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Google CEO Tells Court Search Dominance Is Result of 'Fierce Competition' (wsj.com) 65

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai took the stand Monday in the tech giant's antitrust trial, a pivotal moment in a case that could result in major changes to the company's search engine. From a report: Pichai described Google's search dominance as the result of its innovation and early investment in its Chrome browser. "We realized early on that browsers are critical to how people are able to navigate and use the web," Pichai said during questioning by Google lawyer John Schmidtlein.

"It became very clear early on that if you make the user's experience better, they would use the web more, they would enjoy using the web more, and they would search more in Google as well," Pichai said. [...] The nonjury trial is being heard by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who could ultimately order a breakup or other changes to Google's business practices. Schmidtlein, Google's lead counsel, questioned Pichai about the deal at the heart of the case: the search giant's contract with Apple that makes it the default search engine on Apple's Safari web browser. The Apple deal "makes it very, very seamless and easy for users to use our services," Pichai said. "We know that making it the default will lead to increased usage of our products and services, particularly Google search in this case. So there is clear value in that and that's what we were looking for."
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Google CEO Tells Court Search Dominance Is Result of 'Fierce Competition' More

Google CEO Tells Court Search Dominance Is Result of 'Fierce Competition'

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  • It takes about ten seconds to change the default search engine in Chrome. Settings->Search.

    In iOS, it takes about fifteen seconds. Settings->Safari->Search.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      It takes about ten seconds to change the default search engine in Chrome. Settings->Search. In iOS, it takes about fifteen seconds. Settings->Safari->Search.

      It's easy to do a lot of things if you already know how.

      A random user does not already know how.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        People dont care until they do.

        Id say the early adoption of Google was a result of their technology. People will only change when Google becomes as terrible as the other ones were back when Google changed search with their technology.

        Their advertising system of pushing ad links to the top will likely cause behavioral change for those that dont have ad blockers.

        • Re:Just a reminder (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @05:05PM (#63966966)
          >People will only change when Google becomes as terrible as the other ones were back when Google changed search with their technology.

          It already is. I started using Google because it was the only decent search engine which didn't deceptively put "sponsored results" at the top. Now they do. I used it because the page was clean and simple. It is now much less clean and simple. I used it because the results were unbiased. I used it because the results were accurate based on my actual intent. I used it for the - operator.

          I now use Bing.

      • It takes about ten seconds to change the default search engine in Chrome. Settings->Search. In iOS, it takes about fifteen seconds. Settings->Safari->Search.

        It's easy to do a lot of things if you already know how.

        A random user does not already know how.

        Regarding the does not already know crowd, I'm going to also go with the it takes about ten seconds retort.

        Those that don't know, don't care to learn. This is why Google spends a "fierce" amount of billions to command the default position on any device they can. They know how lazy the audience is too.

    • I always like to point out to folks that it's way harder to download and use a new Internet browser, but the data show that most people do exactly that. The truth is that Google gives the best results most of the time so people keep using it. There's little to nothing that holds people hostage to the platform.

      • this. I used to use Lycos and Webcrawler as my two default search engines, there were others, but what Lycos didn't have, Webcrawler would, in general. The problem for me was the crappy dialup I was on, loading all the ads that came with the search page always slowed down what I was trying to do. Google came along and their clean search page, loading no side page/top page/bottom page advertisements meant I could search for crap easier and faster, only getting ads that were loading once my search was done, a

    • If it is so trivially easy, why does Google waste 10's of Billions of dollars to make sure you never have to do it yourself?

      Personally if my choices are mostly Bing or Google for search, it is hard to care. Sort of like being a banana that two meth'ed up gorillas are fighting over, in the end up treated like monkey crap. I like neither company, but having to listen to M$ whine about another software giant acting like a monopoly is pretty darn rich coming from them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 )

        Personally if my choices are mostly Bing or Google for search, it is hard to care.

        Good thing there are about a dozen other search engines to choose from. Even if they aren't listed, you can always add one.

  • You know what? I believe him (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @01:27PM (#63966212)

    Google is exceedingly good at what it does. No question.

    The problem is when their existence prevents others from existing. Just like a very successful invasive species of weed.

    • You want pretty fonts on your website? Google is one of the best free places [google.com] to go, ...while giving up everyones' privacy that visits your website, (unless you serve those fonts directly from your web server as opposed to loading a library on one of Google's servers).

    • Competition was fierce--in the 90s.

    • Yes, they did compete fiercely. But as you begin to reach market dominance, the rules change.

      For example, when Google Maps was an upstart and MapQuest was king and Yahoo was still a force in search, Google was fine featuring maps links directly within search results and prioritizing them. But now that Google Maps and Google Search are dominant, this kind of prioritization becomes anticompetitive and runs afoul of the law. Most companies that reach this kind of dominance, don't stop the "fierce" competitiven

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jack9 ( 11421 )

      > Google is exceedingly good at what it does.

      Which is selling adspace. Search, not so much.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Making money? Yes. Anything else? Not so much. Google is decidedly 2nd rated in product quality these days with a trend towards 3rd rated.

  • make the user's experience better

    Google has failed, will fail, and is currently failing at doing this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      One could argue the opposite is also true. There are plenty of people that like the user experience Google is providing. That is the thing with subjective measurements.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Google has failed, will fail, and is currently failing at doing this.

      Bold statement there.

      15+ years ago I would have agreed with Google here.
      They were not only the best search engine but the best by an insanely wide margin.

