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Google Search a Target of US Antitrust Probes, Rival Says (bloomberg.com) 15

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
U.S. federal and state authorities are asking detailed questions about how to limit Google's power in the online search market as part of their antitrust investigations into the tech giant, according to rival DuckDuckGo. From a report: Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive officer of the privacy-focused search engine, said he has spoken with state regulators, and talked with the U.S. Justice Department as recently as a few weeks ago. Justice Department officials and state attorneys general asked the CEO about requiring Google to give consumers alternatives to its search engine on Android devices and in Google's Chrome web browser, Weinberg said in an interview. "We've been talking to all of them about search and all of them have asked us detailed search questions," he added. Weinberg's comments shine a light into how the inquiry is examining Google's core business -- online search.
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Google Search a Target of US Antitrust Probes, Rival Says More

Google Search a Target of US Antitrust Probes, Rival Says

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  • Core Business (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @06:22PM (#60146530)
    Google's core business is not search, it's advertising. You can tell this is the case because companies that try to do things outside of their core business area tend to either do a poor job compared to their core competency or outright fail at it. Google's search has gotten worse over the years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Very much this. Google search has never really been good (anybody remember the original AltaVista with logical operators that actually worked?), the only thing the ever had was a really large index and the half-assed "page rank" method.

  • There is a bigger problem here I think. Not that I disagree with consumers having and out of the box choice.

    For better or worse, many people dont even use the word "search". The term "let me google that" is somthing I hear more often. This was a term when people associated google with "do no evil".

    Google now owns the platform many people use to communicate, it's in our schools, it's basically everywhere. Even if google did provide a choice during device setup, it's still physically on their platform.

    For

  • Google has been screwing around and censoring search results for political and ideological reasons for far too long already. It is deeply worrying when an entity that largely acts as the "gatekeeper" of peoples information starts to show clear bias.

  • I've noticed that I have been getting more and more unrelated bullshit in my searches no matter if I wrap terms in quotes. Not that long ago, it wasn't this bad.

    Then there is the dreaded missing: (term crossed out) Must include (term), which only makes things harder. I wish duckduckgo was better (without having to use the !g Google search bang command), but if Google keeps getting worse, then I might as well switch over entirely to DDG.

  • Google is a monopoly that abuses its market position to push one set of search results over another. If you use it to search on any topic at all political, you're only going to see half of the story.

  • U.S. federal and state authorities are asking detailed questions about how to limit Google's power in the online search market as part of their antitrust investigations

    "And we will keep rummaging around until donations increase," a spokesman accidentally spoke ruinously.

    This is how the world works. They just have to hide it better here.

  • Rival Claims "U.S. federal and state authorities are asking detailed questions about how to limit Google's power in the online search market as part of their antitrust investigations" , and then told one of their rivals about it ... but not he public ...

  • Google's search will always be the best (for now) because they have the most users, and their search result refinement will always get better faster because of it.

    Assume that you split Google into two search companies, Aoogle and Boogle, and they start with the same freshly reset search algorithm with no bias. If Aoogle has 50.1% of the previous user base and Boogle has 49.9%, and after that first split, users go to whoever has the most accurate results, you'd expect that over time, Aoogle will eventually c

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