Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

The ruling doesn’t say exclusive distribution agreements are illegal. It says Google can’t enter into them.

Not sure if that is true-competition laws often prohibit the dominant market player from doing certain things, yet still allow smaller players to do the same thing.

Most users will probably use the default. And there's zero reason (zero dollars) saying it will be Google.

This is a huge claim. Do you have any evidence to back it up?

That’s just a waste of money then. Why are they paying bilious to Mozilla and Apple? Because they’re good buddies? Wouldn’t people use Google anyway?

Just imagine the Google CFO looking through the finance spreadsheets last year and instead of going “let’s layoff a whole bunch of people” they go with “let’s stop paying Apple and Mozilla” for default search.

Apple might make their own search engine. Apple has a team that's been creating a next-generation search engine codenamed Pegasus under John Giannandrea. They already have search engines for App Store, Maps, Apple TV and News and Spotlight.

Apple web search development worked as bargaining chip in pricing negotiations with Google. Google paid them $20 billion per year to not compete as much as keeping other competitors away.

there is also Android ecosystem, where DOJ may ask google to prompt user with Search Egnine selection dialog, and Google can easily lose some significant share of traffic to Bing/ChatGPT/etc.

This is the key.

I'm not saying Google couldn't be better. But if it were possible to build a better index of the Internet, Google would do it.

Spam garbage overrunning the web is the underlying issue.

Furthermore it doesn’t cut it to be marginally better than Google Search when they’re the default search engine. You have to completely blow them out of the water and for that you likely need long term, sustained investment to pour into R&D. How many VCs are willing to play that long game and invest when you have an incumbent paying $20B+ to block user choice?

The creation of Firefox and Google Chrome are examples of competition that tremendously benefited consumers, but which took many years to play out, after the government ruled against monopolistic behavior.

Let's think of an alternative where browser are forced to even the playing field: the browser either presents users with a list of search engines in random order, or perhaps it even chooses a random default.

You'd see a world where search engines can run ads that say "click this easy button/download our app/do this really easy thing" to use our search engine.

You would also see smaller search engines being able to get on the Safari search engine list instead of just the ones that can pay Apple what I assume are huge fees.

Let's not forget that iOS and iPadOS commands a huge share of the most affluent customers who would be most willing to use paid search engines. But in the status quo even those willing to do so will find Apple's platforms to be less than accomodating.

Google search sucks. I didn't switch to DDG. Any competitor is going to have a hard time breaking in because of Google's paid exclusivity deals. That's part of why Google sucks. Google won easily in the early days because it was considerably better in a wide field of competitors it wiped out. It's not too hard to believe that Google would return better results if anyone was competing.

My web search has degraded to only searching for things I know already exist or occasionally fighting Google to try my damndest to get it to do an exact text search which is a stupid amount of struggle.

If the decision will not be bad for Google, then why would Google spend so much money and time to defend against it.^1

Why not just stop making the anti-competitive payments and terminate the agreements. Money saved. Problem solved.

We can now safely say it is not a defense to claim "Google is the best" and that's why people choose it. Anti-competitive conduct is illegal. Whether it is prudent or not. It makes no difference whether the payments were actually "necessary".^2 Google made them anyway, repeatedly.

1. Even more, this "prediction" implies there will be an appeal ("... if this ruling holds."). Why bother with an appeal if this decision has no negative effect on Google.

2. One only needs to show the conduct had an anti-competitive effect.

Please read the decision:

https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/f6ab5c36...

Then they wouldn't have those deals in the first place.

Companies don't just piss off money for no reason. And the reason is simple: They want no competition - they strictly maintain their dominance through them.

Just saying "No" isn't enough. You have to explain why they have those deals if you think this isn't the reason why. Otherwise, anyone reasonable must disagree by default.

I disagree. 100% they had a better product, but they have absolutely mangled it over the last few updates. Honestly, if I wanted the opinion of randomnumbers45123 on Reddit, I'd just search Reddit.

Google achieved dominance ~25 years ago by being better than the alternatives, and the other search engines pretty much withered away rapidly. They (Google) are in a very precarious position right now. They will certainly not disappear overnight, but if / when the public becomes aware of something better, the implosion could be spectacular.

