Google illegally maintains monopoly, Judge Rules

[UltraMega]

Quote

WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge on Monday ruled that Google's ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation in a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world's best-known companies.
 

The highly anticipated decision issued by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta comes nearly a year after the start of a trial pitting the U.S. Justice Department against Google in the country's biggest antitrust showdown in a quarter century.
 

After reviewing reams of evidence that included testimony from top executives at Google, Microsoft and Apple during last year's 10-week trial, Mehta issued his potentially market-shifting decision three months after the two sides presented their closing arguments in early May.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," Mehta wrote in his 277-page ruling.
 

It represents a major setback for Google and its parent, Alphabet Inc., which had steadfastly argued that its popularity stemmed from consumers' overwhelming desire to use a search engine so good at what it does that it has become synonymous with looking things up online. Google's search engine currently processes an estimated 8.5 billion queries per day worldwide, nearly doubling its daily volume from 12 years ago, according to a recent study released by the investment firm BOND.

 

Google illegally maintains monopoly over internet search, judge rules (msn.com)

 

Took them 4 years to conclude what we all already know. 

 

 

 

In other news, this is not directly related, but is interesting to note here:

https://www.techspot.com/news/104126-microsoft-edge-desktop-browser-approaches-14-market-share.html

 

[Snakecharmed]

Quote

It represents a major setback for Google and its parent, Alphabet Inc., which had steadfastly argued that its popularity stemmed from consumers' overwhelming desire to use a search engine so good at what it does that it has become synonymous with looking things up online.

 

By that, I think they mean most users are exceedingly lazy and trust the household brand name by default, even when said brand name recommends glue as a pizza topping and rocks as part of a balanced diet because they scrape Reddit and the Onion for data to keep users on their search results page.

 

Google AI search tells users to glue pizza and eat rocks

WWW.BBC.COM

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Google has defended the answers given by AI Overview, describing them as "isolated examples".

 

Google search is very versatile, but it isn't so unbelievably good at search more than it ensures that other search engines will never gain the traction to compete. I can still put together search strings in Google that yield useless results because the subject matter is too esoteric and they can't rely on scraping subreddits for everything.

 

The devious and harmful part of what they do is finding ways to keep users on their search results pages regardless of the search query, even at the expense of taking away traffic from the actual content creators.

[Kaz]

Funny that they FINALLY address this, about a year after everyone has started commenting on google searches going to *.  They've figured out they make more ad revenue if people can't find exactly what they want on the first line.

 

Their searches aren't that great in comparison to other search engines, but the fact that everyone uses them means that every business needs to cater to them.  Google seems to favor websites that have some form of analytic like gstatic.  Businesses are forced to play their game or be left behind.

 

I think Alphabet ought to be broken up, kind of like ma bell was.  There's a few other companies that also fall into that category, but I really doubt anything other than a fine will come out of this. 

[UltraMega]

37 minutes ago, Kaz said:

Funny that they FINALLY address this, about a year after everyone has started commenting on google searches going to *.  They've figured out they make more ad revenue if people can't find exactly what they want on the first line.

This. 

 

 

As a small business owner, I've had to deal with Google ads to advertise locally. It's just a bidding war. Whoever pays the most, wins. The amount you have to pay in a particular area is based on what others are paying. 

 

If Google AI came along and was actually good at filtering through the noise and finding good listings without basing it on adspend, it would totally circumvent Google's main revenue flow. Their AI cannot be allowed to be good for exactly that reason. 

[Kaz]

7 hours ago, UltraMega said:

If Google AI came along and was actually good at filtering through the noise and finding good listings without basing it on adspend, it would totally circumvent Google's main revenue flow. Their AI cannot be allowed to be good for exactly that reason. 

 

I hadn't thought about the AI aspect of it.  By that reasoning, the writing is on the wall for google's business model.  Makes me wonder what their business model will switch to.  Obviously data brokering, but to what end?

[schuck6566]

On 05/08/2024 at 22:17, Snakecharmed said:

 

By that, I think they mean most users are exceedingly lazy and trust the household brand name by default, even when said brand name recommends glue as a pizza topping and rocks as part of a balanced diet because they scrape Reddit and the Onion for data to keep users on their search results page.

 

Google AI search tells users to glue pizza and eat rocks

WWW.BBC.COM

---

Google has defended the answers given by AI Overview, describing them as "isolated examples".

 

Google search is very versatile, but it isn't so unbelievably good at search more than it ensures that other search engines will never gain the traction to compete. I can still put together search strings in Google that yield useless results because the subject matter is too esoteric and they can't rely on scraping subreddits for everything.

 

The devious and harmful part of what they do is finding ways to keep users on their search results pages regardless of the search query, even at the expense of taking away traffic from the actual content creators.

I will beg to differ here a bit because if most people ask me the address of the diner down the road and I say "Just Google it" they know I mean look it up online.If I were to say "Just Duck,Duck,Go it" the majority would be "*?" So in a way saying "Google it" has become synonymous for a large part of my generation(gen x) to saying look it up on line.

It has nothing to do with being lazy and trusting,it's what was always available and in our faces. AOL search,Yahoo search,MSN,they all changed but Google just seemed to get bigger,better,and always there.can you blame people for becoming conditioned to it being there?(BTW,Yahoo & AOL search are now powered by Bing.)Corp greed will win in the end.

