U.S. v. Google

[skilled]

https://archive.ph/cUBoC

E: NYTimes has a live feed up now[0] but unfortunately it is paywalled. You can bypass it by disabling JS and then refreshing once in a while if you want to keep up. I don't see BBC or The Guardian running a live feed, but if there's a better (non-paywalled) link then comment below.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/09/12/business/google-anti...

[havnagiggle]

> other companies such as Microsoft can’t perform enough searches to improve their product

Big belly laugh at this. Literally a boohoo moment. Apple, et. al. are going to throw MS a bone or something? Shitty products don't "deserve" anything IMO. What was OpenAI able to achieve without having 90% dominance in the ad space market?

Anti-competitiveness is still a problem so Google will have a hell of a battle ahead. I am curious what MSFT's stock did in the different phases of their antitrust suit.

[ColinHayhurst]

The <blanks> behind the pre-trial briefs redactions will tell a lot. Some here, more detail in this thread [0].

1. Google’s <blank> with <blank> prevents <blank> from pre-setting a different, more private search engine (e.g., <blank>) as its default [blank].

2. Google's partners-including OEMS, carriers, and Apple-wanted more flexibility than what they ultimately received under their contracts with Google. In particular, <blank> bristled repeatedly at the <blank> restrictive nature ..... For example, in <blank>, <blank> sought to offer <blank>. Google refused.

3. Browsers also took issue with Google’s restrictive terms. For example, <blank> sought an alternative to Google and signed a contract with <blank> to encourage competition in search, welcoming the <blank> to <blank>. However, the trial testimony will show that to win the <blank> default from Google in 2014, <blank> needed to offer a <blank> million annual financial guarantee—roughly <blank> million more than Google was paying for the <blank> default. <blank>

[0] https://twitter.com/ColinHayhurst/status/1701274277830357164

[jcranmer]

> 3. Browsers also took issue with Google’s restrictive terms. For example, <blank> sought an alternative to Google and signed a contract with <blank> to encourage competition in search, welcoming the <blank> to <blank>. However, the trial testimony will show that to win the <blank> default from Google in 2014, <blank> needed to offer a <blank> million annual financial guarantee—roughly <blank> million more than Google was paying for the <blank> default. <blank>

That's an interesting thing to redact because... there's new articles from the time about some of these details. (This is almost certainly Mozilla switching the default search engine in Firefox, see https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/mozilla-partners-with-yaho...). The only thing that I'm not sure about is the precise monetary value was, or what the last <blank> (a full sentence, complete with a footnote attached).

[hospitalJail]

I have so many mixed feelings about Google. They unlike the fruit company, advanced society sooo far with their FOSS. I have sooo many degoogled products, and I need to give them credit for that. They also refused to comply with the CCP, something the fruit company was happy to do during the hong kong protests. They even continue to let ad blockers on their platforms. They also made it easy for a poor college kid to make apps, unlike the fruit company.

But... They also suck. Canceling services, no customer service, removing the aux port to sell headphones, etc... They aren't the same company I was a fan of a decade or two ago.

Not sure what I want out of this. While it seems like I'm taking Ls from all the FAAMG companies, I admittedly think my life has never been better from a tech point of view. (most of that is from GPT and Moore's law though)

[dfxm12]

To put things into perspective, it sounds like most of your complaints are mostly from the point of view as a consumer, but what you like about them is that they enable you as a creator, being given access to modify FOSS, making it easy to create apps or as a responsible member of society, not complying with CCP, allowing ad blockers.

If you ask me, the latter are infinitely more important than the first thing.

Now, I will grant that Google also does a lot more to complain about.

[edgyquant]

Even if they were the greatest company on the planet that doesn’t change that they dominate the ad market and internet and that has to change

[eitally]

A lot of those complaints, historically, are a direct result of Google's culture of being an engineering meritocracy: let everyone experiment, let employees easily transfer to new teams, and let the best product win. That does wonders for innovation if bureaucracy isn't an issue, but what you've seen in the past ten years is that bureaucracy has gotten in the way of innovation at the same time as Google has refused to adjust it's organization & culture to become more top-down and market driven. Since TK took over Cloud, you've started seeing this wholesale, and now this new "culture" (leadership focus & style) affects the Hardware & Platforms PAs, as well as the new Deepmind.

Google isn't an engineering meritocracy anymore, but it's still a great place for engineers overall: wealthy, excellent perks, and some of the best talent anywhere. But, adjusting the culture to be truly market driven and in alignment with a clear purpose has (and is still) taken years, and has created lots of interim pain & suffering [of all kinds, both internally and for customers & consumers]. Google is becoming more like Apple & Microsoft, and if the alternative is "pretend to be like the old Google", this cannot be anything but positive.

[sanderjd]

Do they contradict themselves? Very well then they contradict themselves. (They are large, they contain multitudes.)

