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Comment by summerlight | Hacker News Reader

What is your proposal? I don't see not much other options:

1) Excludes Google from Android/Chrome's default search engine options. This clearly doesn't make sense for Google and I don't think there's an easy way to enforce this. 2) Lists all every search engine that exists on the planet. This still doesn't answer the question who should be placed on the top of the list. 3) Break google up into Android/Chrome and the rest. This is not even an option for EU since their jurisdiction doesn't reach to Google.

Maybe Google can say something like, "all of the profits from this auction will go back to the society!", which practically doesn't make any differences to them since the profit from this auction will likely be a minute fraction compared to the Google's yearly revenues.

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Do what they did on Windows, pick the 4 or 5 most popular. (In that case it was browsers)

I know, I know, what about the less popular search engines?

Well. It's better than Google takes all, and customers get easier access to 5 search engines instead of 1. (Yes they can already choose others. Almost no one bothers)

Maybe they could rotate the last 2 choices between a field of say, 20.

Thing is, if no one's heard of the option, I doubt they'll choose it, so there's not much point offering beyond say, 5 choices.

I'm guessing though.

In this case, Ecosia would still rant about it. They would only change their complaint text from "what about non-profit oriented search engines like us?" to "what about search engines nobody has ever heard about like us?". Interestingly enough, they use Bing API for actually producing SERPs, so basically this is a PR stunt for not getting free access to a marketing method that is irrelevant to user experience. While their claimed goal of promoting afforestation is rational/noble, I consider their argumentation in this case to be disingenuous.

Actually making the profits donated to a non-Google entity works quite well. Then Google should have to bid as well. Then it is fair and competitive and would actually drive the market towards a competitive equilibrium

I don't think it really addresses the complaints in the article, though. The main complaint wasn't that the proceeds go to Google, it's that the premise of an auction naturally favors profit-focused search engines. I think it's a valid problem, and the only ways to counter it have to use a ranking that doesn't involve money.

What about the EFF?

4) Pay an unaffiliated third party to run the auction, and pay to bid like every one of their competitors. Or if technology doesn't allow this, make payments to cause the same outcome. This is roughly your second paragraph, just a slight variant.

Choice of third party is tricky, but a dedicated or existing trade association that includes them and any interested major competitors on equal terms would probably do it.

This makes sense in principle, but I'm seeing a bunch of legal/technical/transparency issues on selecting the third party over the globe.

The root problem is a trust issue and I still don't see how Google can convince bidders that the auction is run by some entities which won't do any (implicitly) good for Google in return of selecting them, especially Google still owns a full control on picking the "third party". This can be solved if a state picks the third party, but now we have even bigger problems; you will have to enforce the same policy on most of the platform holders with similar issues (virtually every single major tech firms)

And that doesn't account for the fact that big corporations have a huge say in what the government does.

Hoo boy.

I don't like it being an auction because then customers aren't necessarily getting the better choices, they're getting the choices backed by the most wealth

It would also harm not for profit search engines.

Why not choose based on popularity?

1) Excluding Google from the Android/Chrome’s options is possible: just remove it from that list.

2) DuckDuckGo has a list of search providers using their !bang query. It’s not exhaustive, but adding one to the list is a form submission to DuckDuckGo.

3) A break up is not necessary: the EU can charge Google increasing fines and significantly hamper Google’s European operations.

I think 1) and 2) together could work: the browser could have no list of search engines but could download a list of search engines from a known good URL when it run for the first time. The owners of the known good URL could be a consortium of search engine providers. There are definitely flaws with this approach, and it gives the user an extra choice, but giving the user this extra choice is the point.

1) "Technically" possible. Google won't do that though unless there's an external, super strong push. 2) DDG can do that since its main target is tech-savy users (at least for now). 3) EU can do that until it doesn't escalate into EU vs US trade dispute. 5B is probably okay since Google really didn't even pay their tax in EU appropriately, but 50B will be big enough for US to intervene.

I replied to the assertion that those things were not possible, not that they were probable.

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