Welcome to Google’s nightmare: US reveals plan to destroy search monopoly

DOJ goes for Google's throat with "staggering" remedies to end search monopoly.

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[The Real Blastdoor]

If Google was able to pay $20 billion to Apple for default search on the iPhone, I'm extremely confident that they will be able to pay Trump to drop this case.

 

[ChefJeff789]

Its not a monopoly. There are many alternatives. Google is dominate because its the best.

And yet, all of the ones that were objectively better than Google have somehow gone under. Hmmm... must be coincidence....?

You're defending a company that controls basically every internet standard that matters, and has been shown to leverage that control to put competitors out of business. It's also been shown time and time and time again that it lies constantly about how it operates and how it modifies search results. But sure, they're just the best. The greatest. They can do no wrong.

 

[Quisquis]

What is it with people drawing part of their identity from a brand or corporation in this manner? It's truly unhealthy. Those corporations do not deserve your loyalty, it's not like there's a reciprocal relationship there. I mean if you work for them or something I get it, but probably better to recuse ones self from the conversation in that case.

I'm not agreeing with them, but what if they just have an opinion about what product is the best?

 

[jdmp10]

This would be a huge issue for the edu K-12 market should it move forward. Google losing control over the Chome browser and being unable to create their own browser for 5 years would completely destroy the ChromeOS model as one of the biggest pieces to ChromeOS is security. Having to rely on a third-pary to manage the core functionality of the product (handles 90% of the heavy lifting, PWAs, web apps, etc..) would turn these devices into a security nightmare.

Latest reports are ChromeOS is going to go away in place of Android which we don't know yet how this DOJ ruling would affect.

 

[jdmp10]

If Google was able to pay $20 billion to Apple for default search on the iPhone, I'm extremely confident that they will be able to pay Trump to drop this case.

And you don't think that kind of backdoor deal would ever come to public light?

 

[AmitY]

I don't use Chrome though I remember how on some sites I've found that they're best viewed with Chrome or even that the only way to view them is with Chrome. But Mozilla Firefox has always been good enough.

 

[JoeJohnJackson]

The DOJ lawsuit started under the Trump administration, and both Matt Gaetz and JD Vance are pretty anti-big tech monopoly. Josh Hawley, another influential Republican calls himself a Khanservative because he's such a big supporter of Lina Khan, Joe Biden's anti-monopoly FTC chair.

There's a fair chance that Trump does his Trump thing, and just uses the threat of the breakup to squeeze Google for some personal enrichment and free cloud services for the government or something.

But anti-monopoly sentiment is far from a polarized partisan issue. There are plenty of Democrats that are super pro-corporate power, and a decent number of anti-trust Republicans. There are plenty of antitrust Democrats and pro-corporate Republicans, too.

You seem to be out of date on your info. He even hinted at as much about a month ago.

“China is afraid of Google,” Mr. Trump said while speaking on Tuesday at an event with Bloomberg News during a meeting of the Economic Club of Chicago. He questioned whether a corporate split might “destroy the company,” though he added that he was not a fan of Google.

“What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it’s more fair,” Mr. Trump said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/us/politics/trump-google-monopoly-china.html
So, yeah, I stand by my statement. This plan to breakup Google likely won't survive long past his inauguration. Google's lawyers are probably laughing at these plans right now since they know they will never come to fruition anymore.

 

[wildsman]

People use them because they’re habituated to them

They've also been the best product on market until recently. Everyone was 'habituated' with Yahoo until Google came along.

I know many people gave Bing an actual shot but it was actually worse than Google so it never went anywhere.

Anyway, I'm not against breaking Google up because they deserve it for their anticompetitive practices. Fines never do anything so this is probably the most that the DOJ can do to punish Google.

 

[Super King]

Let's go! Bring competition back!

I misread that as 'Bing' competition back

 

[siliconaddict]

January 21.....never mind.

 

[stormcrash]

So who will buy Chrome? Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Dummy company owned by China or Dummy company owned by Russia?