[Snakecharmed]

I should clarify that I don't mean a willful or intentional laziness, but more that this isn't a choice that most users care to spend time and energy on these days. As consumers, we chose this some time ago and allowed unchecked momentum to build with the new leader out of convenience. Search isn't a choice anymore like AltaVista, Yahoo, Lycos, HotBot, Excite, or Ask Jeeves was.

 

Google seized on the opportunity of being better than the competition at the time and they built an entire ecosystem around the search engine. Once that was established, despite whatever missteps they made with peripheral projects like Google+, they could roll up everything into the search: Google Reviews, Maps, News, Calculator, and scraping data to starve content creation platforms except for Reddit. In turn, they helped bury or squeeze out Kudzu, Yelp, MapQuest, and others, and now it's a feedback loop whether it's search or consumer services. People use Google because the competition is weak, but Google also leverages their platform to weaken their competitors.

 

Yahoo's the only platform that has come remotely close to assembling an ecosystem like Google, but what's left of it today is paltry and it's really on the strength of only a couple of assets that aren't as tightly integrated: Sports (including fantasy sports) and Finance. The problem is their search is an afterthought. Also, their timing was never right to have made anything out of the IoT era. You could argue that they've had awful or at least underqualified leadership between Jerry Yang and Jim Lanzone. The brand only has strength in Japan, and that's because it's a separate business entity.

 

Everything else that has any kind of minor mindshare in the search engine space today is a niche or operating in an adversarial market: DuckDuckGo (privacy), Bing (propped up by Microsoft/Edge), Yandex (RU), Baidu (CN).

Edited August 8 by Snakecharmed

[schuck6566]

I have to do this...

 

When even your sperm starts using Google Maps....

[UltraMega]

On 07/08/2024 at 06:06, schuck6566 said:

I will beg to differ here a bit because if most people ask me the address of the diner down the road and I say "Just Google it" they know I mean look it up online.If I were to say "Just Duck,Duck,Go it" the majority would be "*?" So in a way saying "Google it" has become synonymous for a large part of my generation(gen x) to saying look it up on line.

It has nothing to do with being lazy and trusting,it's what was always available and in our faces. AOL search,Yahoo search,MSN,they all changed but Google just seemed to get bigger,better,and always there.can you blame people for becoming conditioned to it being there?(BTW,Yahoo & AOL search are now powered by Bing.)Corp greed will win in the end.

I disagree that Google is "better" for search. I just used edge, and Bing by default. I feel like Bing actually works better for searches because Microsoft is less invested in wasting people's time to ensure a certain amount of monetizable clicks. Google is still better for map searches just by sheer volume of people with Google maps listings vs Bing, but for everything else I don't think Google is actually doing anything at a higher quality level than the competition. If I actually need to find the answer to a random question/search, I genuinely think Bing is better most of the time.

 

One thing I like about Bing is they stopped using Yelp for map/reviews. Yelp, like Google, is just a bidding war for marketing tration and Microsoft doesn't want that to be how their search works, it seems. 

Edited August 8 by UltraMega

[Andrew]

A lot of this isn't down to Google though.

 

These days, there's three choices of web browsers. Safari (why you'd use this on anything other than Mac is beyond me), Firefox or Chrome. Because basically every web browser now is pretty much just Chrome with a skin, web developers are focusing way more on Chrome support I occasionally have issues with compatibility with Firefox because of that. Even Edge, the default MS browser, is Chrome with a skin. It's not Googles fault that web browser developers abandoned their own software in favour of a Chrome or that web developers now focus pretty much exclusively on Chrome now.

 

As far as search engines go, I can kind of see this with Apple. Google is paying Apple quite a lot of money for Google to be the default search engine on both iOS/iPadOS and macOS. But other than that, practically everyone defaults go Google anyway. Like, to a point where "Google it" is a very common phrase. To a point where "Google" is now a catch-all phrase for a web browser. Similar to Frisbee, Band-Aid, Velcro or Jacuzzi. That is beyond Googles control.

Edited August 11 by Andrew

[UltraMega]

1 hour ago, Andrew said:

A lot of this isn't down to Google though.

 

These days, there's three choices of web browsers. Safari (why you'd use this on anything other than Mac is beyond me), Firefox or Chrome. Because basically every web browser now is pretty much just Chrome with a skin, web developers are focusing way more on Chrome support I occasionally have issues with compatibility with Firefox because of that. Even Edge, the default MS browser, is Chrome with a skin. It's not Googles fault that web browser developers abandoned their own software in favour of a Chrome or that web developers now focus pretty much exclusively on Chrome now.

 

As far as search engines go, I can kind of see this with Apple. Google is paying Apple quite a lot of money for Google to be the default search engine on both iOS/iPadOS and macOS. But other than that, practically everyone defaults go Google anyway. Like, to a point where "Google it" is a very common phrase. To a point where "Google" is now a catch-all phrase for a web browser. Similar to Frisbee, Band-Aid, Velcro or Jacuzzi. That is beyond Googles control.

Google has always engaged in unfair competition practices. While I don't know all the history of how Google Chrome became so dominant, it's Google... For sure there was some shady stuff going on. Google doesn't do fair competition. Their strategy has always been to look for ways to force users into their ecosystem and then make it as hard as possible for other platforms to be compatible with whatever Google is doing.