Google’s search antitrust trial is wrapping up—here’s what we learned

Google and the DOJ have had their say; now it's in the judge's hands.

See full article...

 

[WozNZ]

Well, this argument is bullshit:

They shouldn't be running Chrome. They can develop it.

The Mozilla foundation does just fine with what they have, and they're not even well monetized.

"Big difference in user base!", you say?

OTHER than customer support, I'd argue that the same resources that go into Firefox can be used for Chrome. Chrome having a fuckton more users doesn't mean shit if the products do the same things. You develop the PRODUCT. Not the customer base.

And from what I gather (though I could be wrong), Google Chrome is Google Chrome everywhere. Same shit, different devices. Google Chrome Mobile would be Google Chrome Mobile everywhere. Chrome for Apple would be Chrome for Apple everywhere.

Firefox runs on all those OS's, too. Mozilla is an ant compared to Google's herd of elephants. And Firefox is actively updated across all platforms.

So, no, there's no valid reason why a considerably smaller, much less well funded (AKA profitable) company can't run Chrome unless they're as big or well funded as Google.

Firefox lives or dies with the outcome of this case. Look into how Firefox is funded. About 90+% of their income is from paid search placement by Google. Courts blocking those payments hurts Apple a bit but kills Firefox.

 

[jdale]

I believe the court's plan is to ensure that Google search is not the default choice anywhere. They are going to stop the payments to Apple which will result in Apple selling the default position in Safari to someone else -- Bing or an AI player. Then if Chrome is sold, the buyer is certainly going to replace default search with their own scheme - be it Yahoo or OpenAI.

Where the court is wrong in this is that the majority of users are just going to set the default back to Google. As bad as Google's search is, right now the others are even worse. Of course there will be a chunk of users who don't know enough to change their default settings, or simply don't use search enough to care.

It's worth noting that Bing's market share is roughly equal to Edge's market share (both around 4%). I think you underestimate how many people will never change their settings.

Something I have not heard mentioned lately.,,, if Google is forced to sell off Chrome will the court bar them from reentering the browser business using Chromium as a base? The earliest version of the remedy proposal included a ten year ban on Google making another browser. What is the status of that now?

That is up to the judge, and no one will know until a ruling is issued.

It would seem dumb to allow them to just create another browser on the same foundation, though. That's virtually no change from where we are now.

 

[jdale]

There's just so much nonsense in what Google is saying, it's hard to take anything from them seriously.

It says selling Chrome would negatively impact privacy and security because Google's technology is deeply embedded in the browser.

Given that they were trying to stuff FLOC in there, and have undermined adblockers, it's clear that Google is not actually a good steward of privacy.

And regardless, Google Chrome would be too expensive for anyone to buy.

When you are required to sell, there is no "too expensive." That idea is nonsense. The price will be whatever people are willing to pay, and not any higher. They might not get what they want for it, but too bad.

Pichai claimed these remedies could force Google to reevaluate the amount it spends on research going forward, slowing progress in search for it and all the theoretical licensees.

This would be a better argument if search hadn't been getting demonstrably worse over the years. Maybe they are still doing "research" but it's obviously "how to improve revenue," not "how to improve search."

 

[ComradeMatis]

I'm confused, how is selling of Chrome going to fix anything? people quite willingly change search providers (if the assumption that Chrome provides a gateway for uses to Google thus Google has the benefit of being the first port of call) as demonstrated by Apple when it defaulted Bing but people changed to Google and Firefox when it defaulted to Yahoo and people changed back to Google. if it is browser dominance, Microsoft have their own telemetry data showing that customers did give Edge (pre-chromium) a try but the moment that a website failed to work they downloaded Chrome and used that instead.

Personally I think the bigger issue is the ad side of the business that really needs a lot more oversight but if you do break up Google what are the downstream consequences? a lot of what is being done in AI and quantum computing rely on businesses generating enough profit to fund these projects and that is done through having economies of scale but if you break businesses up then who will fund it? do we really want the government handing out grants with politicians picking winners? we're already seen the tsunami of corruption coming out of the Trump Whitehouse, imagine how much worse it would be if we started seeing the tech industry trying to get public funds with Trump saying, "well, we could but I'm not too sure about YouTube given the amount of anti-conservative content is there".

 

[Prance0710]

Google has to be made to divest Chrome. The fact that they are baking into Chrome features like Manifest 3 which disables effective Ad blocking, which is then automatically incorporated into other browsers based on Chrome just demonstrates how they are using their dominance to undermine web standards to the detriment of us all.

I guess the future is in system-wide adblockers (AdGuard, the program, not the DNS) or browser with inbuilt adblockers (which aren't extensions, so not affected by MV). Actually, I think that entirely decoupling the blocking from the browser is a nice solution.

 

[Kanten]

Yahoo offering to buy Chrome is kind of hilarious given history.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

It would seem dumb to allow them to just create another browser on the same foundation, though. That's virtually no change from where we are now.

