Google isn’t happy with Microsoft over online news

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22327306/google-microsoft-attack-open-web-online-news-australia-laws

by dsr12 • 5 years ago

180 242 5 years ago

walrus012• 5 years ago

That's a rather funny claim coming from google, considering we are now back in the same situation as we were 20 year ago, when people were designing websites to work 'best' on microsoft's IE browser. Now a lot of things are being designed to work 'best' on Chrome.

At least Microsoft has the benefit of the institutional knowledge of having once been as dominant as Google is now.

threatofrain3• 5 years ago

Has Google been breaking the web with non-compliant implementations of web standards?

walrus012• 5 years ago

More like it's been using its dominant browser market position, and "Essential" nature as a search/cloud based services operator, to wag the dog of the web standardization process.

skinkestek4• 5 years ago

They

- break compability or make their sites slow in other browsers, sometimes in so interesting ways that it makes it hard to defend as just incompetence. Edit, example: didn't they go out of their way to find a way to make YouTube crawl in Firefox while performing well in Chrome a few months ago? IIRC instead of doing it the new straightforward way that was supported everywhere they went with a solution that was so backwards that it was already deprecated in Chrome as well or something?

- make banners on the front page of the worlds most famous web property, urging people to change

prepend2• 5 years ago

They sort of killed DNT.

pxi• 5 years ago

This story is not directly related to chrome.

In the original version of the legislation, google and facebook were required to pay up each time they served an <a> tag that pointed news.com sites. That's what google meant by "breaking the open web" - having to pay <a href> tax.

This was all fine by Microsoft. They apparently did some deal with Murdock in 2019 so appear to have been behind this all along. It's all echos of Gates era dealings.

mattrick• 5 years ago

Chrome is tangential to the story, but Google calling Microsoft out for trying "to break the way the open web works" is super hypocritical. Its the pot calling the kettle black.

mmcnl2• 5 years ago

This is not true at all. The web is at a much better state than 20 years ago. There may be some thing going on that are not ideal, but the it's a night and day difference. I don't know why this gets so many upvotes.

int_19h• 5 years ago

It's in a better state because Chrome, at least, is actively developed, whereas IE was lagging behind.

But in many other respects, it's quite similar. A better baseline for comparison would be circa 2010, when Firefox was still popular enough, and "best viewed in Chrome" wasn't really a thing yet.

prepend2• 5 years ago

It can be really stupid too, I’ve had sites not load and suggest that I use “modern browsers like Chrome” when I’m trying to load it in Safari or Brave. So I think we’re back to dumdums literally checking user agent.

For a little while, outlook and 365 web didn’t work properly in safari because of the third party cookies defaults, so the suggestion was to use Chrome (rather than just adjusting cookie settings).

mbar84• 5 years ago

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Today I develop mostly on Chrome, but I don't dread testing for compatibility on Firefox or Safari. The standardization is quite good across vendors.

Add to that, back then Microsoft had no drive to move the web platform forward. IE was not getting better, which is why it was eventually eclipsed by Firefox and later Chrome.

michaelbrave• 5 years ago

I can't tell you how many times I have problems with a site in Firefox because they only designed it for chrome now, sites owned by google are the biggest offenders.

lowercased• 5 years ago

oddly enough, most of the time I hit issues with stuff not working on safari, but fine on firefox or chrome. I just had a bill pay request from someone using 'bill4time.com' service. Broke in safari, worked in chrome. I seem to hit these situation perhaps once a week or so, where moving to chrome or firefox generally 'fixes' it.

Jiejeing• 5 years ago

Well, considering that microsoft essentially designs their websites (see also: teams) to only work on chrome, that is rich.

FridgeSeal2• 5 years ago

Pot calls kettle black.

Google has probably done more of this single handedly since the advent of Chrome than Microsoft has.

Not that I’m absolving MS of any wrongdoing either, but google has definitely been far more malicious, and for them to pretend otherwise is unscrupulous at best.

dontblink2• 5 years ago

You must have missed the entire 90s. Microsoft hasn't changed, it's just got better PR. Google has it's faults as well, but I vastly prefer Google's contribution over Microsoft's.

supernovae5• 5 years ago

The 90s was 30 years ago.

I was an asshole to my parents in the 90s as an angsty teen. If my parents held on to the 90s like I could never change, grow or be something different my family would be torn apart.

Perhaps you just need to grow up yourself.

FridgeSeal2• 5 years ago

I am in no way absolving Microsoft for their terrible behaviour in the 90s.