Make it a nonprofit spinoff like Mozilla that companies can contribute to for tax write-offs and for when they need a browser engine with feature X that they want to contribute

 

[stormcrash]

Too bad this is only theatre. Biden's AG had 4 years to do some trust busting and did nothing. The only reason this is coming out now is because he lost the election so now the Dems can pretend to attack one of their biggest donors, knowing full well that Trump will stop this. And when he does it will drive more donations.

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/alphabet-inc/summary?id=d000067823

Breaking news, lawsuits take time, details at 11. Seriously, the judgment only came down a couple months ago after a long trial buildup, they literally couldn't do this any sooner than this. And against all the odds they WON the case already, don't forget that very big detail. They WON, regardless of if Trump gets petty and scuttles the penalties the ruling still exists

 

[Steve austin]

What is it with people drawing part of their identity from a brand or corporation in this manner? It's truly unhealthy. Those corporations do not deserve your loyalty, it's not like there's a reciprocal relationship there. I mean if you work for them or something I get it, but probably better to recuse ones self from the conversation in that case.

I’m guessing the irony that the user making this argument has as their user name (identity) literally a brand name may be escaping them.

 

[Ravant]

So the idea behind selling off Ads would be that, then, they open up the ad market for things like Search.

Oh, don't get me wrong, any amount of breakup is good. I'm just arguing that it doesn't quite subdivide it enough, in my opinion.

Edit: Removing redundant "in my opinion" phrases.

 

[ajmas]

While there needs to be something done with Google/Alphabet...that last sentence in the article shouldn't be what we are hoping for. One super huge tech company get's slapped down so another super huge tech company can save us from anti-trust issues?? I get that they are different markets, but the reality is that two behemoths controlling a market is usually no better than one. Make it make sense.

If there are better tools than you could offer, then it makes sense to leverage them. Getting into the market yourself is not necessarily the right approach. Just look at how much of an uphill battle it has been for Bing to get traction.

I do feel that Apple getting into search would be too much of a distraction, to where their core strengths are.

 

[CelicaGT]

I'm not agreeing with them, but what if they just have an opinion about what product is the best?

I was not taking that singular comment alone in context. Besides, opinions stated as facts etc etc ad nauseam ...

 

[Rabid Hungarian]

Just as with most armies, governments are usually fighting the last war. We don’t need Google to be broken up. We DO need privacy legislation and a more-secure operating environment. But both seem to be federal blind spots.

 

[The Real Blastdoor]

And you don't think that kind of backdoor deal would ever come to public light?

Where did I say that? I'm not even sure if they'd bother keeping it from public light. Why do you think it matters whether it comes to public light? Who would do anything about it? Do you think you're living in some kind of democracy with checks and balances or something?

 

[original_mds]

I'm all for breaking up Google, but this seems an obtuse way to go about it. Who would buy Chrome and, more importantly, why? The only market for it is selling user data to tech and advertising companies like...I don't know...Google? Seems like a pretty small win. Make them sell off search or ads.

This. Divesting search guts the rest of their control. One better would also be divesting the ad business. Best of all would be divesting as multiple entities, a la AT&T with the baby Bells.

 

[stormcrash]

I’m so intrigued by how a sale of chrome would even work in practice. Chromium is OSS. I’m sure almost entirely maintained by Google. So if Google does sell Chrome what happens with chromium? Would saying Google engineers can’t work on that anymore be a 1st amendment violation (if code == speech)? If the DOJ is able to legally stop Google from working on chromium, does that set the browser back years as the project scrambles to build up maintainers who will actually understand it he code base?

I’m wondering if the better idea is to force chromium and chrome to be spun off into a foundation (perhaps Apache, Linux, or something new) and remove google from having sole control over the direction.

Chrome is basically open source in name only, sure the codebase is there for you to clone and fork and use, but development is entirely in the hands of google, as is the feature roadmap.

