Google Critics Think the Search Remedies Ruling is a Total Whiff (theverge.com) 41
Critics are denouncing Tuesday's antitrust remedies ruling against Google, calling them inadequate to restore search market competition. DuckDuckGo said the court's decision allows Google to continue using its monopoly to hold back competitors in AI search.
The Open Markets Institute called it "pure judicial cowardice" that leaves Google's power "almost fully intact." Senator Amy Klobuchar said the limited remedies demonstrate why Congress needs to pass legislation stopping dominant platforms from preferencing their own products. The News/Media Alliance criticized Judge Amit Mehta for failing to address Google forcing publishers to provide content for AI offerings to remain in search results.
The Open Markets Institute called it "pure judicial cowardice" that leaves Google's power "almost fully intact." Senator Amy Klobuchar said the limited remedies demonstrate why Congress needs to pass legislation stopping dominant platforms from preferencing their own products. The News/Media Alliance criticized Judge Amit Mehta for failing to address Google forcing publishers to provide content for AI offerings to remain in search results.
Re: Um (Score:1)
Do you also pine for Myspace?
These aren't different "products" to the user (Score:5, Interesting)
Treating image search, finance search, travel search, and news search as different "products" is a false flag by DuckDuckGo and others.
When I search for a topic - let's say NVidia - all I care about is are the results accurate, relevant, and actionable.
If they aren't then over time I will go and use a different tool.
Having to go to different places for different kinds of search is just ridiculously anti-consumer and short-sighted - especially in this age of AI. If a ruling like that happened, then Perplexity would just totally eat Googles lunch, not because their results were better but simply because users wouldn't have to go to multiple places.
Re: (Score:3)
Having to go to different places for different kinds of search is just ridiculously anti-consumer and short-sighted - especially in this age of AI.
I totally agree. What may be worse is having to go to different places for the same search.
I default to DDG and use it as much as possible, mostly because it's "not Google" and is therefore less evil. But increasingly, I can try DDG and get zero hits, whereas for the same search terms Google delivers a dozen or more, with usually at least one helpful link in the bunch.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct.
For search to operate ANY OTHER WAY would be COMPLETELY IDIOTIC.
So, naturally, that's what lawmakers and dumbasses promote.
Still waiting for Internet Explorer to be removed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Removing it wasn't a requirement in any ruling. At best it was a case of hiding it and offering a selection screen, but even then only in Europe and they did get that.
Also it's not 1995 anymore. These days the inclusion of a default browser is expected in an OS. No one would find the bundling of a browser to be an antitrust violation today.
Lets just State The Obvious (Score:3)
They were busy arguing about Chrome, defaults, and algo minutia.
The focus should have been on the collusion with Facebook, https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
The bottom line is simple: Google has destroyed the internet advertising space.
In 1999, I ran banners for $12-15 cpm. Post crash, the day AdSense launched I was running them for about $6cpm. By 2015, those ads were making less than $2 cpm, and today it is down to less than .25cents cpm and traffic had dried up. Better content - more fresh - quality than ever before.
Google used the power of the search engine algo to destroy internet advertising programs (including affiliate programs). I fully believe Google targeted affiliate programs by reducing clicks it sent to them.
I also believe they reduced traffic to AdSense sites to drive advertisers to the AdWords where Google's "take" was much higher.
All of that just never bothered to come up in court.
Re: (Score:2)
That did not come up in court. The emails that the state of tx says exist between Facebook and G
Need a too big to fail rule (Score:4, Interesting)
We need a rule that if a company is 'too big to fail', then it should automatically be required to break up.
Keep in mind that most companies that were broken up by the US ended up creating multiple thriving companies as a result.
Microsoft was created when IBM split out their software from their hardware.
AT&T became the Baby Bells - resulting in Verizon.
Standard Oil became Exxon, Cheveron and BP
American Tobacco became RJ Reynolds and Ligget Myers
Not one of these break ups harmed the country or the share holders.
