Department of Justice Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google

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Welp, it's been a good ride - but Google as we know it is finally coming to an end.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/1...files-its-long-awaited-lawsuit-against-google

The Justice Department accused Google of maintaining an illegal monopoly over search and search advertising, in the government’s most significant legal challenge to a tech company’s market power in a generation.

In a lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, the agency accused Google, a unit of Alphabet, of using several exclusive business contracts and agreements to lock out competition.

Such contracts include Google’s payment of billions of dollars to Apple to place the Google search engine as the default for iPhones. By using contracts to maintain its monopoly, the suit says, competition and innovation has suffered.
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This is very much like the antitrust lawsuit that the United States Departments of Justice launched against AT&T / Bell. However, having learned from that, I think that the DoJ will push for much more vast and everlasting changes.
 
I think this will end up being a dog and pony show, they will haul out a bunch of Google bigwigs to answer useless and ignorant questions and ultimately end up fining them for a few billion and use that to balance some budget and slap them with some easily circumventable laws or regulations so they can continue on as before. But some senators will get to feel like they actually did something with their lives, so good for them I guess.
 
The only downside to breaking up google is the fact that the rest of the world already has equal sized monopolies. Unlike Bell this time when google gets broken up it actually leaves North America in a worse position globally.
Not sure I really want Baidu as the top dog for most of the planet.

Still also not sure I really like the idea of a company being larger than many countries either. Damned if we do damned if we don't I guess.
 
1603230623818.png
 
c3k said:
Duckduckgo to search while browsing on Brave.

I hope this works. Google is too manipulative. IMO...Google is evil.
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I use duckduckgo as well, but I always heard it uses Google servers on the backend while obscuring user information. Can anyone speak to that?
 
kamikazi said:
I use duckduckgo as well, but I always heard it uses Google servers on the backend while obscuring user information. Can anyone speak to that?
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Wikipedia:

DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg on February 29, 2008, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.[3][28] Weinberg is an entrepreneur who previously launched Names Database, a now-defunct social network. Initially self-funded by Weinberg, DuckDuckGo is advertising-supported, but the user has the option to disable ads.[29] The search engine is written in Perl[30] and runs on nginx, FreeBSD, and Linux.[4][3][31] DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various vendors. Because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a "hybrid" search engine.[32][33]

And:

DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[9] including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot) and others.[4][9][10][11] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the results.[11][12] As of August 2020, it had 65,166,695 daily searches on average.[13] DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information, and uses cookies only when required. Gabriel Weinberg, creator of DuckDuckGo, states: "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell." It maintains logs of all search terms used "though not in a personally identifiable way".[14]

So it seems to me the answer is yes and no.
 
Conman said:
From the Startpage site...
"You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results"

so yea
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Paste the whole thing:

You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. The result: The world’s best and most private search engine. Only now you can search without ads following you around, recommending products you’ve already bought. And no more data mining by companies with dubious intentions. We want you to dance like nobody’s watching and search like nobody’s watching.

They are using the search engine and acting as a proxy so you are anonymous
 
Conman said:
You suggested Startpage for someone worried about using google servers on the backend. The marketing fluff about how great they are wasn't relevant to his question.
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No one else has a functional search engine that even amounts to google. That is the problem so you need to use one that hides your searches. They own 88% of the search market. That is almost the entire thing.
 
tangoseal said:
No one else has a functional search engine that even amounts to google. That is the problem so you need to use one that hides your searches. They own 88% of the search market. That is almost the entire thing.
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88%?! Google has reached search immunity.

Fortunately most [H] peeps are know-it-alls - we rarely need to search for stuff. :D
 
Fix Me said:
Google won't be changing. I'll eat my hat if they do.
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Insert joke about being an asshat... But seriously how could you change Google in a way that wouldn't destroy or cripple them without handing the reins over to companies that are not only worse but operate in China. I get that Google is too powerful and there needs to be some regulation passed regarding online predatory advertising and how personal data is handled but I seriously doubt that a US Senate appointed committee is going to be the body to accomplish that.
 
Kwaz said:
Welp, it's been a good ride - but Google as we know it is finally coming to an end.
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That remains to be seen. Many big companies have come out of these just fine. Microsoft is basically just doing the exact same thing that got it into trouble 20 years ago. (I.e. shoving its browser down everyone's throats).
 
A great many of the websites I have been using for years are a shell of what they were because advertising revenue has been plummeting.