I do however, think that google, having more reach and influence makes them somewhat worse.

threatofrain3• 5 years ago

In the middle of all of this, Microsoft was very public about its support of Australia’s new law, and it even teamed up with European publishers to call for online platforms to reach deals to pay news outlets for content. Google isn’t happy about Microsoft getting involved and this is the first big public spat we’ve seen since the Scroogled era.

gchokov• 5 years ago

Serious question - does anyone at all still liking Google?

sMarsIntruder2• 5 years ago

Unfortunately a lot. I was one of them, loved the Android idea. Then a couple of years ago I started migrating to privacy oriented services (or at least alternatives), but it's a long process.

WarOnPrivacy8• 5 years ago

Like might be too strong a word. I sometimes grudgingly use Google for search because DuckDuckGo - unfortunately, frustratingly, bizarrely - doesn't know what operands are.

izacus4• 5 years ago

Liking has nothing to do with law prices about future of the web.

We're not sampling chocolate here - think how propping up old media with mandatory charges actually helps us and the open web?

notRobot• 5 years ago

Both companies have tried to or successful broken "the way the open web works" time and time again and both of them should stop.

Will they? Of course not.

uncledave• 5 years ago

Amp already did that.

aemreunal• 5 years ago

Microsoft acted pretty sleazy (IMHO) on the Australian law situation but it's rich for Google to attack them since they caved first and paid. I'm all for taxing companies (tech or otherwise) in sensible ways but the Australian news law was far from sensible.

Not to mention AMP and whatnot.

markdown• 5 years ago

the Australian news law was far from sensible.

For those out of the loop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU

gdsdfe• 5 years ago

Haha one thing for sure australian have a good sense of humor

u678u• 5 years ago

Lol. This bit sums up the whole thing for me. "Will that help our ailing media?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU&t=77s

PoignardAzur• 5 years ago

Honestly, I'm with Google on that one.

I'm disappointed they caved in and paid the danegeld, but the way Microsoft went "We fully support the extraction from the danegeld, and if Google happens to lose any market share due to its refusal to pay it, we would be more than happy to have these customers use Bing instead. We fully support this law that has no effect on us and actively harms our main competitor" is just disgusting.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 5 years ago

They would be fine with it as long as they aren't subject to it. If they were subject to it, it would make it very difficult to operate Bing. Unless they just aren't doing algorithm changes very often, it would present a significant burden to be required to report out such changes weeks before deployment. Of course the forced "arbitration" for "fair" payment to news organizations would also be onerous for them. But fortunately for MS the law is highly selective in which companies it targets.

ehsankia2• 5 years ago

Google's move was clever because they were in a lose-lose situation where they had to pay anyways. By doing a deal with News Corp, they showed that the whole thing was a blackmail and will the Australian government look bad.

tester756• 5 years ago

Google Web Accelerator, Amp...

jimjimjim2• 5 years ago

everybody likes piling on google but i'm still thanking them for killing ie. people have short memories

zargon2• 5 years ago

Mozilla killed IE. Google swept in after Firefox did the hard work. (Ab)used their search monopoly to drive Chrome ads.

merb3• 5 years ago

thats a fairy tail. mozilla killed ie for home users, but on the business side (a way bigger market) that was not true. mozilla also basically did not target that market that much, I meaan they had no adm/admx templates and msi files for a very long time.

techrat3• 5 years ago

I stopped using Firefox because it was a bloated mess that frequently ended up with memory leaks despite shutting down the browser. Creating a new window with no history and killing all other windows still didn't get Firefox.exe to release all the ram it gobbled up.

Mozilla has a habit of taking a decent, slimmed down browser (Phoenix, for those who remember that era), adopting it as their primary because their previous became a bloated mess... then taking the new fork, making it unwieldy and forcing people to create yet another fork to reign it in.

Tell me again how this is Google's fault.

They simply made a better browser.

sildur• 5 years ago

I think it was Firefox who killed IE. IE was declining in usage way before Chrome appeared. What Google killed was Firefox.

fhd2• 5 years ago

With a combination of some actually good improvements over Firefox, and incredibly shady bundling practices. There was hardly anything you could install a few years back without it forcing Chrome as a standard browser on you.

jimjimjim2• 5 years ago

Firefox did hard hard work, all the way through the dark ages, it kept the flame alive. I've used firefox since the start, I still use firefox, in fact my progression was netscape->mozilla->firefox, and i'll continue using firefox.