Re: Need a too big to fail rule (Score:2)
What we need is to enforce antitrust preemptively by not allowing M&A that will result in a too big to fail situation. They don't just magically happen, the government approves them.
Re: (Score:3)
>>Microsoft was created when IBM split out their software from their hardware.
An antitrust case in 1969 accused IBM of having an illegal monopoly in computers (i.e. mainframes). The case was eventually dropped due to lack of merit.
Microsoft was founded in 1975, producing BASIC interpreters & operating systems for personal computers makers like Apple, Commodore, Tandy and (eventually in 1981) IBM. IBM outsourced the PC's BASIC and PC-DOS to Microsoft because they still thought mainframes were the
Re: (Score:2)
You re-wrote some history there.
1) The case was dropped. Whether it was dropped due to 'lack of merit' is an opinion, and a rather one sided one.
2) The problem continued to exist long after the case was dropped. IBM was still a near monopoly up to 1980.
3) You claim that IBM outsourced their software because they failed to understand the value of PC's is rather inane bullcrap.
4) If you think IBM did not want that business you are a fool. If you think they did not have enough programmers, you are a fool.
Re: (Score:3)
1) The case's lack of merit was not my opinion, it was in the official ruling:
After thousands of hours of testimony (testimony of over 950 witnesses, 87 in court, the remainder by deposition), and the submission of tens of thousands of exhibits, on January 8, 1982 the anti-trust case U.S. v. IBM was withdrawn on the grounds that the case was "without merit."
https://www.historyofinformati... [historyofinformation.com]
2) The case wasn't dropped until 1982 by which point any monopoly in mainframes was increasingly meaningless.
3) IBM was
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft was created when IBM split out their software from their hardware.
That's a rather creative rewrite of history.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you claiming that IBM did not split out their software business?
Or are you claiming that Microsoft's hugely profitable business was not directly caused when IBM gave them the CP/M contract?
Do you believe Microsoft would still be around if IBM had made the deal with Digital Research for the CP/M instead of going with Microsoft.
What I did is called critical analysis, not creative thinking. Look beyond the straight facts and figures and the decisions that were made and WHY they were made.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you claiming that IBM did not split out their software business?
They did not. I worked for IBM's software group in the 2000s, and it was still intimately tied into the HW groups then.
The only hardware and software business "splitting" IBM did was in the late 60s when they started selling hardware and software separately, rather than bundling them together (before then hardware came with software and that was the only way to get it). This was also true of the PC; the PC came with no OS at all and you had to purchase an OS separately... but as a practical matter the o
Why do we have a justice department (Score:2)
If they can't create change for issues that are clearly a problem. If these companies retain their power over time, this does not bode well for the future.
It may not matter (Score:2)
New AI tools are replacing traditional search
Google is one of the leaders in AI research and their AI assisted search is getting better
As usual, the law is slow and late when dealing with fast moving tech
Re: It may not matter (Score:2)
"Google is one of the leaders in AI research and their AI assisted search is getting better"
Hahahahahahahhaha no.
Only people who don't know anything can believe that, because people who know things see the Gemini search results decreasing in quality over time.
I just did a search yesterday to try to find results from some non-AI resources that usually come up when I search certain types of terms. Not only did Google not give me any such results this time, it also gave me an AI result which was totally batshi
not gonna happen (Score:3)
In any case, breaking up big companies has been unnecessary for the past 50 years or more. IBM was an unstoppable juggernaut at one point. There was no need to break it up. It lost it's mojo, shrank on it's own, and got muscled out by hungrier companies. At one point, everyone was soooo worried about Microsoft as a monopoly because it dared to bundle it's browser with it's OS. Oh noooes they were gonna rule the world. That didn't happen.
