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Don’t put the cart before the horse. There’s a gaping chasm between a proposal getting written up and Google actually getting broken up.
Not using google this surprises me. Apparently, the reasoning goes as:
“[T]he material consideration in determining whether a monopoly exists is not that prices are raised and that competition is actually excluded but that power exists to raise prices or exclude competition when it is desired to do so.”
(…)
Plaintiffs attempt to prove that Google has monopoly power in the market for general search services through both direct and indirect evidence. Although they offer little direct evidence, the indirect evidence supporting the structural approach.
(…)
Notwithstanding the option to switch, the default remains the primary search access point. Roughly 50% of all general search queries in the United States flow through a search access point covered by one of the challenged contracts
I would intuitively not call google search a monopoly, as changing is so easy.
But to the letter of the law, as presented in the linked document, the majority of US citizens not thinking and chosing defaults, is sufficient.
I seem to disagree with the law.
I hope they’ll round robin the search engine selection. Confuse the hell out of those default non-thinkers.
I think the advertising needs to be stripped from the company and that element broken into at least three competitors in the ad serving space. Google can make money on their cloud services and whatever else they’re working on.
But the conflict of interest is: they are incentivized to serve search results that drive ad revenue back to themselves. That, in combo with their near monopoly position, makes them bad for society.
To get decent Google results now, I have to use the advanced search and set the timeframe to pre-2020. And then, much to my surprise, it works pretty well. The internet broke during COVID – the combination of everyone being shut in absorbing their social media echo chambers and LLMs and other generative content means you can’t find shit. And Google is specifically enabling and encouraging this.
To get decent Google results now, I have to use the advanced search and set the timeframe to pre-2020. And then, much to my surprise, it works pretty well. The internet broke during COVID – the combination of everyone being shut in absorbing their social media echo chambers and LLMs and other generative content means you can’t find shit.
You can’t? Try using another search engines.
I’m not of the opinion google search is a good product. I understand that the law is being applied.
My position is that I’m surprised by the rule of the law, as you can apparently both be a monopoly, and have (better) products in the same field, easily available, simply because people don’t care to learn alternatives.
To me, the above is a people problem, not a technological or business (or even law) problem.
I understand that, to the law, it isn’t.
Do you work for Google? What the fuck.
No? What makes you think that?
My position is that I’m surprised by the rule of the law, as you can apparently both be a monopoly, and have (better) products in the same field, easily available, simply because people don’t care to learn alternatives
Why does this surprise you?
I’m confused how something can be a monopolly, when there’s alternatives easlily available?
Monopoly doesn’t refer to literally a single seller. It’s used to refer to disproportionate market power.
