reuters DOJ wants Google to sell Chrome and Android

[UltraMega]

Quote

Google must sell its Chrome browser, share data and search results with rivals and take other measures - including possibly selling Android - to end its monopoly on online search, prosecutors argued to a judge on Wednesday.

 

The measures presented by the Department of Justice are part of a landmark case in Washington which has the potential to reshape how users find information.

 

They would be in place for up to a decade, enforced via a court-appointed committee to remedy what the judge overseeing the case deemed an illegal monopoly in search and related advertising in the U.S., where Google processes 90% of searches.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/google-must-sell-chrome-to-restore-competition-in-online-search-doj-says/ar-AA1uvJma?PC=EMMX01

 

 

DOJ is pretty serious. Hopefully that carries forward into the next administration. Android would be so much better without google.

[SamsTechStuff]

25 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/google-must-sell-chrome-to-restore-competition-in-online-search-doj-says/ar-AA1uvJma?PC=EMMX01

 

 

DOJ is pretty serious. Hopefully that carries forward into the next administration. Android would be so much better without google.

 

Seems about as clearcut as it can be in terms of monopoly status but, I don't know if I believe much action will actually occur.

 

Android would be interesting but I feel that would cause problems for Android users. I do remember though that some older Louis Rossman video where he tested GrapheneOS (I think?) and without the Google Play services running, he regained an astonishing amount of usable battery life, something* like days worth? Was surprising

Edited 10 hours ago by SamsTechStuff

[UltraMega]

5 minutes ago, SamsTechStuff said:

 

Seems about as clearcut as it can be in terms of monopoly status but, I don't know if I believe much action will actually occur.

 

Android would be interesting but I feel that would cause problems for Android users. I do remember though that some older Louis Rossman video where he tested GrapheneOS (I think?) and without the Google Play services running, he regained an astonishing amount of usable battery life, something* like days worth? Was surprising

Yes, I agree it seems unlike... except that the DOJ is saying it may push the sell off of Android if Google can't stop being anti-consumer, and if there is one thing that true above all else about Google it's that it's an anti-consumer business. I doubt that Google will be able to avoid further scrutiny. 

 

Of course this all assumes Trump doesn't just shut this all down and let Google go back to doing whatever it wants, which is probably what will happen. Maybe the next administration will pick this back up. 

[SamsTechStuff]

I think I am not well educated on the topic of what DOJ can do, or will do, or the timelines it will work on, or any other tactics it might employ in various scenarios but, I suspect you're right in that any action will take a long time to occur.

It's interesting to see the take on this from some of the investing YouTube channels I watch. Some believe Google is simply doing its job and there's no issue (quite a funny thing to argue IMO). One suggested that it's possible the parts might be worth more than the sum which is an interesting though, for investors at least. I think Apple collects about ~$20B(?) annually from Google for default search 'rights' for example. Changes to the way Google works will have far and wide reaching impacts.

Edited 9 hours ago by SamsTechStuff

[UltraMega]

16 minutes ago, SamsTechStuff said:

I think I am not well educated on the topic of what DOJ can do, or will do, or the timelines it will work on, or any other tactics it might employ in various scenarios but, I suspect you're right in that any action will take a long time to occur.

It's interesting to see the take on this from some of the investing YouTube channels I watch. Some believe Google is simply doing its job and there's no issue (quite a funny thing to argue IMO). One suggested that it's possible the parts might be worth more than the sum which is an interesting though, for investors at least. I think Apple collects about ~$20B(?) annually from Google for default search 'rights' for example. Changes to the way Google works will have far and wide reaching impacts.

 

Hard to imagine anyone with eyes and ears could see Google as "simply doing it's job".

 

As a small business owner, I can tell you with certainty that Google has killed a ton of small businesses and hurt consumers greatly in the process by dominating search and charging for ads. They control the platform in which people use to find goods and services, and they set the prices for business to be able to reach customers. A business with 100+ 5 star ratings will show up after a business with a bad rank if the latter is paying more for ads.

 

Google has turned local businesses into a pay to win model, and that's just one aspect of their business. Everything they do is anti-consumer. They corner a market and then they surround it with pay walls.

 

Google has been around for so long and evolved with the internet in such lock step that I don't think many of us fully realize how much damage Google has done. We have never seen what a mature online landscape that wasn't dominated by Google would look like, so we are not totally aware of what we're missing.

Edited 9 hours ago by UltraMega

[Snakecharmed]

1 hour ago, UltraMega said:

As a small business owner, I can tell you with certainty that Google has killed a ton of small businesses and hurt consumers greatly in the process by dominating search and charging for ads. They control the platform in which people use to find goods and services, and they set the prices for business to be able to reach customers. A business with 100+ 5 star ratings will show up after a business with a bad rank if the latter is paying more for ads.

 

I had small business owners tell me about how Kudzu and Yelp did the exact same thing before Google took over the reviews space. This isn't behavior specific to Google. This is about them leveraging the ubiquity of their brand and entering markets occupied by other unloved incumbents and doing the exact same thing. The problem is, there isn't likely to be a successor because who is bigger than Google that wants to invest the resources to compete with them as well as overcome the fact that most users have an active Google session in their browser cookies?

[UltraMega]

9 minutes ago, Snakecharmed said:

 

I had small business owners tell me about how Kudzu and Yelp did the exact same thing before Google took over the reviews space. This isn't behavior specific to Google. This is about them leveraging the ubiquity of their brand and entering markets occupied by other unloved incumbents and doing the exact same thing. The problem is, there isn't likely to be a successor because who is bigger than Google that wants to invest the resources to compete with them as well as overcome the fact that most users have an active Google session in their browser cookies?

Totally agree that other companies like yelp can be just as scummy, but yelp doesn't control search, and yelp is just one of at least half a dozen other places to find business listings and reviews so they would normally have to compete in the market. 

 

Google doesn't have to compete because they control the very platform that the vast majority of the market all this online advertising exists on. It would be like if one grocery store chain owned 90% of the market and then started charging insane prices to the food distributors just to have their food in stores, and still competed with their own store brand options but also made the store brand easier to buy than the alternatives.