Not seeing it. If they create another browser they will be competing with their previous browser with chrome1 having the advantage of already being installed on most people's machines.

 

[morlamweb]

Google can't fall far enough fast enough to correct for all the evil it has precipitated.

What ever happened to "do no harm"?

Oh, yeah. Right.

It was "don't be evil". "Do no harm" is part of the Hippocratic oath taken by physicians.

 

[ackmondual]

Google can't fall far enough fast enough to correct for all the evil it has precipitated.

What ever happened to "do no harm"?

Oh, yeah. Right.

In case that wasn't rhetorical, I heard that was never any seriousness to it. It's like when Fox News says they're "fair and balanced". Even they can't say that without laughing at the absurdity of it.

 

[Anton Longshot]

I don't see why the DOJ even bothers.
They might as well sit back and do nothing while the elected government wrecks the country.

 

[KeyboardWeeb]

Meanwhile, Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim explained that losing the Google deal could spell the end of Firefox. He testified that Mozilla would have to make deep cuts across the company, which could lead to a "downward spiral" that dooms the browser.

As a Firefox user on multiple platforms, this is my biggest worry in this case. I don't give a rat's ass what is done with Chrome, I hate that browser. Firefox is already a tiny player in the market, but at least organizations like banks, Amazon, etc. recognize its existence. If it were to shrink even more into obscurity due to lack of funding leading to poor or no updates, that would change.

 

[Emon]

Out of the frying pan and straight into the depths of hell.

Worst case scenario is OpenAI now modifies what everyone experiences such that we all have our own, isolated bubbles, with AI controlling everything we see and read. Misinformation is bad enough when you have to seek it out.

Browser activity isn't something they like? Brownshirts knocking at your door.

Why bother with mass surveillance when the vast majority of internet users are using a browser that self updates? That can phone home directly?

Even if Chrome stays with Google, that's going to happen if the fascist government wants it to. They (Google) already directly monitor your activity for ad purposes, even in incognito mode.

Absolutely NO ONE should be using Chrome anymore, not on any platform and not for ANY reason. Use Chromium, Firefox, Safari, or maybe other Chromium based browsers.

If you're using Chrome, you are allowing yourself to be exploited for profit, plain and simple. Your browsing habits are being sent to Google constantly.

 

[vonDubenshire]

Worst case scenario is OpenAI now modifies what everyone experiences such that we all have our own, isolated bubbles, with AI controlling everything we see and read. Misinformation is bad enough when you have to seek it out.

Browser activity isn't something they like? Brownshirts knocking at your door.

Why bother with mass surveillance when the vast majority of internet users are using a browser that self updates? That can phone home directly?

Even if Chrome stays with Google, that's going to happen if the fascist government wants it to. They (Google) already directly monitor your activity for ad purposes, even in incognito mode.

Absolutely NO ONE should be using Chrome anymore, not on any platform and not for ANY reason. Use Chromium, Firefox, Safari, or maybe other Chromium based browsers.

If you're using Chrome, you are allowing yourself to be exploited for profit, plain and simple. Your browsing habits are being sent to Google constantly.

This might be the most mid-witted and unintelligible opinion I have ever seen

 

[jdale]

Not seeing it. If they create another browser they will be competing with their previous browser with chrome1 having the advantage of already being installed on most people's machines.

Chrome doesn't come pre-installed on most PCs, so everyone who has it, has it because they installed it. In many cases because Google pushed it.

I don't think it's a stretch that many current Chrome users would install Google Manganese or whatever they call it.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

Chrome doesn't come pre-installed on most PCs, so everyone who has it, has it because they installed it. In many cases because Google pushed it.

I don't think it's a stretch that many current Chrome users would install Google Manganese or whatever they call it.

I think most people that are currently using chrome would just continue using chrome rather than installing something new. Isnt that the logic behind the idea that default placement creates a monopoly?

edit: yes new users wouldnt have chrome by default, but 1. new users are a tiny percentage of all browser users and 2. when they hear most use chrome theyre likely to pick chrome

 

[sofutoheddo]

Shitty

 

[DrBruceBanner]

As far as the US actually breaking up a monopoly or reigning in Big Tech, I'll believe it when I see it. For now I'd just like nationwide privacy reforms to make our PII data and its sharing require opt-in to Google, Meta, data brokers etc.

 

[mcsquare]

They could launch their follow-up browser, Google Manganese.

Ever since Mendeleev, we learnt that the true successor to Google Chromium ought to be Google Molybdenum.

 

[Sovetsky]

R

.

Out of the frying pan and straight into the depths of hell.

And the best thing to happen to Mozilla Firefox since MS left IE6 to rot

 

[Prance0710]

As a Firefox user on multiple platforms, this is my biggest worry in this case. I don't give a rat's ass what is done with Chrome, I hate that browser. Firefox is already a tiny player in the market, but at least organizations like banks, Amazon, etc. recognize its existence. If it were to shrink even more into obscurity due to lack of funding leading to poor or no updates, that would change.