[kanbara]

you can create apps for free on apple platforms, just can’t publish without a sub.

google most def supports CCP since their re-entry into china

apple invented webkit and clang/llvm among others

maybe look at things with a more open perspective. google and apple both do good as well as bad; it’s not a competition in terms of who abuses capitalism, the answer is everyone.

[noman-land]

To me Google contributing to open source is like Pablo Escobar giving food and goods to the poor people of Colombia.

[ocdtrekkie]

You are ignoring all the FOSS that never existed because Google killed it or prevented it from happening. Monopolies kill choices you will never even hear of, just by existing. You may believe some technologies are better off because a monopoly exists, but that's almost certainly always incorrect, monopolies impede progress.

[cracauer]

This is bad in one aspect:

Google pays Mozilla a lot of money, mainly to keep Google search the default search engine in Firefox.

If that turns out to be illegal it could create a financial crisis for the Firefox browser and hence reduce diversity in web browsers.

[convolvatron]

this is true. but wouldn't it be nice everything didn't have to flow through google and could exist on its own merits?

infrastructure like browsers should really be neutral ground - its sad we can't figure out a way to fund things like that

[gettodachoppa]

Mozilla could easily live without Google's money if the vast majority of their income wasn't spent on being Big Nonprofit ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180480 )

I would love it if they lost Google's money and trimmed the bile and focused on making great tech. But something tells me the first to be let go will be the techies, making Firefox effectively a maintenance-only browser. And the army of useless "evangelists" will be there until Mozilla collapses under its own weight.

[keep_reading]

Maybe we should have a reality check on the true cost of tech. Anything that can break the behavior of the tech industry due to cheap money is a good thing for the long term health of the industry.

[elashri]

Is there a chance that Microsoft can make an offer to Mozilla about making bing the default search in this case. I don't know if this would make sense from Microsoft business point of view and probably an evil from internet freedom ans diversity point. But maybe it is better than the current status.

[ricardo81]

Another take might be that Google's financial clout killed the browser market. That whole $xx.xx CPM thing that only they attain, and others basically pick up the crumbs. Search terms as input to ads are very powerful.

[someotherperson]

Might be a bit contrarian, but so what?

Mozilla hasn't produced a decent browser for, what, 12 years? They instead take their hundreds of millions of dollars annually to instead spend time building junk like half-baked password managers.

I'd argue that Mozilla's mishandling of Firefox has been killing innovation in this space for years -- it is a giant red flag for anyone wanting to enter the space considering Mozilla's budget and still not being able to produce something of value. The reality is moreso that Mozilla itself doesn't care about building a better browser. It's only when people started to realise this in the last couple of years that we've started to see some new contenders.

Maybe when Mozilla dies, we might start to see open source efforts going to better browsers.

[ocdtrekkie]

If Firefox loses a lot of funding but Google loses the ability to pay companies to make Chrome the default on nearly all devices sold globally today, Firefox will be in much better shape than it is now. Google is killing it, and also giving it a few dollars.

[f33d5173]

I'm all in fabour of anti trust against google, but this really doesn't seem like the way. Any other company can easily pony up the cash to become the default search engine, if they'd like. Yahoo gave it a pass on firefox a few years back. All it costs is money. On android, they seemingly don't abuse their ownership of the platform there to maintain their search monopoly: the complaint is about a special search specific deal like everywhere else.

[arijun]

But why couldn't that be a monopolistic practice? For example, let’s say Apple is getting more than 100% of the ad revenue Google earns from iPhones, but it’s still worth it for Google only because it doesn’t have iPhone users start thinking about other search engines (thereby maintaining the monopoly). That seems pretty similar to standard oil pricing below market value to get its competitors out of business.

[boredpeter]

Or we could give users the choice of default search engine instead of just rewarding the winners with the most money to spend..how do you ever expect a new upstart search engine to compete with google if google can just buy defaults? Or owns the most popular mobile OS and web browser?

[bilal4hmed]

This will be a good one to watch. If the government wins, Apple and Mozilla might also be on the losing side here and for Mozilla itll pretty much be the end.

Might be the kick in the pants FF needs to figure out funding, otherwise a plus for web devs who now need to worry about just 2 rendering engines.

[toomuchtodo]

Matt Stoller has spun up a small initiative and is paying a reporter specifically to attend the trial in person if you want to follow along.

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/big-tech-on-trial-how-big...

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/

(financial supporter of both his BIG newsletter and big tech on trial, no other relation)

[throwoutway]

> Might be the kick in the pants FF needs to figure out funding,

First they need to stop wasting money on silly side projects and funding activists and political activities

[westcoalst]

> This will be a good one to watch.

An equivalent of a trip to the theatre.

[trinsic2]

What about Microsoft? It seems like they're in a way worse position for from an antitrust perspective.

[wslh]

Do you think they have added more tracking in Google Chrome to use time as the last bullet/opportunity to gain more information about users?