But chrome did the impossible, they shifted the Moms and Pops and most unbelievable, the absolute holy grail, the corporate desktop.

croes• 5 years ago

Chrome killed IE in the companies because it was manageable and packable before Firefox was

stormdennis• 5 years ago

Just looked it up and find it hard to believe how low firefox's share is, under 4% overall. I moved back to it about a year ago from chrome and I think it's great.

techrat3• 5 years ago

Mozilla killed Firefox. Several times, in fact. How many variants of regular and mobile Firefox have there been now because the primary version always ends up a bloated mess?

skinkestek4• 5 years ago

I'm thankful for that but now they've given us a new even worse monster and we are right back to square one.

Remember: IE6 was the best browser for a while, the problem was it did things slightly different and people targeted IE instead of the web, exactly as they target Chrome instead of the web today.

Jonnax• 5 years ago

I think you're misremembering.

IE6 was a broken implementation of the standards of the time.

And Microsoft decided that web browsing was done and did not update their browser.

It was a scheme for vendor lock-in.

boublepop• 5 years ago

Just curious, what is the best way to “target the web” these days? I remember back in the xhtml days that you could validate against standards. But as I understand it these days with google eating up the standards development it seems like html5 is synonomous with chrome.

vanviegen• 5 years ago

Yes, they didn't care much for standards. But the larger problem was that they basically stopped implenting new web standards the moment IE was dominant, protecting their Windows monopoly.

I don't think many web developers who have really lived through the IE 'glory days' would say the current situation is even nearly as bad.

nix23• 5 years ago

This time Google is really going to far with the 1. April jokes...oh wait..

codeulike2• 5 years ago

'slam' is such a weird verb for this sort of thing, and it only seems to turn up in headlines. It is supposed to be a wrestling metaphor? Its such an odd mental image.

kthejoker2• 5 years ago

It's slang from around the turn of the 20th century.

No joke, it comes from birdsong hobbyists, when two birds were "competing" they would insert deliberately off and loud notes to intimidate and silence each other. They named those "slams" like a door slam.

That became the slang for the patter of street hawkers when they negged you or heckled someone else for laughs and attention, and eventually became slang for any kind of insult or put down.

codeulike2• 5 years ago

Wow, thanks. Had no idea.

draklor40• 5 years ago

*cough* AMP *cough*

supernovae5• 5 years ago

I find it curious Google pushes amp, yet the new google analytics 4 doesn't even support it.

I have a feeling AMP is really dead and now they're looking for ways to get news back after forcing so many people to embrace that terrible tech.

bogomipz3• 5 years ago

I'd be curious to hear why you are sensing that AMP is really dead? It this just based on Google Analytics 4 or are there other signs as well?

intricatedetail2• 5 years ago

This I don't understand. Why Google only has to pay for news content? Why only big news corporations get rewarded but a guy with a blog won't be?

ewindal• 5 years ago

Because this law is literally just about letting Murdoch cling to power. It’s such an obviosly corrupt law.

intricatedetail2• 5 years ago

Where are the institutions that are supposed to protect us from corruption that we pay dearly in taxes? This is just so wrong. Strong towards the weak, weak towards the strong...

michaelmrose3• 5 years ago

Nobody ought to have to pay for linking to content it breaks how the internet works when you get to decide who can link to your content. Just because something would serve as a handle to allow one party to maximize their profit by controlling others behavior doesn't imply we should enshrine such a handle into law.

hownottowrite2• 5 years ago

Half of Google’s profits should be set aside to pay content creators.

foobar33333• 5 years ago

Why? Content creators are free to negotiate with google themselves. If they can't come up with a good deal they can use robots.txt to remove their content from google.

kuschku4• 5 years ago

As long as Google only used links that was fine, but now with the Knowledge Graph often just quoting all the content of the site directly, and Google showing ads to profit from that, we're seeing a situation where Google profits by scraping content, but the creators never do.