      Their switch from context search terms to literal ones was the point they no longer had much advantage over the competition.

      Their removal of literal modifiers is when, to me personally, they became worthless.
      That's due to my primary use case being "yes, I meant the word I typed, search for exactly that"
      I know I am in a minority there. Most slashdotters ar

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Their switch from context search terms to literal ones

        By 'literal' you mean Google adwords?

    • I like Google fine. It's my default. I have Edge and I use it for those cases when I need simultaneous disconnected browsing (for instance, one logged in, one not), and it's default is Bing. And when I accidently search with it, beyond the branding, I know I'm using Bing because the search results are generally less useful.

      Say what you want about the company, but there absolutely are people who like it just fine - technically astute, educated people who don't fall into the easy bucket of not knowing the dif

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. And why? Because they simply have no reason to. They do what any quasi-monopoly does: A race to the bottom in quality to improve profits.

  • "Chrome is so much better" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @01:34PM (#63966238) Journal

    Gag me. I have a pile of complaints about it.

  • Altavista (Score:4, Informative)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @01:52PM (#63966296)

    Back when many of you were in diapers or not even born ..before google, there was altavista. EVERYONE used altavista in the 1990s. It was hard to imagine anything replacing it. However, within a year of Google coming out, nobody used altavista anymore. In fact most people have forgotten it even existed. One of the most popular websites in the 1990s. Within a year nobody even remembers it. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Google had a better product at the time. I bet is AltaVista had the bank roll that Google does currently, we all would be using it.

      • Not without Pagerank. Two things made google superior by far. Instant results and relevant links. Alta vista would take a second or two while Google’s results were instantaneous it was like magic at the time. You guys in this generation miss out on the wonder of seeing stuff like that. Back in 1998 a friend of mine got a job offer at Google. Of course he turned it down. Why would a PhD go work for some startup that did only one thing and its users weren’t ever going to pay for it?

        No doubt as I w

    • Google Search was definitely a paradigm shift in how search was conducted though at the time and add on the fact that at it's start it was ad-free it really set itself apart at the time as "wow, this is something different" when all the search engines at the time were pretty similar, AltaVista was just the best of a group of similar things. I am old enough to remember that but my reccolection could be off, it was a long time ago!

      I don't think Google has had such a competitor come for it in that was in the

      • Everyone keeps saying AI/ChatGPT but remains to be seen. I doubt it will be this. Unless something changes soon. All those do is query Google or Bing and return the first result, regardless if its the answer or not.

        • Yeah that is a very good point. Has OpenAI or any of these other places tried making a bespoke new search engine with their tech yet? Like actually having the thing go out and scrape a whole new dataset to index? Until that happens like you said, it's just a rehash of what exists, not that wouldn't be useful.

    • I preferred Lycos and Webcrawler, but your point is well founded, when Google came out, one year later, almost no one was using those three search engines.

    • And before that, there was hotbot.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by eegeerg ( 673636 )

      I agree. There was a window when AltaVista was clearly the best. They were pioneers in statistics of inverse document frequency, inverse word frequency, also fast search results. Great ideas, but SEO bad actors overcame. IIRC, their heyday was 1994-1997. What do you remember?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Untrue. I used AltaVista as long as it continued to work reasonably well, because in comparison, Google was just crap. Yes, it had a larger database, but as soon as you needed something specific, Google could simply not deliver.

  • Yes there was fierce competition: from Google. They did everything they could to make sure they dominated the search market (ie. the entry to web market). Even going as far as either taking over or competing giving away a free alternative at a massive loss for anything that may compete in giving an entrance to the web: operating systems for everything from mobile devices, tablets, tv's and cars. Even with ChatGPT now as a competitor they give away Google Bard where they give away at a loss. Premium ChatGPT

    • They are not complaining. They are arguing that they are not a monopoly.

      They are also lying by technically telling the truth. As you pointed out, the fierce competition for the web was themselves.

      It was Microsoft who made the web the default entry point for the internet. It was Microsoft who tried to kill every web browser that wasn't Internet Explorer. The W3C was founded to prevent Microsoft from succeeding, and it did.

      Chrome was not how Google won the last Search Engine War. Pagerank was. Chrome is

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by eegeerg ( 673636 )

        > The W3C was founded to prevent Microsoft from succeeding, and it did.

        Citation needed. Here are my citations against. But your general point that Microsoft did a lot of damage, well I agree.

        > In 1994, the decision to form the World Wide Web Consortium came at the urging of many companies investing increasing resources into the web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee started leading the essential work of the Web Consortium team to foster a consistent architecture accommodating the rapid pace of progress in web st

  • Google paid $26 billion in 2021 to become the default search engine on browsers and phones and apparently earned $146 billion at least partially from doing so (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/27/google-paid-26-billion-in-2021-to-become-a-default-search-engine.html).

    Maybe somebody else could've paid $27 billion and still turned a profit. No problem there. But if somebody pays so much that they take a loss in order to put their competition out of business...then there's a problem (...at least one problem).

  • when I want to "fiercely compete"

  • I tend to agree that Google Chrome gives easier-to-acess, less distracting, and faster search results than Bing, especially with the "images" search tab. In Bing, the link that takes you to the *actual* result is tiny and easy to miss. If you click anywhere else in the image, it will advance to the next image result.

    Additionally, Bing just comes across as much more of a "have a look at one of THESE sponsored search results" pusher than Google. I hate that, too.

    Bing = clutter and overt ad-pushing
    Google = cle

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