This is a strange statement to be honest. Have you used google search in the last decade?

google search was awesome back in the very early 2000s. If you remember those times, you know how good it was.

That started deteriorating in the 2010s and it has become really useless in the last decade. Today google search results are mostly spam sites with autogenerated content along with sales and advertising sites. It can't find any of the actual user-generated honest content anymore.

They had a good product, but have screwed it up. Have you tried Kagi?

I dipped my toes and have never looked back, not once. It’s quick, it’s good, I have some neat customisation. The less-geeky family have joined me. The downside? It’s paid. But it’s worth it.

This would be a great thing for Firefox. That Google money is toxic in more ways than one.

or bing pays to be the default? or apple choose to give some upstart like duckduckgo a chance? Or they produce their own search engine (not that i think they will).

Stupid them then. I don't and now I won't have to see Google defaulted to everywhere.

This is great news. If Mozilla can't afford to provide Firefox anymore then they could ask for donations or provide a paid product. I'd pay for firefox if they stripped out the google and pocket crap.

What I'm seeing however is nothing more than toothless, political pointing sticks.

Both IBM, Microsoft and Google have clearly at some point obtained total domination of their markets. Consequently they've all found themselves at the antitrust chopping blocks, however these companies have become so important to the economy that actual verdicts are reduced to a "carry on, just don't exert your dominance too much".

Or have I misunderstood antitrust laws?

Edit: s/excert/exert

It depends instead on the overall health of the Internet.

We are moving away from open commerce and into walled gardens. Once Google makes deals similar to their Reddit deal with Meta and Bytedance, it's going to become basically impossible for an upstart search engine to index anything competitively.

So, a powerful solution would be to make targeted advertising illegal. This would make it easier for new competitors to enter the market and make it visible if someone abuses the ad industry to push political agendas.

Predatory hiring: Hiring key employees from competitors primarily to weaken them rather than to benefit from the employees' skills.

Patent abuse: Using a large portfolio of patents to stifle competition rather than to protect legitimate innovations.

Regulatory capture: Using influence to shape regulations in ways that benefit the monopolist and create barriers for potential competitors.

Killer acquisitions: Buying potential competitors primarily to eliminate future competition rather than to integrate their technology or talent.

Data hoarding: In digital markets, collecting and refusing to share data that is crucial for competitors to enter or compete effectively in the market.

Self-preferencing: In platform markets, giving preferential treatment to one's own products or services over those of competitors.

Vaporware: Announcing nonexistent or deliberately suboptimal products or features to discourage customers from switching to competitors' existing products.

Just as Standard Oil used their position to force railroads and other distributors to only carry their oil and not of their competitors', the same case here with Google.

Arguably all these antitrust cases, while better late than never, are at least a decade late. If it was filed in the early 2010s, then possibly there could've been viable competitors to Google, Apple, Amazon, and even Meta. But now these tech titans all have unassailable positions.

Wouldn't this be the fault of Apple as it is Apple that controls the list?

I use Kagi's extensions to maintain Kagi as default search across many devices and browsers. It's been seamless across Firefox/Waterfox/etc instances.

IIRC, Kiwi and Brave were fairly agreeable (I avoid Chrome, Edge). Opera was a pain because Opera is a pain about everything.

I appreciate the effort you+team have put into this.

It's interesting though - what is Apple's vested interest in only having native support for certain search engines? I now no longer use their browser because of this - I would think that is _some_ kind of loss for them. Maybe not, since I'm on macOS anyway.

2. That sounds perfectly reasonable. Google doesn't want people to bundle other things for users who want to install just a different default search (and not "your hotbar" like the Netscape days).

3. I'm not sure what you're talking about, is Chrome on Linux default search configured differently than Chrome on Windows?

I guess this is so that unrelated extension X can't also change the default search while it's at it, like in the good old IE days, so it kind of sort of makes sense. though if the extension is named after a search engine it should probably get a pass, and the context menu thing obviously is also related to search.

On Chrome at least this is possible, even if it’s additional steps (I have not used the extension though there.)

I have never seen the search contract so I don't think I am breaking any kind of NDA but I have been close enough to engineering and browser planning and product management to know that Google dictates (negotiates?) in great detail every aspect of search in the browser. This is not a simple "you can use Google Search" deal, instead Google is basically the product manager and ux designer for the browser and they spell out in the contract how search works, how the navigation works, what the UX looks like, what is allowed and not allowed in terms of competing search engines. On mobile it goes further than that and they also dictate how the browser integrates with Android features related to search and voice search.

