By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... )
It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story) yet why is it always such a hassle for them to feel that they should link the original content? I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point. It feels like they want to be the gatekeepers of information, and poor ones at that.
I think it should be adopted as standard journalistic practice in fact -- reporting on court rulings must come with the PDF.
Aside from that, it will be interesting to see on what grounds the judge decided that this particular data sharing remedy was the solution. Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data?
I am not too familiar with antitrust precedent, but to what extent does the judge rule on how specific the data sharing need to be (what types of data, for what time span, how anonymized, etc. etc.) or appoint a special master? Why is that up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?
This is an astonishing victory for Google, they must be very happy about it.
They get basically everything they want (keeping it all in the tent), plus a negotiating position on search deals where they can refuse something because they can't do it now.
Quite why the judge is so concerned about the rise of AI factoring in here is beyond me. It's fundamentally an anticompetitive decision.
This seems like a very sensible and logical conclusion by the judge to me.
An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The ban on exclusive contracts makes sense though; they should not be allowed to use contracts to furthur their monopoly position.
And similarly with Chrome; it made no sense to bring Chrome into this equation. Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today NOT through exclusive contracts, but because Chrome is just a better product. Users can switch to Firefox/Safari (Mac default)/Edge (Windows default); they don't because Chrome is better. Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company.
With the rise of ChatGPT (I barely use Google anymore) and AI search engines potentially shifting the search landscape, who knows if Google will still be a monopoly 5 years from now. Software moves fast and the best solution to software monopoly is more software competition.
> Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today
I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best?
How is Chrome a better browser than Edge? They are both just custom builds of the underlying Chromium browser.
I switched from Chrome to Edge on my Windows machine a couple of months ago for the embarrassing reason that I had so many tabs open that Chrome slowed down to a crawl.
(Yes, I'm one of those lazy people who uses old tabs as if they were bookmarks.)
Of course I eventually opened enough tabs in Edge that it slowed down too! So I finally bit the bullet and started closing tabs in both browsers.
Otherwise, I hardly notice any difference between the two.
There are bigger differences on my Android device. Edge supports extensions! (Yay!) But it lacks Chrome's "tab group carousel" at the bottom of the screen. Instead, you have to tap an icon to open the full-page list of tab groups, then tap the tab group you already had open, and finally tap the tab you want from this tab group. (Boo!)
So I went back to Chrome on mobile but still use Edge on desktop.
> Users can switch to Firefox/Safari (Mac default)/Edge (Windows default); they don't because Chrome is better. Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company.
Yeah. People on HN just don't use Windows, at least not a freshly installed one. Windows does nudge you to use Edge [0]. On PC, Chrome is not just competing fairly: it's competing at a disadvantage! Yet it just keeps winning.
This is perhaps a tad ahistorical. Google forked Blink off from WebKit around 2013 - it owes a lot of it's early success to the same technical foundations as Safari (which in turns owes the same debt to Konqueror...)
Regarding Chrome - don’t forget Google used it’s market leading position of their products to block other platforms/browsers (from the top of my head - Windows Phone). Or develop their web apps (or browser APIs) deliberately in such a way that they work best only on Chrome.
> You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law
I think you can, under the assumption that Apple's decision wasn't independent/voluntary. At least, that seems how it works for people in cases of coercion, conspiracy or impairment.
Firefox can still get money, and maybe Apple too. The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity.
Google also must share search data with competitors, but it's not totally clear what this is. The ruling mentions helping other engines with "long tail" queries.
All in all this seems like a pretty mild ruling, and an appeal can generally only help Google from a not to bad ruling at this point.
The problem for the judge seems to be that there is no alternative at this point. No other company can bid for or credibly pay Apple/Mozilla as much as Google did. Apple testified they would spend less on innovation if the payment goes away, Mozilla said they wont survive. So the alternative for the judge is to create a market in the next five years where people invest in search, there are more credible products that come up, and are competitive enough to justify the placement bids (ending dependency on google).
The nuclear option was DDG's hope. Google should share their entire data, so DDG can offer the same product without having to build out the thing themselves. The judge correctly identified (imo) where this sharing of index and search results would have meant a bunch of white labeled wrappers selling Google search and would have no incentive to innovate themselves in the short term. Somehow, DDG did not see that happening. At that goal, it's a great ruling, well considered.