None of this would've been an issue 20 years ago when 90% of the web was noncommercial, but now it destroys an entire industry.

daniellarusso2• 5 years ago

That is not the IP extortion model used by YouTube.

hownottowrite2• 5 years ago

If a better web experience is core to Google’s interests, paying for content should pay off in the long run. That's what they're demanding of content creators anyway, so they should put their money where there mouth is.

mar13032021• 5 years ago

Negotiate with a company that bans accounts randomly and does not have a helpline? Nah, let government go after them, I bet they will be taking _those_ phone calls.

ttt02• 5 years ago

Somewhat relevant, content creators from outside the US are going to be taxed by the US government.

https://twitter.com/YouTubeCreators/status/13693446469089361...

mr_toad• 5 years ago

Income taxes from two or more jurisdictions, as well as sales taxes and whatever cut the platform takes? What’s left, and is it even a positive number?

kgeist• 5 years ago

In 2021, it looks like Google is more predatory than Microsoft

sullyj3• 5 years ago

They're not wrong, but coming from the creators of AMP this is a bit rich.

izacus4• 5 years ago

AMP was the defense against all content moving into native apps like Facebook. Antithesis of open web, with completely locked down content, applied DRM and no ability to contribute without the review of platform owners.

It's that the endgame you'd have preferred? Ecosystem of apps because news web developers refused to make their ad and autoplay video ridden websites usable on the mobile devices?

Look at the trends and tell me if you'd have preferred to read all your content in an Apple News walled garden instead?

fakedang• 5 years ago

AMP was the defense against all content moving into native apps like Facebook.

Google: We will defend you but we'll also strangle you while at it.

onlyfortoday2• 5 years ago

ahahahahha funny

nojito2• 5 years ago

News organizations have ad inventory to sell, but they can no longer sell directly to those who want to place ads,” says Microsoft president Brad Smith. “Instead, for all practical purposes they must use Google’s tools, operate on Google’s ad exchanges, contribute data to Google’s operations, and pay Google money. All this impacts the ability of news organizations to benefit economically even from advertising on their own sites.”

I’m not too versed in the Australia news thing, but is this statement true?

sMarsIntruder2• 5 years ago

Says who invented and imposed FLoC.

smaryjerry2• 5 years ago

Google, the company that actively tries to make YouTube not work on any Amazon device simple because Amazon is a competitor, is complaining about someone breaking the open web? Google refused to build an app for Amazon devices and even when Amazon had a working app that was essentially a browser that visited YouTube on their Alexa devices with screens, YouTube changed their website for the sole purpose of breaking it on Amazon devices. Google has no right to complain here.

bqmjjx0kac• 5 years ago

IIRC, Amazon built their own UI around YouTube which meant YouTube was not monetizing those views.

Edit:

A person familiar with Google's thinking on the matter told Engadget that a big point of contention had been the fact that Amazon implemented what was essentially a hacked version of YouTube on both the Echo Show and Fire TV. Rather than work with Google to build versions of its apps that work on Amazon's devices, Amazon has been trying to do it itself -- a move that cuts out features and also likely affects Google's ability to collect on some of the ad revenue that comes from its videos.

https://www.engadget.com/2017-12-05-google-blocking-youtube-...

smaryjerry2• 5 years ago

The update at the bottom details amazons side of the story:

Amazon has responded, and its response points to the unfair nature of Google effectively blocking access to the YouTube web site based on the type of device being used to access it. "Echo Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube's existing website," Amazon's statement reads. "Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website. We hope to resolve this with Google as soon as possible."

HJain13• 5 years ago

Amazon isn’t without fault either. The company dragged its feet for years in releasing a proper Prime Video app for Android in the Google Play Store. Previously, you had to install Amazon’s own, separate app store and only then could you install Prime Video. It was a sad, convoluted attempt at luring users to the Amazon Appstore. Even now, Prime Video still doesn’t support Chromecast.
And that’s directly tied to Chromecast’s absence on Amazon.com. Since there’s no easy way of watching Prime Video, Amazon won’t sell it. But it’s Amazon’s own fault that Prime Video doesn’t work with Chromecast. Amazon has the power to make it happen. What’s Google supposed to do in this scenario?
Amazon’s decision to remove popular, well-liked products from its store over this spat — or never sell them to begin with — is an ugly example of the company throwing its weight and power around. No one should be surprised that Google is crying foul. Is the company under any obligation to sell Google Home — the chief rival to its own Echo? Of course not. Them’s the breaks. But the Chromecast situation is troubling, and Amazon’s recent halting of sales for certain Nest hardware (with no real explanation) seems juvenile. Prime shipping is still a very powerful incentive, and Amazon is well aware of that.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16738752/google-youtube-a...

Amazon is nowhere near innocent in their feud

unimpossible• 5 years ago

I use Chromecast with Prime. Mine's from 2016 so I don't know if they stopped supporting it on newer models. Everything else though, I agree with. Big tech, like any monopoly, does not play fair.

kuschku4• 5 years ago

Amazon is nowhere near innocent in their feud

Amazon built the Fire stick to be compatible with Chromecast. Google then changed the Chromecast protocols repeatedly to prevent this.