And that roadmap is entirely about building a tool for their own domination, from adding custom non standard features that lazy web devs use thereby making google the defacto standards setter and gives them a way to force W3C to adopt their features, to using the behavior of chromes engine to use invisible youtube tags to break JIT optimizations on Firefox and pre-chromium Edge that Chrome conveniently handled fine making it look faster, to it being tied to a google account that makes all of the google web services integrated and with lower friction in a way other web service providers can't replicate, which steers you to their ads etc.

I do agree that it would be best to spin it off as an open source nonprofit foundation though with a truly independent board making the roadmap decisions and companies able to contribute just as they do for other OSS projects

 

[Vaasa]

I don't get either of these remedies. If you want to address Google's dominance, you force them to sell the advertising marketplace and similar ad-selling and distribution functions. Make Alphabet only able to sell ads on Google-owned URLs. Android and Chrome are just mechanisms for pushing data to those ad functions. No one is going to buy either as they aren't particularly valuable businesses on their own. If browsers were valuable on their own, Netscape would never have failed.

 

[Hemlocke]

I would have preferred the DOJ to force Google to divest itself of the ad business, end exclusive deals, and put some privacy protections in place for users such as opt-in screens, but that latter is a pipe dream that should be forced on all companies.

 

[rick9004]

The DOJ goes for the throat with technology like Google to kill it. Trump.... they just let him skate for years. Now we have both the DOJ and the EU all after American technology companies. What is it about lawyers that want to bust up successful companies? Didn't work for AT&T, they were constantly after IBM, then Microsoft, etc.

 

[NotInMyBasement]

including bans on exclusive default deals with other browsers

Well there goes Firefox's budget.

I am also unconvinced that chrome makes enough money to be worth buying or that I would trust anyone who might buy it.

 

[TinCoyote]

And who exactly do you think is going to buy and maintain Chrome? How are they going to monetize it?

Microsoft.

They use Chrome under Edge anyway. And they love love love to have their own browser platform.

Wouldn't that put the DoJ's panties in a twist?

 

[rick9004]

Yup, of course! Everyone with information in the US is too thoroughly wedded to not give a damn about privacy or anything (except maybe finance?), so there's an impossible hill to overcome without unpopular-to-campaign-contributor-businesses legislation somehow being successful. There's no impetus for a US GDPR and lots of hate for the concept, so maybe the state patchwork of privacy laws gets us somewhere someday. An opt-in required system is a loooooonnnngggg way off, though.

Data collection everywhere? that would be really hard to define where everywhere is. It is part of our life now. I was part of an organization in the mid-1980s that collected everyone's grocery receipts so that we could help advertisers to market. We collected over 10GB each day even back when modems were 800 baud. Today, cars, phones, security systems, government agencies, stores, online activity, of course. Going back to 1960 is not going to happen. I may not like it, but it is not going away.

 

[Cloudgazer]

Chrome is basically open source in name only,

Tell me more

sure the codebase is there for you to clone and fork and use,

So not in name only then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F...#The_Four_Essential_Freedoms_of_Free_Software
All the essential freedoms as defined by the FSF are right there. The fact it isn't developed in the open by the community doesn't mean it's not open source software.

 

[MechR]

So who will buy Chrome? Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Dummy company owned by China or Dummy company owned by Russia?

Every potential buyer I can think of are entities I trust even less than Google, that would actually make me drop the browser after sticking with it for this long. The absolute state of Big Tech

 

[disquiet]

Best thing to come out of the DoJ in a while, feels like. Death to Chrome and its monopoly.

 

[kvndoom]

They are going to get this done in (checks calendar) the next 60 days?

Exactly.

By February google will just need to know where to send the check to make it all go away.

 

[SportivoA]

Data collection everywhere? that would be really hard to define where everywhere is. It is part of our life now. I was part of an organization in the mid-1980s that collected everyone's grocery receipts so that we could help advertisers to market. We collected over 10GB each day even back when modems were 800 baud. Today, cars, phones, security systems, government agencies, stores, online activity, of course. Going back to 1960 is not going to happen. I may not like it, but it is not going away.

too thoroughly wedded

Sounds like it! All in the name of, ah, yes, the advertisers. Maybe some insurance in there. Every keystroke, wheel turn, and purchase: link it back to a person! Unfortunately leverage over the data and the fact that it has "generated value" means it's a self-fulfilling "not going away". And, unfortunately, that continued value means continued employment of everyone interested in continuing to build the Ad Data Machine (now with government analytics benefits!).

