U.S. v. Google

https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-antitrust-trial-doj-search-91d32f8f

by skilled • 3 years ago

59 82 3 years ago

skilled• 3 years ago

E: NYTimes has a live feed up now[0] but unfortunately it is paywalled. You can bypass it by disabling JS and then refreshing once in a while if you want to keep up. I don't see BBC or The Guardian running a live feed, but if there's a better (non-paywalled) link then comment below.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/09/12/business/google-anti...

bilal4hmed6• 3 years ago

This will be a good one to watch. If the government wins, Apple and Mozilla might also be on the losing side here and for Mozilla itll pretty much be the end.

Might be the kick in the pants FF needs to figure out funding, otherwise a plus for web devs who now need to worry about just 2 rendering engines.

westcoalst• 3 years ago

This will be a good one to watch.

An equivalent of a trip to the theatre.

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

Matt Stoller has spun up a small initiative and is paying a reporter specifically to attend the trial in person if you want to follow along.

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/big-tech-on-trial-how-big...

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/

(financial supporter of both his BIG newsletter and big tech on trial, no other relation)

op00to2• 3 years ago

FWIW the "www.bigtechontrial.com" domain does not work for me.

throwoutway2• 3 years ago

Might be the kick in the pants FF needs to figure out funding,

First they need to stop wasting money on silly side projects and funding activists and political activities

bilal4hmed6• 3 years ago

they will have to stop if $500 mn in payments stop....they might have to stop altogether lol

tristan9573• 3 years ago

You are mixing up the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation.

wslh• 3 years ago

Do you think they have added more tracking in Google Chrome to use time as the last bullet/opportunity to gain more information about users?

hospitalJail• 3 years ago

I have so many mixed feelings about Google. They unlike the fruit company, advanced society sooo far with their FOSS. I have sooo many degoogled products, and I need to give them credit for that. They also refused to comply with the CCP, something the fruit company was happy to do during the hong kong protests. They even continue to let ad blockers on their platforms. They also made it easy for a poor college kid to make apps, unlike the fruit company.

But... They also suck. Canceling services, no customer service, removing the aux port to sell headphones, etc... They aren't the same company I was a fan of a decade or two ago.

Not sure what I want out of this. While it seems like I'm taking Ls from all the FAAMG companies, I admittedly think my life has never been better from a tech point of view. (most of that is from GPT and Moore's law though)

edgyquant• 3 years ago

Even if they were the greatest company on the planet that doesn’t change that they dominate the ad market and internet and that has to change

inductive_magic2• 3 years ago

I wish more people understood how horrible advertising truly is.

Your life is essentially a compilation of what captures your attention. Embracing this perspective, any entity auctioning off your attention to the highest bidder is trading away a part of your life.

People don't understand what this means. They also don't understand how cynical this is in the context of a search engine. I don't have a solution to this, but man, its horrible.

dfxm12• 3 years ago

To put things into perspective, it sounds like most of your complaints are mostly from the point of view as a consumer, but what you like about them is that they enable you as a creator, being given access to modify FOSS, making it easy to create apps or as a responsible member of society, not complying with CCP, allowing ad blockers.

If you ask me, the latter are infinitely more important than the first thing.

Now, I will grant that Google also does a lot more to complain about.

noman-land• 3 years ago

To me Google contributing to open source is like Pablo Escobar giving food and goods to the poor people of Colombia.

kanbara• 3 years ago

you can create apps for free on apple platforms, just can’t publish without a sub.

google most def supports CCP since their re-entry into china

apple invented webkit and clang/llvm among others

maybe look at things with a more open perspective. google and apple both do good as well as bad; it’s not a competition in terms of who abuses capitalism, the answer is everyone.

sulam• 3 years ago

Sorry, in what way is Google in China? No offices, no employees, products are not sold there, the only way to access their web products is VPN. Apple, on the other hand, sells their entire product lineup there. Some part of manufacturing is there, but most things are being built in Vietnam, Taiwan, etc, and FATP at most is in China.

robmccoll• 3 years ago

* Technically Apple forked WebKit from KHTML, but it's been 20 years and 10s of millions of lines of code since then. Chris Lattner and Vikram Adve created LLVM at UIUC. Chris was later hired by Apple who supported its development.

sanderjd• 3 years ago

Do they contradict themselves? Very well then they contradict themselves. (They are large, they contain multitudes.)

ocdtrekkie3• 3 years ago

You are ignoring all the FOSS that never existed because Google killed it or prevented it from happening. Monopolies kill choices you will never even hear of, just by existing. You may believe some technologies are better off because a monopoly exists, but that's almost certainly always incorrect, monopolies impede progress.