Only after that did Amazon ban the Chromecast devices from their store.

Tell the whole story, at least.

trident5000• 5 years ago

They tried to make YouTube not work on Firefox as well.

jedberg• 5 years ago

It still doesn't really work. When I load YouTube in Firefox it kind of hangs for a while and then plays in low res. If I grab the URL and jump over to Chrome, it instantly play in the highest resolution.

yread• 5 years ago

Exactly same situation with Windows Phone

perryizgr8• 5 years ago

Google also killed windows phone using the same tactics.

Shadonototro• 5 years ago

The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft

They used the same techniques for Stadia, they bashed it while praising Xbox Cloud

The same with Team vs Zoom

And the same with AWS/GCE vs Azure

Hmm

throwaway53453• 5 years ago

The media is institutionally biased against Google and Facebook because they are 'direct competitors' in their heads. Don't get me wrong, there are issues with Big Tech, but I don't believe the news industry's collapse to be one of them. It's like arguing with the printing press or railroads galvanizing the dinosaurs of their era.

skinnymuch5• 5 years ago

Facebook is also the favorite most hated company on social media sites like Reddit, Hacker News. Imo there’s no logic behind the degree of disliking FB over some other big tech.

supernovae5• 5 years ago

This entire thread is depression and responses like this are pure depression. Why does any of this matter? All I see are a bunch of apologists or a bunch of people making assumptions and no one really discussing anything without their extreme bias and prejudices in the way.

The first comments here are people bashing the Microsoft of 20 years ago..

And this one... "The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft" - for no other reason than to perpetuate the bias here.

Why do we do this to ourselves people? This is absurd.

The Verge is very much in love with Apple, they're not in love with Google. That doesn't make them Pro-Microsoft. The verge DID hire a a fantastic Microsoft writer who knows Microsoft inside and out, so they're not Oblivious to Microsoft - but that doesn't make them "Pro Microsoft".

And for Christ's sake - NONE of what is mentioned here makes Microsoft bad. They're a business making products and building services doing what businesses do and its certainly not Balmer's Microsoft anymore.

Who cares what Google isn't happy with when its painfully apparent no one is is happy with anything around here...

gerash5• 5 years ago

Some pretend Microsoft has turned into this benevolent corporation lately with their "Microsoft <heart> Linux" and adopting Android and Chrome. Well all those were done because they'd lost market share in servers, mobile OS and desktop browsers despite being the dominant player and forcing their offerings the whole time.

Microsoft used to run smear campaigns (remember Scroogled?) when they hired Hillary Clinton's strategist. This last case shows they don't even care if it means everyone can be sued for not paying for a hyperlink. Say whatever you want about AMP or Google reader or whatnot but when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival?

Microsoft's corporate tactics have remained the same.

amarant• 5 years ago

Agreed! I used to work for a Microsoft owned game studio a while back, and during their Microsoft <3 Linux campaign, or shortly after, I noticed that xbox.com wouldn't work on Linux, unless I changed the user-agent to Chrome-windows or Chrome-Macos

Loves Linux but blocks Linux by user agent. Nice.

They changed it tho when we contacted them, so I guess there is some love, at least they were willing to change (when it impeded their own developers).

Don't trust Microsoft!

f6v• 5 years ago

Don't trust Microsoft!

The fact that people might consider trusting ANY corporation is sad.

Wowfunhappy• 5 years ago

Microsoft loves Linux in a very specific context—on servers, and as a development environment, in the latter case preferably running as a container or virtual machine inside of... well, you know.

alpaca1282• 5 years ago

Similarly, if you want to directly download the Windows 10 ISO on a Windows machine you need to fake the user agent. In which case the site always claims that you're running an old version of Windows, even if you actually loaded the site on Linux.

prussian• 5 years ago

Loves Linux but blocks Linux by user agent. Nice.

Reminds me of Office 365. If your UA has Windows in it, all of a sudden they offer SSO authentication as if Linux can't be set up for it.

otabdeveloper4• 5 years ago

...when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival?

Somehow, of all the abuses and injustices Big Tech commits, this one is way, way, way down on the very bottom of my list.