Nowadays, people are totally certain that Google and Apple need to be stomped because they're unstoppable monopolists. The truth is that they're just one or two screwups away from being replaced. It could happen within a few years if they lose their edge. Apple isn't the only manufacturer of smartphones. Google's browser isn't the only game in town. Heck, even Intel lost it's mojo and got replaced, and chipmaking is a business with as wide a "natural moat" as it gets.
There can certainly be cases where monopolies need to be broken up, but I'm just not seeing it in today's internet companies. The monopolies that need to be externally broken are the ones where a company achieves some sort of complete physical lockdown on a resource. Like the railroads, but that was over a hundred years ago. Nothing on the internet is a monopoly.
Re: (Score:3)
There can certainly be cases where monopolies need to be broken up, but I'm just not seeing it in today's internet companies.
I think people keep forgetting that the point of anti-monopoly laws are to protect the *consumer* from financial damage. What financial damage are consumers facing when they use Google Search?
The second factor to consider is friction. How hard is it to not use Google Search? It takes about two seconds to type in another URL. It takes about ten seconds to change the default browser in Chrome to something other than Google. How long does it take to install a browser other than Chrome? A minute or two?
Re: (Score:2)
Do you remember when any search at Google generated a pop-up prompting you to install Chrome? Every Fucking Time. If that developer, project manager, or line manager are still at Google, expect everything to be shit forevermore.
Script (Score:2)
Do you remember when any search at Google generated a pop-up prompting you to install Chrome?
No, because for general internet browsing and searching I used Firefox with a script blocker. I use Chrome to access gmail and drive, and that's all. But, I get your point.
Re: (Score:3)
Nowadays, people are totally certain that Google and Apple need to be stomped because they're unstoppable monopolists. The truth is that they're just one or two screwups away from being replaced.
The possibility that one monopoly may eventually be replaced with another one isn't enough to prevent the abuse. We need actual competition between contemporary companies. I don't want to be stuck taking a bad deal, hoping that maybe a better monopoly will come along next decade.
Google and government (Score:2)
Google provides so much data to the US government, there's no way they're going to get smacked down by it.
They could threaten to either stop providing the info, or tell people what they have been providing.
Nothing to see here... move along... move along
Re: (Score:2)
Google provides so much data to the US government, there's no way they're going to get smacked down by it. They could threaten to either stop providing the info, or tell people what they have been providing.
Lots of people believe that Google provides lots of data to the government, more than they're legally obligated to through warrants, subpoenas and the like, but I have never seen a shred of evidence for it. Have you? Can you point me to it?
It seems to me that there's some rather strong counter-evidence, in the form of this anti-trust prosecution. The DoJ is the government department that would most benefit from data from Google, but they're the organization that prosecuted Google and demanded severe re
Oh, come on!! (Score:2)
... stopping dominant platforms from preferencing their own products.
Maybe the dumbest bullshit in the history of mankind.
Of course a company is going to prefer selling its own products rather than anyone else's products.
It should!
Why wouldn't it?
It's completely natural behaviour!
Congress should fuck off.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that this is a Nash equilibrium situation. The contention is that the most natural and advantageous thing to do for a single entity is bad for the group, in this case the (market, economy, state).
Not very different from nuclear proliferation, deforestation, environmental issues etc.
The single entity is not ‘wrong’ to do what it does. But it has been shown mathematically shown by John Nash that this kind of setup is inevitably detrimental in the long run. Ref: https://www.jstor.org [jstor.org]
Re: (Score:2)
... stopping dominant platforms from preferencing their own products.
Maybe the dumbest bullshit in the history of mankind.
Of course a company is going to prefer selling its own products rather than anyone else's products.
It should!
Why wouldn't it?
It's completely natural behaviour!
It's completely normal, natural and legal... unless the business has a monopoly.
Note that having a monopoly is not illegal, but the law says that using a monopoly position in one market to boost a company's products in another market is illegal.
You can, of course, disagree with that law, but most people find it pretty reasonable, even compelling, on the grounds that allowing monopolists in one area to leverage that monopoly to squash competition in another area is bad for market competition and therefor