convolvatron3• 3 years ago

Google successfully maintained the fiction for more than a decade that they were the only place where fundamental work could happen. that alone was immensely damaging to progress and the overall health of the community. they bought up not just all the talented students, but all their professors too.

eitally• 3 years ago

A lot of those complaints, historically, are a direct result of Google's culture of being an engineering meritocracy: let everyone experiment, let employees easily transfer to new teams, and let the best product win. That does wonders for innovation if bureaucracy isn't an issue, but what you've seen in the past ten years is that bureaucracy has gotten in the way of innovation at the same time as Google has refused to adjust it's organization & culture to become more top-down and market driven. Since TK took over Cloud, you've started seeing this wholesale, and now this new "culture" (leadership focus & style) affects the Hardware & Platforms PAs, as well as the new Deepmind.

Google isn't an engineering meritocracy anymore, but it's still a great place for engineers overall: wealthy, excellent perks, and some of the best talent anywhere. But, adjusting the culture to be truly market driven and in alignment with a clear purpose has (and is still) taken years, and has created lots of interim pain & suffering [of all kinds, both internally and for customers & consumers]. Google is becoming more like Apple & Microsoft, and if the alternative is "pretend to be like the old Google", this cannot be anything but positive.

f33d5173• 3 years ago

I'm all in fabour of anti trust against google, but this really doesn't seem like the way. Any other company can easily pony up the cash to become the default search engine, if they'd like. Yahoo gave it a pass on firefox a few years back. All it costs is money. On android, they seemingly don't abuse their ownership of the platform there to maintain their search monopoly: the complaint is about a special search specific deal like everywhere else.

arijun• 3 years ago

But why couldn't that be a monopolistic practice? For example, let’s say Apple is getting more than 100% of the ad revenue Google earns from iPhones, but it’s still worth it for Google only because it doesn’t have iPhone users start thinking about other search engines (thereby maintaining the monopoly). That seems pretty similar to standard oil pricing below market value to get its competitors out of business.

reaperman• 3 years ago

That seems pretty similar to standard oil pricing below market value to get its competitors out of business.

Not quite. In economic terms, if:

Apple is getting more than 100% of the ad revenue Google earns from iPhones

This would mean that Google is pricing it not just "below market value", but also "below marginal cost of production". You can price below market value and still make a small profit. But in your hypothetical it's literally bleeding money.

I don't think it invalidates your point that "it could qualify as a monopolistic practice". But it's an important distinction because generally selling your goods/services below the supplier's marginal cost is inherently unsustainable.

yetanotherasian2• 3 years ago

Playing for placement is common (not saying it's right, nor am I saying it's wrong)

https://thecounter.org/coca-cola-frito-lay-mars-real-estate-...

https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-slotti...

boredpeter• 3 years ago

Or we could give users the choice of default search engine instead of just rewarding the winners with the most money to spend..how do you ever expect a new upstart search engine to compete with google if google can just buy defaults? Or owns the most popular mobile OS and web browser?

wbl• 3 years ago

The completion is a click away. On Android it's settings in the browser default search, similarly for Firefox and Chrome on desktop.

smoldesu• 3 years ago

If we open that floodgate, I feel like we have to talk about the browser situation too. How are innovative browser engines expected to compete in a landscape where their defaults are not respected or possible?

bloppe• 3 years ago

Users are pretty much always able to choose their search engine. I don't understand what you mean by "give users the choice of default search engine". What would that look like? A global vote on the defaults for various platforms?

havnagiggle• 3 years ago

other companies such as Microsoft can’t perform enough searches to improve their product

Big belly laugh at this. Literally a boohoo moment. Apple, et. al. are going to throw MS a bone or something? Shitty products don't "deserve" anything IMO. What was OpenAI able to achieve without having 90% dominance in the ad space market?

Anti-competitiveness is still a problem so Google will have a hell of a battle ahead. I am curious what MSFT's stock did in the different phases of their antitrust suit.

cracauer• 3 years ago

This is bad in one aspect:

Google pays Mozilla a lot of money, mainly to keep Google search the default search engine in Firefox.

If that turns out to be illegal it could create a financial crisis for the Firefox browser and hence reduce diversity in web browsers.

convolvatron3• 3 years ago

this is true. but wouldn't it be nice everything didn't have to flow through google and could exist on its own merits?

infrastructure like browsers should really be neutral ground - its sad we can't figure out a way to fund things like that

gjsman-1000• 3 years ago

At the same time though, when's the last time any of us donated to open source?