2OEH8eoCRo03• 5 years ago

Most people seem upset that they said / did mean things to competitors or bundled IE with Windows. Meanwhile the FAAG (facebook, amazon, apple, google) is being investigated for antitrust not in the distant past, but right now.

ggambetta• 5 years ago

Some people are too young to remember. I recently worked with new grads in a startup, and for these 20-somethings Microsoft has always been somewhat cool, and Bill Gates has always been this benevolent old guy that cures diseases. They were very surprised where I shared the articles where they were saying literally LINUX IS CANCER.

With a mixture of time passing and billions of dollars, it looks like they've successfully "cleaned" their image :(

tpmx4• 5 years ago

High-end, (long-term) consistent PR management works very well. (Remember how everyone used to hate George W. Bush with the passion of a thousand burning suns?)

xahrepap• 5 years ago

I try not to complain when proper competition causes improved behavior.

I’m a fan of “the new MS”. Do I trust them? Not any more than a massive company.

But do I love all the open source software they’re producing now? Yes! Do I pretend that it’s because MS has seen the light and become penitent? No!

But at least this time when MS turns its back on their users, we can fork .net, edge, and vscode and go on with our lives. MS can’t unmerge their contributions to the Linux kernel or other open source projects they’re selfishly contributing to.

gerash5• 5 years ago

I agree. If the outcome is a win for both Microsoft (or any other entity for that matter) and the rest of the ecosystem that's perfect.

But they have shown that as a corporation they are comfortable playing nasty when it suits them.

hackerbrother• 5 years ago

My interpretation of "Microsoft <3 Open Source" is that MS has realized that their power in the tech industry is not dependent on their source code being a secret, and that in fact making your stuff open source makes you more popular and influential.

In my opinion, MS didn't really cede much power to the community when open-sourcing .NET, for example. It would still be incredibly painful for a company to unhook itself from Microsoft's version of .NET, and .NET is still influential for all the same reasons is was before, because of MS's position in the software industry. I think the move was just MS moving the framework into the current paradigm of software development. All(?) popular frameworks are open source these days: React, Electron, ... It just doesn't fit with the times to have .NET be closed source.

It think is interesting to think though about Google directly providing the source code base for its competitors, Edge and the other Chromium clones. Maybe the lasting message of US v. Microsoft was that if you open-source your software, you're less likely to be perceived as controlling. Or maybe your software simply becomes more influential if it's open source! Chrome being open source allows Google to be enormously influential as far as web standards go. It would probably be a lot less so if Chrome was closed source.

CharlesW2• 5 years ago

…when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival?

That's a PR stunt. You should be Actually Concerned about how much Alphabet is spending on lobbying.

gerash5• 5 years ago

Lobbying is like the prisoner's dilemma. If you don't do it but your rival does then you'll end up with these extortion laws that hands Murdoch free money as we saw in Australia

SllX7• 5 years ago

If they’re spending a lot of money and still getting raked over the coals in various legislatures including Congress, why should we be worried?

Lobbying only gets your interests on the table; it doesn’t get you a seat at the table.

HPsquared• 5 years ago

They're in the 'embrace' phase.

2OEH8eoCRo03• 5 years ago

The bulk of Microsoft's income is not from hoarding user data and serving ads. Microsoft makes most of it's money by making good products that people pay for.

I've got my eye on them, but they aren't the same company under Satya.

mupuff12342• 5 years ago

What good products are they making? Haven't used any of their products in ages but I still get the impression that no one really enjoys their products (excluding excel maybe?)

gerash5• 5 years ago

I disagree with this way of assessing things.

Most big tech companies have been investing to diversify their income sources. Whether those investments have had a massive return to take over their original cash cow is a separate concern. Google has been investing in hardware and cloud, Apple in building online services, Amazon in pretty much everything.

skinnymuch5• 5 years ago

Does Duck Duck Go not still run smear campaigns against Google? Their sites in my opinion are exaggerated to the point of being close to misinformation. At least misleading to the lay person. Yet Duck Duck Go is beloved far more than Microsoft.

Note: I am not anti Duck Duck Go.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

Microsoft owns MSNBC, huge conflicts of interest.

Paianni• 5 years ago

Microsoft hasn't owned any part of MSNBC since 2012.

WarOnPrivacy8• 5 years ago

"Microsoft divested itself of its stakes in the MSNBC channel in 2005 and in msnbc.com in July 2012"

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC

saagarjha• 5 years ago

If you haven’t read the blog post already, give it a minute: https://blog.google/products/news/google-commitment-supporti.... It’s a mudslinging embarrassment.

