virtue of using a permissive license, but it means somebody could outcompete you with a fork and effectively take over as the dominant project.
I think the main problem is that Chromium still contributes towards the browser engine monoculture, as it is bug-for-bug compatible with Chrome. Therefore if you switch to Chromium, it’s still enough for the web sites to test for Chrome compatibility, which they will, because it has the largest market share. Users of competing browsers suffer, further driving the lure of Chrome (or Chromium).
On the other hand, if people switched to some other engine, one that does not share the same core engine or even the same history, this will no longer hold: web sites would need to be developed against the spec, or at least against all the browsers they might realistically expect their customers to use.
