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Comment by bitpush | Hacker News Reader

I dont understand. I can browse the internet using a non-Google computer, use a non-Google browser, go to a non-Google website, use a non-Google programming language etc etc.

Nobody, including Google, is stopping you from doing that.

Note, this is different from actual monopoly of railways (I have to use Central Pacific Railroad) or ISP (My city only has Comcast) or electricity (If I want electricity, I have to use PG&E).

The barometer is whether there's meaningful alternative. Can I do X without the $company in question = not a monopoly.

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> i can ...

You are doing the same mistake PP did, projecting from yourself to others. Not everyone can do this or knows the resons why it is important.

If the search market was that flexible, it wouldnt really make sense to spend a fortune to become the default SE.

>Note, this is different from actual monopoly of railways

You can ride a horse. Ergo, not a monopoly.

>ISP (My city only has Comcast)

You've got starlink. Not a monopoly.

Sounds like a local problem. Even my parent’s small town in south GA has a choice between AT&T Fiber with symmetric 1GB up/down and the cable company.

> You can ride a horse. Ergo, not a monopoly.

Are you really saying that there is no other search engine you can use besides Google?

No, they're saying their is an alternative, but it comes at a huge disadvantage. Perhaps not for individual users, as a DDG and Firefox user I'm quite content, but it's definitely an overwhelming disparity for website admins. Even if that admin is not literally in Google Analytics to view their site data (and they probably are), they're still looking at an overwhelming majority of organic traffic coming from Google Search using Google Chrome. And for site publishers and advertisers, Google AdSense or Google Ad[Word]s are enormous.

In 1870, if you wanted to get from Chicago to San Francisco, it would be facetious to claim that Union Pacific did not have a monopoly on that route. No, Union Pacific wasn't forcing you to board their train. Just like you can Ctrl+T over to duckduckgo.com/ or bing.com/ or kagi.com/ in seconds, and never go back to Google. You could avoid the railroad monopoly by 'just' riding a horse, or walking, or taking a boat down the Mississippi and launching a sailing expedition around Cape Horn. That's still a monopoly.

That’s a horrible argument. The difference between riding a horse and riding a train is multiple orders of magnitude. The difference between using an alternate search engine is minimum and the experience is often better than Google.

And if your entire business strategy is to have a website and depend on Google search results to drive traffic, you are doing it wrong as many news organizations like Buzzfeed found out.

I do occasional self promotion and “thought leadership” bullshit to put my name out there. I go to where the eyeballs are - LinkedIn. It’s far more likely that the people I want to reach are on LinkedIn than my blog that I don’t have a link to anywhere. I just use it as a publicly accessible place to workshop my writing and thoughts before I post them to LinkedIn.

And I will play the world’s smallest fiddle for advertisers even then, if you have a product to sale to consumers, you are probably better off using Amazon or a Meta app to advertised. It’s better targeting and ads are less likely to be blocked.

I cannot use my bank app without Google Android. This it count like a monopoly?

No, that's an issue with your bank.

Exactly. "McDonald's only serves Coca Cola. So Coca Cola is .. bad?"

I sometimes dont understand the logic of some people.

Imagine if 99% of stores only served coca cola.

Is coca cola then a monopoly on soft drinks? I would say obviously yes.

This is the situation the current internet and applications are in. They only service users who utilize Google in some type of way, for the majority of apps.

Its deceptive to say "well it's just that one bank". No, that one bank is an example. That's not the breadth of it, and we both know that.

It is not an issue with my bank. Apps from all banks fail on any AOSP ROM because the Play Integrity check.

You can change bank

There is no bank app that works outside Google Android. Try any bank on an AOSP ROM and it will fail because Play Integrity.

Around half of all websites use Google analytics so good luck totally avoiding Google.

Just use an ad blocker. O wait all the chromium browsers just made that harder with manifest v3. 75% of browsers are chromium based?

I don’t think it’s fair to compare digital services to something like PGE. Fundamentally different.

Google lost the case. They just weren’t punished how they should’ve been.

Edit: wow and how could I forget 8.8.8.8 or google’s own transmission lines!

> Around half of all websites use Google analytics so good luck totally avoiding Google.

Isnt adding Google Analytics to the website a decision solely and independently made by the website in question?

You said you you can browse the internet independent of Google and I’m saying you can’t because yes other people can force Google onto you

Whether a company has a business relationship with a company you dont like, doesnt make the same argument you're making.

It is like saying, I dont like Coca Cola but when I go to McDonald's to eat food, they only serve Coca Cola. Hence, Coca Cola is.. bad? McDonald's is free to chose any business partner they like, and you insisting that McDonald's shouldnt use Coca Cola sounds silly.

If you went to McDonalds and had to drink Coke just to walk in the door.

If I understand correctly, manifest v3 is like what Safari implemented a decade ago and it’s perfectly possible to block Google analytics with Safari content blockers.

Yes you can still block it’s just stripped down now eg ublock lite.

My point is that it’s incredibly difficult to avoid Google. Especially for people who aren’t nerds.

How is your argument that you can’t avoid Google supported by the argument that with manifest v3 you can’t block Google analytics even though you can?

In the US, iOS has 60% market share and installing an ad blocker is a matter of going to the App Store and installing it and then enabling in settings. They all walk you through the process. It’s the same on the Mac with the Mac App Store.

That’s not my entire argument I just started going a rabbit hole to show how tied in it all is.

Google pays Apple to be the default search engine.

Google transmits our data undersea.

You can’t easily avoid them!

And you can change your search engine. If you have evidence that someone Google has quantum computers that allows it decrypt encrypted traffic, I’m sure people would like to know.

But no one has been proposing that Google not be allowed to have underseas cables

Yeah because metadata isn’t important…

The argument is that you can cut Google out of your life. The reality is you can’t and many don’t even realize how deeply intertwined it is.

You don’t think that’s going deep down the rabbit hole to show that Google is a monopoly to say that it owns a few of the under seas pipes? How much of an American’s traffic do you think goes over Google’s pipelines?

Well apparently it’s around ¾ of the traffic.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.12253

And the other half all put a giant pop-up asking me to sign into Google. I've not yet figured out how to block it, if anyone knows I would love to hear it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/#wiki_g...

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