I’m not a huge fan of the new rules, but it’s clear that they’ve scared Google to the point where their PR department is unable to moderate themselves anymore, a trend I’ve noticed with every large tech company when placed in a difficult position. Until you see more companies doing this I think it’s mostly safe to assume that any regulations you’re applying to them are toothless and just a cost of doing business.

LegitShady• 5 years ago

wow it's hard to believe that's official google messaging. It looks like someone lost their cool and hit 'submit' without giving it a day and re-reading it.

alpaca1282• 5 years ago

They are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival

That's rich coming from Google.

path4112• 5 years ago

Yeah at first I read it the other way and thought maybe microsoft was criticizing amp or something

bogomipz3• 5 years ago

Agreed. The following is particularly cringeworthy:

"And it’s no coincidence that Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us comes on the heels of the SolarWinds attack and at a moment when they’ve allowed tens of thousands of their customers — including government agencies in the U.S., NATO allies, banks, nonprofits, telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations — to be actively hacked via major Microsoft vulnerabilities."

What does the Solar Winds hack have to do with news publishing regulation? Mentioning Bing here would have been logical but this poorly written run-on sentence is just pure mud slinging of the same type he is accusing MS of. Are there no corporate PR officers at Google who need to approve such posts prior to publishing? What an embarrassment.

path4112• 5 years ago

Could also be Google adopting the new political speech. This is exactly how political "journalists" "slam" politicians on the other side. It's worked well for politicians this long, maybe it will work for these large walled corps?

cwyers• 5 years ago

That is in such astonishing bad faith. It's one thing when random Reddit commenters ignore that Microsoft is a massive corporation that can, in fact, mulitask. A senior Google official should know better, because Google can mulitask too. Just a spectacular display of engaging in ad hominem instead of engaging on the issue.

ksec• 5 years ago

Yes, there is something wrong with this PR that I cant quite grasp.

Or it could be just the old google. We are good and you are evil mentality.

WarOnPrivacy8• 5 years ago

I'd like to recap the issue here:

An Australian law was based on the premise that it was unfair for Google to reap benefits from sending traffic to AU media sites. The law also forced search engines to firehose user data (w/o implementing privacy protections [1]) to Australian media interests (eg: Rupert Murdoch).

Google said, "Ok. We'll comply with the law, forgo those benefits and stop sending traffic." Oddly, this did not satisfy the interests behind the law.

Microsoft stepped in and said "We're totally down with this law" - including, apparently, the egregious gift of user data to AU media interests.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200817/22554345133/googl...

bfgoodrich• 5 years ago

This is an absurdly biased and fact-free recap.

Any framing that posits that Google is benevolently "sending traffic" betrays that it should be discarded at the outset. Google (like Facebook and most other "make money on your content" empires) desperately tries to send as little traffic as possible to anyone, which is why they have AMP, scrape content and provide a dubious "expert engine", and provided a news dashboard where they summarized every news site.

I see this same ludicrous argument made re: Facebook. When Facebook temporarily blocked news, downloads of news site apps rose dramatically. It turns out that they weren't helpful whatsoever to anyone. They are a desperate suckerfish just trying to live off of the creation of other people.

oezi2• 5 years ago

The monopoly powers Google holds over search have given them such a strong position, that Google is more than reaping benefits. It is in the public's interest to prevent such powers to destroy the 4th column of balance in democracies that journalism should strive to be.

This is not to say that Murdoch's news empire isn't bad as well, but no country should sit back and watch while Google and Facebook siphon money out of the countries.

koboll• 5 years ago

The traditional way to do this would be something like building a domestic search engine and levying steep taxes on foreign ad buys, rather than this bizarre attempt at backhanded protectionism.

ajmadesc2• 5 years ago

Journalism is a joke.

austhrow743• 5 years ago

"4th column"

https://i.imgur.com/o7VI2PA.jpg

nojito2• 5 years ago

Terrible recap.

The idea that Google is the one who gets to know who you are despite not creating the content that they are exposing to you is absolute nonsense.

Google is not the gatekeeper to the internet.

imperfectcats• 5 years ago

How does that relate to this specific law? Something can be bad, and the cure as bad or worse. Can we all agree on at least that?

leereeves• 5 years ago

You left out the part where Google changed their minds and decided to pay for news in Australia. The whole "Ok. We'll comply with the law, forgo those benefits and stop sending traffic." bit was an empty threat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/business/media/australia-...

WarOnPrivacy8• 5 years ago

Google's action did what it was intended to do, expose that the stated reason for the law (using content w/o compensation) was a lie.