 

[Bolivar diGriz]

This is a judgement that on one hand has massive consequences for a corporation exploiting its monopoly power while on the other hand being completely inadequate and largely pointless.

It will, if it survives appeals, force a breakup of various Alphabet divisions. It effectively deals with the state of play concerning one corporation in 2024. Not addressed is the lack of regulation that resulted in the rise in that corporation's power during the years 1998-2023. Google (and then Alphabet) achieved its monopoly and was able to abuse it because that is what the system deliberately allows them to do. Basically the regulatory environment pats these monoliths on their heads year after year telling them what a good job they're doing until one day they (DoJ) turn around and send them off to be euthanized for doing nothing more than what they've been rewarded for doing for decades.

Presumably we're going to see Nvidia (picked at semi-random) treated the same way in a few years' time. That'll show their future executives who's boss and make a difference to the way current executives behave!

 

[bb-15]

That's... exactly the point of the case and proposed remedies?? Everyone jumping on the Chromium bandwagon. Default search deals with $$ payments. Apple not getting into web search despite liking first-party solutions.

I don’t think Apple needs to create their own web search program (which creates more monopoly problems).
Google can be stopped from paying Apple to be the Mac/iOS default search.
Couldn’t Apple negotiate with another search provider to make that the next default? (Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.)

 

[Zilveari]

All this, and yet they are letting Microsoft do exactly what they were doing in the late 90s when the DoJ sued them for anti-trust.

Please hit Microsoft too. This shit with them trying to force Edge is BS. They should be forced to pre-install Chrome and something else, Opera or something.

 

[stormcrash]

Tell me more

So not in name only then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F...#The_Four_Essential_Freedoms_of_Free_Software
All the essential freedoms as defined by the FSF are right there. The fact it isn't developed in the open by the community doesn't mean it's not open source software.

My point is it's not the collaborative open any group can contribute project that most people think of for FOSS/OSS. I'd bet google would have kept it closed source if they could have but the licensing of Webkit from KHTML prevented that and it got them brownie points with OSS obsessed nerds who don't read the fine print beyond OSS = Good Closed Source = Bad

 

[tRexx]

Paying Apple for search was a step too far in my opinion.

 

[emppedocles]

I don't really disagree with you, but it's tricky.

We have a subscription program for Ars that is entirely ad and tracker free. You can pay us directly and completely escape the box. No privacy issues, no advertising, just pure content and some extra perks, especially ones we can offer because we don't have to serve subs ads, so we get more flexibility in layout and presentation.

And yet only a relatively small fraction of our readership opts for that.

What's our option? Put up a paywall to force you to either pay or not read?

It is a conundrum that I have reflected on for twenty years. I appreciate Ars and therefore subscribe, plus appreciate and learn from the articles and comment threads and thank everyone's contribution.

 

[Cloudgazer]

My point is it's not the collaborative open any group can contribute project that most people think of for FOSS/OSS.

That's not what most people think of for FOSS or OSS, because there are lots of important FOSS projects that's not true of. You can't just contribute to a GNU project for example, not without jumping through hoops around copyright assignment, yet nobody would say that GNU isn't open source surely?

Heck at the end of the day Linux is Linus's baby and he decides what does or doesn't get into the kernel mainline. Is that not open source because he gets to decide the feature roadmap?

I'd bet google would have kept it closed source if they could have but the licensing of Webkit from KHTML prevented that and it got them brownie points with OSS obsessed nerds who don't read the fine print beyond OSS = Good Closed Source = Bad

Either Apple or Google could have chosen to develop their browsers as closed source if they wanted to. Apple didn't have to start from KHTML, Google didn't have to start from Webkit. Your bet is based on nothing but your confident ignorance.