> The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity.
From what I understand Google could pay for Firefox to install a Google search extension, but they can't pay Firefox to make Google the default search engine. Even if they get google to pay for just pre-installing it, it's not going to be anywhere near what Google currently pays to be the default.
Google being allowed to pay Firefox or Apple whatever they want makes the exclusivity restriction pretty moot.
If Google pays Apple 3x more than OpenAI and Apple sets Google as default "because of market research, not because of the money", we're firmly in the status quo. So much as Google can modulate how much it pays Apple depending on how friendly they've been to Google in the last round.
> Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.
This is the problem. It doesn't matter if they used those specific assets to perpetrate these specific acts. The overall market power derived from those assets (and many others) taints everything they do.
There is no way to effectively curtail monopoly power by selectively limiting the actions of monopolists in certain specific domains. It's like thinking you can stop a rampaging 500-pound gorilla by tying two of its fingers together because those were the two fingers that were at the leading edge of its blow when it crushed someone's skull with a punch.
Once a company has monopoly power of any kind, it is useless to try to stop it from using that power to do certain things. It will always find a way to use its power to get around any restrictions. The problem isn't what the monopoly does, it's that the monopoly exists. The only surefire way is to destroy the monopoly itself by shattering the company into tiny pieces so that no entity holds monopoly power at all.
The BBC is reporting the exact opposite of this headline.
"It's also free to keep making payments to partners such as Apple, to secure placement of its browser - another closely watched and contentious part of the case."
I don't see the contradiction "paying partners to secure browser placement" =/ "exclusivity." This just means you can have partner deals, but that they can't be exclusive, right?
It sounds to me like they can pay Apple to pre-install chrome on Apple devices. But they can't pay Apple or Mozilla to be the default search engine in their browsers (Safari and Firefox).
And the latter is going to be pretty bad for Mozilla.
Gotta keep the cash flowing because the scam is too big.
"Cutting off payments from Google
almost certainly will impose substantial—in some cases, crippling—
downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers,
which counsels against a broad payment ban."
> The remedy also extends beyond the conduct Plaintiffs seek to redress. It was Google’s control of the Chrome default, not its ownership of Chrome as a whole, that the court highlighted in its liability finding. See Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 120–21. Ordering Google to sell one of its most popular products, one that it has built “from the ground up” and in which it has invested (and continues to invest) billions of dollars, in the hope of opening a single channel of distribution to competition—and not even one that was unlawfully foreclosed by the challenged contracts—cannot reasonably be described as a remedy “tailored to fit the wrong creating the occasion for the remedy.” Microsoft III, 253 F.3d at 107; Rem. Tr. at 2466:23–2468:3 (Pichai); id. at 1634:23–1636:2 (Tabriz) (discussing PXR0215 at -257). Further, as a legal matter, the divestiture of Chrome exceeds the proper scope of relief. “All parties agree that the relevant geographic marketis the United States.” Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 107. Chrome, however, is not so geographically confined. The vast majority—over 80%—of its monthly active users are located outside the United States. Rem. Tr. at 1619:23–1620:6 (Tabriz). Plaintiffs do not try to make the case that a divestiture of Chrome to just U.S.-based users is feasible.
The search deals were already not exclusive. The real impact will be the other businesses (especially GenAI) where Google will be barred from having exclusivity clauses in its contracts.
A loser in this is Perplexity. I’ve never understood the thesis of Apple purchasing them: whether or not you enjoy their product, I see nothing defensible or interesting and suspect they’re among the most overvalued AI startup.
Nonetheless, I’d bet Apple will do more of what’s worked: partner with Google to solve something core that they’re not great at. I’d take a deeply integrated Gemini on the iPhone over Siri any day of the week!
I think ultimately this is a good decision. The web has flourished in part because Google has supported Chrome so well over the years since they are incentivized to do so. You don't have to use Chrome (I don't) to benefit from this second order effect.