QuantumGood• 5 years ago

It was unfair for Google to reap benefits from: (1) Copying story summaries from AU media sites, putting them on a Google site, capturing visitor data from that site (2) Sending traffic to AU media sites

It's more (1) than (2)

tengbretson• 5 years ago

Copying story summaries from AU media sites

I could be wrong, but aren't these summaries published voluntarily as semantic metadata or a feed from the media sites?

WarOnPrivacy8• 5 years ago

Self-responding - adding my position.

I find most of these arguments against Google to be reasonable, inc complaints of monopoly. Personally I strongly mistrust Google and have mostly divested myself from their offerings.

What I see Google did here was to vet the law's claims of fairness (Google gets money from our content so we should too) by stopping that arrangement. Once done, that particular unfairness was ended and the purported aim of the law was satisfied.

The grumpyness following Google's action confirms the law's intention is to create a new stream of tax revenue that AU Gov would grant (for now, anyway) exclusively to AU media entities.

I could potentially be behind a tax->news. Maybe. If it were constructed with more wisdom than this law is. I can not support this law because of it's shoddy construction (firehosing user data? srsly?) and because it's supplied purpose (ending unpaid usage of content) isn't truthful.

A larger issue may be that snippet laws seem to serve to further entrench Google's position by making news orgs dependent on Google for their operating revenue. This seems highly problematic.

It also grants new control over news funding to the AU Gov. If that control can be misused - to forward (AU Gov or 'partner' Gov) agendas - modern history tells us it will be.

Lastly, once this is normalized, who should pay next?

judge2020• 5 years ago

Another boneheaded provision on the law is the requirement to give advance notice on upcoming changes to the algorithm to the news publishers. This is broken for both the reason of not being able to deploy 'algorithm changes' without delaying them 14 days (PDF page 23), which might not even be possible given machine learning's always-learning algorithm, and for the reason of news outlets for some reason being entitled to information on algorithm changes before everyone else in order to get a leg up in search results over anyone not in cahoots with the search partner.

Law text: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

moosebear847• 5 years ago

What is firehose user data? I've become an expert on 11,000kPa-pressure hoses used to extinguish fires, but still have no idea what you mean!

astrange4• 5 years ago

Typically used to mean "sending you everything", e.g. the Twitter firehose used to be an API that sent you all of Twitter live. I suppose this would just mean your analytics get every news view.

WarOnPrivacy8• 5 years ago

'Firehose' is meant to illustrate an enormous volume of data, in this case the personal data of millions of users. That's a huge amount and it would be delivered continually.

EasyTiger_• 5 years ago

Google has launched a scathing attack on Microsoft today, accusing it of trying “to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival.”

That is some pathological levels of projection.

bogomipz3• 5 years ago

I'm in no way defending the Australian legislation but It's absurd to me that Google and recently Facebook have positioned themselves as defenders of "the open web." Google with their AMP, Project Dragonfly and Chrome dominance and FB with their walled garden seem to reach for the "open web" argument whenever something threatens their status quo.

cturner• 5 years ago

The Australian situation has created an incentive for tech companies to consider getting into news-content production, a sector that was previously not-lucrative.

Find a struggling newspaper to purchase for a song. That gets you a masthead and a basic editorial pipeline. Then, use strong salary packages to raid the content talent from the existing participants. Alphabet could do this with pocket change.

This is similar to the play the media titans use to capture sports broadcast rights - World Series Cricket in the 70s, SuperLeague in the 90s.

jimnotgym• 5 years ago

“The Kettles are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival,” says Mr Pot.

rdiddly• 5 years ago

Wow, quite the display of projective hypocrisy between the pot and kettle.

whatever_dude2• 5 years ago

Tangential, but am I the only one who thinks that Google News is really bad nowadays? It used to be my main source of news, but I can't stand it anymore. It's clear that it's trying to drive engagement by offering links more likely to be clicked. My custom topics are hidden away, stuff I don't want to read about is brought to the top... just overall bad in every way.

ceras• 5 years ago

I still use it, but also feel it's not really showing me the right content. What do you use instead?

whatever_dude2• 5 years ago

I just moved back to RSS (using Feedly). Took a while to get the right set of sources, but the experience is orders of magnitude better. I would even say that had an actual impact on my mental health, as I'm not bombarded with clickbait, outrage-driven crap anymore; I'm still informed with some responsible new RSS sources, I just don't need a firehose.

nano-erud• 5 years ago

bitch fight

Google isn’t happy with Microsoft over online news

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