Mozilla can't surive without Google cash and I fully believe they negotiated hard for a good fair deal that puts users and choice first but I am also sure that Google got the better hand and that is why Search in Firefox has been largely "product managed" / micro-managed by Google.

Apple probably had much more freedom becsuse of their size and power and I don't really understand why it is not possible to add a custom search engine. There is no advantage for Apple to not allow this. Other than .. Google probably force a good deal in their advantage? Apple taking more money by allowing less choice, or even being forced to accept a new deal?

Not having a search deal is simply not an option. Mozilla would die. Apple would have to explain billions of revenue loss to shareholders. Both are impossible.

On iOS my Safari browser is always in private mode. I never use non-private tabs. Kagi integration via the Safari extension works most of the time - but was broken for several months (required re-logging into Kagi when opening a new private tab after a delay). It looks like you fixed it just a couple of weeks ago, so I appreciate that.

I am raising this just so you are aware of this use case - always staying in private mode.

(The fact that iOS doesn't allow setting the default search provider in Safari to anything other than half a dozen of pre-selected partners is abysmal.)

I guess, all that we get from Google, we deserve it.

Reading the early history of Microsoft I once came across a quote from someone that the company intentionally made the possibility of booting different operating systems on the PC difficult by design. What I found interesting is that this was before Linux became popular. They were already contemplating the possibility of booting other operating systems.

Google's argument at trial was something like, "Everyone agrees Google search is the best and that's why they use it exclusively." (Hence it should be set as a "default".) Could we imagine Microsoft arguing, "Everyone agrees Windows is the best and that's why they will never want to boot another operating system."

Maybe some relics of this sort of subtle subterfuge live on today. For example, it was historically difficult if not impossible to dual boot Windows along with non-Microsoft OS without allowing Windows to be first in the boot order, e.g., Windows partition must be the first partition. Even in the UEFI era, I see hints that this issue may still persist:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/u9siuc/how_...

Regardless of whether I have the details exactly right (I used to edit MBRs by hand to set the first active partition and have forgotten much of that knowledge now), the point is that the software/"tech" company tactic of preserving or adding deliberate hassles, i.e., "friction", is an old one. Surely it must work to have persisted for so long.

I must say I really hated that change, hopefully you will consider making a new extension?

As a for-profit company you cannot fall back on the comfort of blaming outside factors for your problems. You have the best search engine in the world already, so don't make it so difficult for people to become your (paying) users.

They pay Apple alone around 20 billion per year. There is no way anyone else can even think about competing with that. It's not because they happened to get the highest bid. It's because they're paying for the elimination of anyone else getting a foothold.

> Google understands there is no genuine competition for the defaults because it knows that its partners cannot afford to go elsewhere. Time and again, Google’s partners have concluded that it is financially infeasible to switch default GSEs or seek greater flexibility in search offerings because it would mean sacrificing the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars that Google pays them as revenue share.

[...]

> That was the key takeaway from the testimony of Neeva’s founder and former Google Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce, Dr. Ramaswamy. The court found him to be a particularly compelling witness. He put it best. When the court asked why Google pays billions in revenue share when it already has the best search engine, he answered that the payments “provide an incredibly strong incentive for the ecosystem to not do anything”; they “effectively make the ecosystem exceptionally resist[ant] to change”; and their “net effect . . . [is to] basically freeze the ecosystem in place[.]” Tr. at 3796:8–3798:22 (Ramaswamy). No one would ever describe a competitive marketplace in those terms. When the distribution agreements have created an ecosystem that has a “strong incentive” to do “nothing,” is “resist[ant] to change,” and is “basically [frozen] in place,” there is no genuine “competition for the contract” in search. It is illusory.

What about of money are they allowed to pay?

Will there be a state-run auction?

Companies with monopoly power must work with different rules.

Having monopoly power is not illegal, abusing it is.

But if you or I are operate a monopoly (whether a natural monopoly or an artificial monopoly) and we make the same kind of exclusive deal, then: That may not be fine. We have laws (like the Sherman Act) that can restrict this sort of thing only if a monopoly becomes involved.