What do you define as "flourished"? Chrome won in part because it was better than Internet Explorer, but ironically, the internet was better back when IE had majority market share.
Today, 99% of internet traffic goes to a handful of sites/apps, and the vast majority of the ad revenue on the internet goes to a handful ad companies. The internet is a SEO spam shit hole crafted in service of Google's easily gamed ranking algorithms, and designed with the sole purpose of serving ads.
Google effectively owns the internet, and this ruling is a green light for them to take even more. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop releasing Chrome sources and fully ban ad blockers now. The court already ruled that the government can't touch them, even when they've been found to have broken the law.
Everywhere I look people are complaining about how awful the internet is now. That is largely due to Google influence and dominance over the past 15 years. People see ads as the only way to monetize a product, attention is the currency of the internet, and all original utility from many sites has been stripped away to prioritize addiction and attention. Since these things are all that matters, bots and AI generated content have taken over, and who cares, as long as it keeps people glued to the screen. This is Google's internet.
They should be barred from shipping experimental or non-standardized features in Chrome to prevent them from abusing their monopoly and forcing others hands by creating de-facto standards without a fair discourse.
Experimental features should be allowed in special Chrome builds targeted at developers only, and not be allowed to come preinstalled on any consumer device.
Why? It seems like new API's should be tested with real users before becoming a web standard, and origin trials were a big improvement over what happened before with webkit specific CSS, etc.
Not sure about this, but if it was going to go in if the flag isn't turned on by default that seems fine without requiring a special developer build making most stuff even harder to get tested. The web broadly isn't going to rely on something that isn't default.
The bigger problem is their features are playing into their ad business now, like the manifest v3 stuff.
This story has something I've never seen on HN before: underneath the title and the subsequent "X points by colesantiago N hours ago | flag | hide ..." line, there is a link to https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...
No other story on the front page has this, and I've never seen it before. How did that link get there? It is not the link to the story itself. That is on cnbc.com.
It’s surprising that the proven conflict of interest posed by other departments driving Chrome team decisions was allowed to stand. I would’ve expected at minimum for Google to be required to keep Chrome/Blink as siloed off from the rest of the company as is practically possible.
Why would it be bad for Apple? They get to keep the billions/year flowing in exchange for Google Search being the default on iOS devices. Google just can't pay to be the only search engine on iOS (but they have never done that afaik).
After hours moves can be dramatic, we'll see where it's at tomorrow w/ full volume. It's good news for sure but you can't tell me Wall Street actually thought they would be broken up or anything drastic.
[+] [-] supernova87a|6 months ago|reply
It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story) yet why is it always such a hassle for them to feel that they should link the original content? I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point. It feels like they want to be the gatekeepers of information, and poor ones at that.
I think it should be adopted as standard journalistic practice in fact -- reporting on court rulings must come with the PDF.
Aside from that, it will be interesting to see on what grounds the judge decided that this particular data sharing remedy was the solution. Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data?
I am not too familiar with antitrust precedent, but to what extent does the judge rule on how specific the data sharing need to be (what types of data, for what time span, how anonymized, etc. etc.) or appoint a special master? Why is that up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?
[+] [-] fidotron|6 months ago|reply
They get basically everything they want (keeping it all in the tent), plus a negotiating position on search deals where they can refuse something because they can't do it now.
Quite why the judge is so concerned about the rise of AI factoring in here is beyond me. It's fundamentally an anticompetitive decision.
[+] [-] Hansenq|6 months ago|reply
An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The ban on exclusive contracts makes sense though; they should not be allowed to use contracts to furthur their monopoly position.
And similarly with Chrome; it made no sense to bring Chrome into this equation. Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today NOT through exclusive contracts, but because Chrome is just a better product. Users can switch to Firefox/Safari (Mac default)/Edge (Windows default); they don't because Chrome is better. Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company.
With the rise of ChatGPT (I barely use Google anymore) and AI search engines potentially shifting the search landscape, who knows if Google will still be a monopoly 5 years from now. Software moves fast and the best solution to software monopoly is more software competition.
[+] [-] pinkmuffinere|6 months ago|reply
I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best?