I can count myself within the last month... but many will admit that they have never run "npm fund" once.

nabakin4• 3 years ago

It would be nice, but it's not realistic. If Google's revenue disappears, then unless Mozilla finds some other form of revenue (which they've been trying to do for years now), Firefox is done for.

ocdtrekkie3• 3 years ago

If Firefox loses a lot of funding but Google loses the ability to pay companies to make Chrome the default on nearly all devices sold globally today, Firefox will be in much better shape than it is now. Google is killing it, and also giving it a few dollars.

bilal4hmed6• 3 years ago

how would the loss of funding put Firefox in better shape? Are you saying that exposure would mean dollars would flow in from donations from new users?

keep_reading2• 3 years ago

Maybe we should have a reality check on the true cost of tech. Anything that can break the behavior of the tech industry due to cheap money is a good thing for the long term health of the industry.

nabakin4• 3 years ago

Only problem is that there's no good alternative for them. You'd be committing Firefox to a slow death

someotherperson2• 3 years ago

Might be a bit contrarian, but so what?

Mozilla hasn't produced a decent browser for, what, 12 years? They instead take their hundreds of millions of dollars annually to instead spend time building junk like half-baked password managers.

I'd argue that Mozilla's mishandling of Firefox has been killing innovation in this space for years -- it is a giant red flag for anyone wanting to enter the space considering Mozilla's budget and still not being able to produce something of value. The reality is moreso that Mozilla itself doesn't care about building a better browser. It's only when people started to realise this in the last couple of years that we've started to see some new contenders.

Maybe when Mozilla dies, we might start to see open source efforts going to better browsers.

alexsereno2• 3 years ago

This is a strong but valid take, Mozilla has a huge focus on getting revenue streams from somewhere, but flubbing it right and left along the way. The consumer might benefit from a better browser but Mozilla has basically decided that that’s not what will drive growth or revenues… not that I think they’re particularly correct about that

myaccountonhn• 3 years ago

I actually think Firefox is better than chrome and use it as my main browser. Not sure why you say it’s not decent.

I also think they do a lot of great stuff around Firefox, the email spoofing is good, the sync function is good, their podcasts and studies are good. Not sure what people mean here.

ricardo81• 3 years ago

Another take might be that Google's financial clout killed the browser market. That whole $xx.xx CPM thing that only they attain, and others basically pick up the crumbs. Search terms as input to ads are very powerful.

gettodachoppa• 3 years ago

Mozilla could easily live without Google's money if the vast majority of their income wasn't spent on being Big Nonprofit ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180480 )

I would love it if they lost Google's money and trimmed the bile and focused on making great tech. But something tells me the first to be let go will be the techies, making Firefox effectively a maintenance-only browser. And the army of useless "evangelists" will be there until Mozilla collapses under its own weight.

elashri• 3 years ago

Is there a chance that Microsoft can make an offer to Mozilla about making bing the default search in this case. I don't know if this would make sense from Microsoft business point of view and probably an evil from internet freedom ans diversity point. But maybe it is better than the current status.

ColinHayhurst• 3 years ago

The <blanks> behind the pre-trial briefs redactions will tell a lot. Some here, more detail in this thread [0].

1. Google’s <blank> with <blank> prevents <blank> from pre-setting a different, more private search engine (e.g., <blank>) as its default [blank].

2. Google's partners-including OEMS, carriers, and Apple-wanted more flexibility than what they ultimately received under their contracts with Google. In particular, <blank> bristled repeatedly at the <blank> restrictive nature ..... For example, in <blank>, <blank> sought to offer <blank>. Google refused.

3. Browsers also took issue with Google’s restrictive terms. For example, <blank> sought an alternative to Google and signed a contract with <blank> to encourage competition in search, welcoming the <blank> to <blank>. However, the trial testimony will show that to win the <blank> default from Google in 2014, <blank> needed to offer a <blank> million annual financial guarantee—roughly <blank> million more than Google was paying for the <blank> default. <blank>

[0] https://twitter.com/ColinHayhurst/status/1701274277830357164

jcranmer• 3 years ago

3. Browsers also took issue with Google’s restrictive terms. For example, <blank> sought an alternative to Google and signed a contract with <blank> to encourage competition in search, welcoming the <blank> to <blank>. However, the trial testimony will show that to win the <blank> default from Google in 2014, <blank> needed to offer a <blank> million annual financial guarantee—roughly <blank> million more than Google was paying for the <blank> default. <blank>

That's an interesting thing to redact because... there's new articles from the time about some of these details. (This is almost certainly Mozilla switching the default search engine in Firefox, see https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/mozilla-partners-with-yaho...). The only thing that I'm not sure about is the precise monetary value was, or what the last <blank> (a full sentence, complete with a footnote attached).

trinsic2• 3 years ago

What about Microsoft? It seems like they're in a way worse position for from an antitrust perspective.

U.S. v. Google

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