And to be clear: It's generally OK to have a monopoly (good fuckin' job, mate! you totally own your market! all the spoils for you!). But it's generally not OK to use that monopoly status in an anticompetitive way.

Because it's a monopoly, and paying over the odds for these placements, it does not allow for a competitive marketplace. These payments create significant barriers to entry for other companies to even try and increase their market share given all the frictionless access points are blocked by Google not because of superior product but payments. These payments from a monopoly have a disproportionate impact on the market by limiting opportunities for everyone else in a significant manner.

(Kind of, in a competitive market, a company can block 1-2 pathways. Here google pretty much blocked every entry point.)

Interesting that they limit the case to mobile browsers. I guess MS share is significant enough on desktop.

A pretty good argument could be made that Apple would likely have built up and/or acquired it's own search engine by now if Google wasn't paying such obscene amounts. Apple was previously involved in talks with Microsoft to purchase Bing, and even acquired an ai search startup founded by ex-googlers (LaserLike).

>>Google search is still the best out there

The second statement coupled with the fact that google search has declined in quality due to choices by google (not just the admitidely difficult SEO adversaries) is the harm. Google is able to purposefully degrade it's experience because of the lack of competition, and demonstratably has (while still, arguably, being viewed as the best).

I'm with you on the remedies, I can't think of any specific to paying to be the default that don't have multiple negative knock on effects (I'm particuarly worried about what this means for Mozzila funding myself). Still you don't skip chemotherapy just because it's more acute in the short term.

Considering this is an antitrust case, those payments are not honest.

Thunderbird, on the other hand, takes user donations.

Just skimmed the ruling [1]. A pillar appears to be that “Google’s distribution agreements are exclusive.” So if Mozilla e.g. auctions off the next N installs default-search engine designation, it might work? (Also, the ruling doesn’t ban exclusive distribution agreements in general.)

[1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25032745/045110819896...

Presumably a proper non profit would be more incentivized to stick to the projects ideals so they can brag about it in their fundraising activities (with perhaps a little too much of that money going into administrator pockets on the down low). Meanwhile Google's funding creates a status quo where it's pretty much fine with anything so long as Firefox continues to exist as a scarecrow to anti-trust suits. It effectively muscles out all the potential well meaning donors which could have helped steer things in a more positive direction, and acts like a sword of damocles floating over Mozilla's head, engorging the organization in addictive cash they don't deserve, and implicitly discouraging them from ever stepping on Google's toes lest the money hose gets turned off.

These days I'd call Firefox "good enough" from a privacy & open source perspective. It checks the boxes, and while I'm actually pretty open to the UI changes they have made over the years, I've gotten the sense that top Mozilla leadership don't really care about Firefox anymore, even distancing themself from it in certain respects. These days Firefox doesn't really seem to be going anywhere, it does the bare minimum by implementing web standards but all efforts to distinguish it from Chrome seem to be gradually extinguished. I wouldn't even be surprised at this point if they eventually turned off Mv2 support in a few years from now, despite all promises to the contrary, citing complexity or perhaps even "security" like Google's been doing as the reason.

If in the "worst" case Mozilla shutters down or abandons Firefox development after losing their money hose, perhaps the mindshare of the community they have been hoarding away all these years will coalesce around a healthier fork with an organization structure closer to the Linux foundation, maybe then Firefox would actually have a future again.

One can only dream.

via

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us...

https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-...

The gist of the story is the author wrote an article debunking the recipe myth that you only need 5 minutes. In their tests it was 25 - 45. Google snippet would report "about 5 minutes" and link to the article as a reference.

I think the information summaries at the top of searches have been wrong for a while.

Google search ads have been rife with scams for a while[1]. I think that counts as patently untrue information at the top of a google query.

[1] https://searchengineland.com/google-search-ads-brands-fraud-...

Google search went to shit and ruined most of the web with it, by creating an SEO industry that's 100% focused on optimizing for their ranking signals.

With the recent LLM stuff, I'm not so sure. Maybe OpenAI will have searchGPT as an option. After all, for a mobile user interface that seems more appropriate since I'm not going to be banging out a complex query.

It's not a big conspiracy where everybody is buying judges and politicians.