U.S. expected to sue Google next week as DOJ seeks support from states

This kind of short term thinking is actually bad for the economy and bad for customers because it leads to the proliferation of pump-and-dump businesses which exist solely for the purpose of being bought and sold rather than actually providing some kind of utility to the customer. This can have real consequences, such as how Arlo purports to be a "security company" to which people should entrust their safety despite the fact that their interface is so dysfunctional it would be a small miracle if any of their customers could actually figure out how to use their arlo footage in court. I know this because I spent the last summer running a small surveillance operation, and doing so required an off-site file server with high speed internet and a few python scripts to glue all the pieces together.

And to anyone thinking "well if it doesnt provide utility it wouldn't get bought" you can hold your tongue because I don't believe that. That's an irrational argument. Useless, low quality goods and services make a killing on the market and we all know it. Anyone who has taken a real close look at any "smart" device certainly knows it.

I don't see anything wrong. It's a good response page. If they didn't provide the widget the page would be worse, I would have to dig through all the links and filter the noise to find information.

There's an assumption that people come to Google in order to find websites. No, they come for information. They can get information in many ways. People are not there just to provide sales to organically ranked sites.

In a few years voice interfaces will probably replace text for search. In a voice interface, you have to provide the answer directly in plain language, not a link to a website. What would the displaced websites do, sue for monopolistic practices again?

Instead, they are arguing that Google should be forced to share user data with rivals (like Bing).

This might surprise many in the tech community - even those who are sympathetic to the idea that big tech is too big (because it seems a terrible idea).

However, it appears to be a fairly common lobbying point. Notably in Australia a similar argument against Google in the news field is seen where news organisations don't get access to audience preferences for advertising.

TL;DR: The government appears to be looking to force Google to share personal data with other companies which is likely to be the opposite of what many consumers want.

Ex. speed test - Google's responsibility is to the customer who wants to most likely conduct a speed test. Displaying an in-result widget that does so completes the query that the user requires.

The line is certainly drawn if you searched "in-home IoT device" and Google showed its own Nest/Home products at the top even above ad space without paying for it, but the example you provided doesn't really break it for me.

Google doesn't prevent you from finding Ookla, doesn't bury it or delist it, doesn't stop you from going direct to the site... I don't see how that is going to hold up in court. There are competitors to Google that can offer a user a search experience that gives them lots of choice on how to answer their query, Google is just choosing (and customer's are probably responding to it as well) a better way to answer the query.

Posing this as a hypothetical argument, I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

That seems implausible. Under the best of circumstances this is going to take half a decade. Wheels of justice turn slowly.

Almost every contract has terms like "If it turns out that a particular term is not valid or enforceable, this will not affect any other terms" in it, because some specific terms may not be enforceable in some jurisdictions.

Every contract I write has this term, and I can't think of one I've signed that doesn't.

Here’s a list of other alternative search engines: https://fossbytes.com/google-alternative-best-search-engine/