[+] [-] Stratoscope|6 months ago|reply
I switched from Chrome to Edge on my Windows machine a couple of months ago for the embarrassing reason that I had so many tabs open that Chrome slowed down to a crawl.
(Yes, I'm one of those lazy people who uses old tabs as if they were bookmarks.)
Of course I eventually opened enough tabs in Edge that it slowed down too! So I finally bit the bullet and started closing tabs in both browsers.
Otherwise, I hardly notice any difference between the two.
There are bigger differences on my Android device. Edge supports extensions! (Yay!) But it lacks Chrome's "tab group carousel" at the bottom of the screen. Instead, you have to tap an icon to open the full-page list of tab groups, then tap the tab group you already had open, and finally tap the tab you want from this tab group. (Boo!)
So I went back to Chrome on mobile but still use Edge on desktop.
[+] [-] raincole|6 months ago|reply
Yeah. People on HN just don't use Windows, at least not a freshly installed one. Windows does nudge you to use Edge [0]. On PC, Chrome is not just competing fairly: it's competing at a disadvantage! Yet it just keeps winning.
[0]: https://x.com/frantzfries/status/1628178202395873286
[+] [-] swiftcoder|6 months ago|reply
This is perhaps a tad ahistorical. Google forked Blink off from WebKit around 2013 - it owes a lot of it's early success to the same technical foundations as Safari (which in turns owes the same debt to Konqueror...)
[+] [-] coliveira|6 months ago|reply
Of course, Apple didn't want to lose its part in the ilegal scheme.
[+] [-] attendant3446|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] trymas|6 months ago|reply
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=windows+phone+google
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[+] [-] komali2|6 months ago|reply
What's wrong with that?
[+] [-] makeitdouble|6 months ago|reply
"We only accept bribes from other monopolies"
[+] [-] tgv|6 months ago|reply
I think you can, under the assumption that Apple's decision wasn't independent/voluntary. At least, that seems how it works for people in cases of coercion, conspiracy or impairment.
[+] [-] Workaccount2|6 months ago|reply
Google also must share search data with competitors, but it's not totally clear what this is. The ruling mentions helping other engines with "long tail" queries.
All in all this seems like a pretty mild ruling, and an appeal can generally only help Google from a not to bad ruling at this point.
[+] [-] ankit219|6 months ago|reply
The nuclear option was DDG's hope. Google should share their entire data, so DDG can offer the same product without having to build out the thing themselves. The judge correctly identified (imo) where this sharing of index and search results would have meant a bunch of white labeled wrappers selling Google search and would have no incentive to innovate themselves in the short term. Somehow, DDG did not see that happening. At that goal, it's a great ruling, well considered.
[+] [-] mig39|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] thayne|6 months ago|reply
From what I understand Google could pay for Firefox to install a Google search extension, but they can't pay Firefox to make Google the default search engine. Even if they get google to pay for just pre-installing it, it's not going to be anywhere near what Google currently pays to be the default.
[+] [-] makeitdouble|6 months ago|reply
If Google pays Apple 3x more than OpenAI and Apple sets Google as default "because of market research, not because of the money", we're firmly in the status quo. So much as Google can modulate how much it pays Apple depending on how friendly they've been to Google in the last round.
[+] [-] lofaszvanitt|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] BrenBarn|6 months ago|reply
This is the problem. It doesn't matter if they used those specific assets to perpetrate these specific acts. The overall market power derived from those assets (and many others) taints everything they do.
There is no way to effectively curtail monopoly power by selectively limiting the actions of monopolists in certain specific domains. It's like thinking you can stop a rampaging 500-pound gorilla by tying two of its fingers together because those were the two fingers that were at the leading edge of its blow when it crushed someone's skull with a punch.
Once a company has monopoly power of any kind, it is useless to try to stop it from using that power to do certain things. It will always find a way to use its power to get around any restrictions. The problem isn't what the monopoly does, it's that the monopoly exists. The only surefire way is to destroy the monopoly itself by shattering the company into tiny pieces so that no entity holds monopoly power at all.
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|6 months ago|reply
"It's also free to keep making payments to partners such as Apple, to secure placement of its browser - another closely watched and contentious part of the case."