In fact, it looks to me like it's dropping at an almost directly proportional rate to the growth of Google's stranglehold on the market. I'm no marketing exec and I'm no lawyer, I could be totally wrong and missing a greater trend.
 
illram said:
That remains to be seen. Many big companies have come out of these just fine. Microsoft is basically just doing the exact same thing that got it into trouble 20 years ago. (I.e. shoving its browser down everyone's throats).
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Isn't there browser chromium base and ultra easy to change the default browser in their windows since ? I am not sure there is a big edge load much faster than Chrome and others in windows 10 because of some unfair advantage going on anymore.

If they are forcing it in people throats they are really bad at it:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/BrowserUsageShare.png
 
IMO This is going to be a hard case to prove.

To break up a monopoly you need to show systematic harm to the consumer and or the competition.

If they argue this on how fringe beliefs and stories are ranked, I doubt judicial decision will be made.

If they go after advertising and find pay for play violations, there is a chance.
 
schmide said:
IMO This is going to be a hard case to prove.

To break up a monopoly you need to show systematic harm to the consumer and or the competition.

If they argue this on how fringe beliefs and stories are ranked, I doubt judicial decision will be made.

If they go after advertising and find pay for play violations, there is a chance.
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Basically this, it isn't enough for somebody to be a Monopoly you have to prove they have leveraged that power inappropriately or maliciously.
 
Kwaz said:
Welp, it's been a good ride - but Google as we know it is finally coming to an end.
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Yep. Now they are going to get killed and punished. Just like what they did (and are still doing) to Microsoft.
 
schmide said:
IMO This is going to be a hard case to prove.
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I don't think so. There are two things they DOJ needs to prove, and they're not both requirements: that Google controls 80 percent of the market in any market, or that Google is using its services to tie users into its other services.

Since Google is the de-facto search engine and de-facto ad provider, they can control who gets advertising and who sees the ads. Same argument goes for YouTube.
 
Axman said:
I don't think so. There are two things they DOJ needs to prove, and they're not both requirements: that Google controls 80 percent of the market in any market, or that Google is using its services to tie users into its other services.

Since Google is the de-facto search engine and de-facto ad provider, they can control who gets advertising and who sees the ads. Same argument goes for YouTube.
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There is nothing wrong with providing services even with a tie in (term contract). If you price these services artificially low or exclusively, then you run into trouble.

Proving they are a monopoly is well duh.
 
Lakados said:
But seriously how could you change Google in a way that wouldn't destroy or cripple them without handing the reins over to companies that are not only worse but operate in China.
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Forcing them to sell off their ad business, maybe.
 
illram said:
Microsoft is basically just doing the exact same thing that got it into trouble 20 years ago. (I.e. shoving its browser down everyone's throats).
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I must have missed their pushing Chrome's market share.
 
Google helps control the people of China for it’s wealthy communist leaders.
Like it or not their tradecraft is being perfected there in the giant AI Facility. They’re not going anywhere.

They buy politicians then protect their investments.
Its the American way.

https://www.everestlegalmarketing.com/google-new-cases-study/

Seems like the above game still works.

Google search 19 new cases. You’ll get headlines for it.
Then try every number proceeding that into the 1,000’s and you’ll see multiple headlines for each number.

I just googled 762 new cases and got a bunch of headlines.
Try any number followed by these 2 words, “new cases.”

Lots of fun.
 
Nafensoriel said:
The only downside to breaking up google is the fact that the rest of the world already has equal sized monopolies. Unlike Bell this time when google gets broken up it actually leaves North America in a worse position globally.
Not sure I really want Baidu as the top dog for most of the planet.

Still also not sure I really like the idea of a company being larger than many countries either. Damned if we do damned if we don't I guess.
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True, but is Google even a "North American company?" These companies will eventually be based in tax sheltered countries or pay no taxes, if they are not already. How many people realize that Apple is really a Jersey island company?

What is the solution? Eventually they become like MomCorp in Futurama.
 
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Passing some laws on one company won’t change anything. Another will take their place and we can repeat it all over again, or possibly not if the company simply says no. Sweeping reform industry wide needs to be done and this could be that chance, but they will bungle it.
 
Lakados said:
Which makes up 75% of their income. That would destroy them.
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Well, that's just an opening bid.

But perhaps it would force them to focus smaller. Stop throwing tons of projects out there and then abandoning them.
 
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