Firefox being now a tiny player is entirely Mozilla's fault. They used to have around 30% market share, then the user base started to decline. Mind you, the decline was not only in market share (which could be justified by the "more devices on the internet"), but in absolute numbers as well (more than 50 M lost since 2019, and counting). This means that a lot of people, which used to voluntarily download and install, FF has voluntarily left the ship, included myself. Mozilla alienated a lot of people along the way.

 

[iseptimus]

If anything will kill Chrome, it's selling to even bigger scammers like Perplexity or OpenAI. They make Google look positively quaint and old school in data harvesting. Lol at Yahoo though. The deluge of people dumping Chrome as soon as Yahoo search is the default and they probably stick Bonzai Buddy in it as the AI assistant.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

delete. accidental reply

 

[AverageDutchGuy]

The end of Google payouts to Firefox is not the end of Firefox; it is the end of a cushy CEO paycheck and extraneous "revenue-seeking" adventurism for Mozilla.

As a multi-decade Moz user, I would welcome refocused effort on the core principles behind a open source, user-ONLY mission without the weird advert partnerships and subscription features that have been cropping up like mushrooms.

Lean it out. I need TRON. Not user first... user ONLY

The problem is that with the people involved now, I don't think that is possible. I too would LOVE it if Mozilla could finally figure out that Firefox should be it's premiere product, not an afterthought, but I don't think that message is ever going to land again.

 

[AverageDutchGuy]

I'm wondering, would selling chrome force a rollback of anti-competitive and anti-ad-block measures like Manifest V3 or at least stop further developments in that direction or would it just hand the reigns of steering the world away from privacy and freedom on the net to a different evil corporate overlord? I don't see Chrome getting sold to for instance openAI or Yahoo as a step forward. It's just whip passing from one lord to another. You still end up getting beaten.

 

[s73v3r]

The half of Google without AdSense would go bankrupt. AdSense is the golden goose.

Maybe. But that part would be selling ads through third parties. Which means there would be competition for them.

 

[s73v3r]

Once Google has a long steady product someone want to kill it

I really don't think all the solution proposed are fair to Google

I don't care about them being fair to Google. They weren't fair to the web.

Google open sourced chrome, it created it and helped to standardize the web and others to freely have a good base for a browsers ... It found a way to have all advantages without penalizing others.
This isn't a monopoly behaviour.

No. Making your sites work worse on other browsers is absolutely anti-competitive behavior. Making it so that you get first and last peeks at ad auctions is absolutely anti-competitive behavior. Open sourcing Chrome does not make up for that.

Google has very good positions in the search/ads but it isn't a real monopoly because people have a choice.

FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME, MONOPOLY IN THE LEGAL SENSE DOES NOT LITERALLY MEAN ONLY ONE OPTION.

You cannot criminalise cocacola because most of people love it

I could criminalize them if they engaged in anti-competitive behavior, like charging more for their product to companies that also sell Pepsi.

A fair trial should scale all the aspect of the behaviour of a company.

A fair trial would still come out that the harm Google has done outweighs the good.

 

[A Man A Plan A Canal Panama]

The half of Google without AdSense would go bankrupt. AdSense is the golden goose.

Well then I'll buy stock in the other half that keeps AdSense.

The question of divesting Chrome is completely orthogonal to this and makes no sense at all.

 

[Prance0710]

Google loosing Chrome in exchange for Mozilla to die is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. They (Mozilla) are a cringy shadow of what they used to be. The internet deserves something better.

Oh, please, forgive me for having an opinion! /s

 

[cjb110]

I don't get selling off Chrome, if for example they did, and Yahoo bought it, and then they would do exactly the same, Yahoo search by default...surely that would then be the same abuse, and solve nothing.

It's easy to change the default search engine in Chrome (and most other browsers), but why would you? None of the competitors have shown themselves to have an actual competitive product.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

I don't get selling off Chrome, if for example they did, and Yahoo bought it, and then they would do exactly the same, Yahoo search by default...surely that would then be the same abuse, and solve nothing.

It's easy to change the default search engine in Chrome (and most other browsers), but why would you? None of the competitors have shown themselves to have an actual competitive product.

IIUC the main abuse isnt the search by default. Its leveraging adsense.

 

[alisonken1]

I don't get selling off Chrome, if for example they did, and Yahoo bought it, and then they would do exactly the same, Yahoo search by default...surely that would then be the same abuse, and solve nothing.

It's easy to change the default search engine in Chrome (and most other browsers), but why would you? None of the competitors have shown themselves to have an actual competitive product.

It's not that Yahoo switching chrome to Yahoo Search - it's Yahoo is not a dominant (legally-defined "monopoly") using a web browser that is not part of their dominant position (ad slinging web search) that's the issue with Google.

 

[TylerH]

Without google ads isnt the rest worthless though? I mean from a financial pov.

I think between search, chrome, android, google cloud platform, google productivity suite, etc. they can find something to make money. But, y'know, reducing their ability to make so much money and gain so much influence over the industry and economy is kind of the entire fucking point of this trial.