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t
Edit: Even the CNBC body text contradicts its own headline. The confusion seems to be what "exclusive" means.
"The company can make payments to preload products, but they cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision showed."
[+] [-] pdabbadabba|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] robocat|6 months ago|reply
When they can't spell, it's a sign the article was poorly rushed?
[+] [-] thayne|6 months ago|reply
And the latter is going to be pretty bad for Mozilla.
[+] [-] stefan_|6 months ago|reply
"Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial—in some cases, crippling— downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban."
[+] [-] nycdatasci|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ankit219|6 months ago|reply
> The remedy also extends beyond the conduct Plaintiffs seek to redress. It was Google’s control of the Chrome default, not its ownership of Chrome as a whole, that the court highlighted in its liability finding. See Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 120–21. Ordering Google to sell one of its most popular products, one that it has built “from the ground up” and in which it has invested (and continues to invest) billions of dollars, in the hope of opening a single channel of distribution to competition—and not even one that was unlawfully foreclosed by the challenged contracts—cannot reasonably be described as a remedy “tailored to fit the wrong creating the occasion for the remedy.” Microsoft III, 253 F.3d at 107; Rem. Tr. at 2466:23–2468:3 (Pichai); id. at 1634:23–1636:2 (Tabriz) (discussing PXR0215 at -257). Further, as a legal matter, the divestiture of Chrome exceeds the proper scope of relief. “All parties agree that the relevant geographic marketis the United States.” Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 107. Chrome, however, is not so geographically confined. The vast majority—over 80%—of its monthly active users are located outside the United States. Rem. Tr. at 1619:23–1620:6 (Tabriz). Plaintiffs do not try to make the case that a divestiture of Chrome to just U.S.-based users is feasible.
[+] [-] neallindsay|6 months ago|reply
-update- CNBC has fixed their headline.
[+] [-] lofaszvanitt|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] seatac76|6 months ago|reply
Bloomberg article is better, has more details on the remedy.
IMHO: They got off easy. Looking forward to reading Matt Stoller’s take on this.
[+] [-] mrcwinn|6 months ago|reply
Nonetheless, I’d bet Apple will do more of what’s worked: partner with Google to solve something core that they’re not great at. I’d take a deeply integrated Gemini on the iPhone over Siri any day of the week!
[+] [-] snihalani|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|6 months ago|reply
How is this relevant? Apple is the one selling exclusive access to search on iPhone, not Google.
[+] [-] sylens|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bogwog|6 months ago|reply
Today, 99% of internet traffic goes to a handful of sites/apps, and the vast majority of the ad revenue on the internet goes to a handful ad companies. The internet is a SEO spam shit hole crafted in service of Google's easily gamed ranking algorithms, and designed with the sole purpose of serving ads.
Google effectively owns the internet, and this ruling is a green light for them to take even more. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop releasing Chrome sources and fully ban ad blockers now. The court already ruled that the government can't touch them, even when they've been found to have broken the law.
[+] [-] al_borland|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] chneu|6 months ago|reply
Just recently they got fed up with ad-blockers so what do they do? Yeah. Then what just happened with android apps? yeah.
Google is not good for the internet. Anyone saying this is just sucking google's dick and siding with a major corporation.
Also fuck AMP.
[+] [-] pentakkusu|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] makeitdouble|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bergfest|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cma|6 months ago|reply
The bigger problem is their features are playing into their ad business now, like the manifest v3 stuff.
[+] [-] lisper|6 months ago|reply
No other story on the front page has this, and I've never seen it before. How did that link get there? It is not the link to the story itself. That is on cnbc.com.
[+] [-] cosmic_cheese|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tiffanyh|6 months ago|reply
(Whereas Perplexity was offering $32B)
[+] [-] e-clinton|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] seatac76|6 months ago|reply
The Bloomberg article is much better on what exactly is the remedy. IMHO: they got off easy.
[+] [-] motoxpro|6 months ago|reply
Edit: I just checked the stock, I had no idea people priced in a split with that much certainty.
[+] [-] frankchn|6 months ago|reply
AAPL up 3%+ after hours.
[+] [-] diamond559|6 months ago|reply