Google Defends 'Better' Search Product as Antitrust Trial Concludes (ft.com) 31
Google is making its last attempt to fight back against a historic effort by the US Department of Justice to break the tech giant's grip on online search, as the most significant antitrust trial in 25 years comes to a close in Washington. From a report: A federal court in Washington began hearing closing arguments on Thursday after a 10-week trial in which the DoJ accused Alphabet, the parent company of Google, of suppressing search rivals by paying tens of billions annually for anti-competitive agreements with wireless carriers, browser developers and device manufacturers. During the hearing on Thursday, John Schmidtlein, a lawyer from Williams & Connolly representing Google, sought to push back on claims that it had hindered rivals' efforts to gain a foothold in online search, and argued that users had plenty of alternatives.
Unsealed court documents revealed this week that Alphabet paid Apple $20bn in 2022 alone to be the default search engine for its iPhone and Safari browser on its other devices. "Google winning agreements because it has a better product is not a harm to the competitive process, even if it gives it scale to improve its product," Schmidtlein told the court. A lawyer for the government, Kenneth Dintzer, told the court that Google's "anti-competitive conduct harms competition and is self perpetuating." Defaults "are a powerful way to drive searches, otherwise Google wouldn't pay billions of dollars for them," he added.
Amit Mehta, the judge hearing the case, noted that search "today looks a lot different than it didâ 10 to 15 years ago. He pushed back on the DoJ's contention that the quality of search had suffered due to the lack of competition, although he also noted that only two "substantial competitors" had entered the search market in the past decade. "Doesn't that tell us all we need to know in terms of barriers of entry," he asked.
Unsealed court documents revealed this week that Alphabet paid Apple $20bn in 2022 alone to be the default search engine for its iPhone and Safari browser on its other devices. "Google winning agreements because it has a better product is not a harm to the competitive process, even if it gives it scale to improve its product," Schmidtlein told the court. A lawyer for the government, Kenneth Dintzer, told the court that Google's "anti-competitive conduct harms competition and is self perpetuating." Defaults "are a powerful way to drive searches, otherwise Google wouldn't pay billions of dollars for them," he added.
Amit Mehta, the judge hearing the case, noted that search "today looks a lot different than it didâ 10 to 15 years ago. He pushed back on the DoJ's contention that the quality of search had suffered due to the lack of competition, although he also noted that only two "substantial competitors" had entered the search market in the past decade. "Doesn't that tell us all we need to know in terms of barriers of entry," he asked.
The search engine is all but useless (Score:1, Insightful)
The search operator functionality it used to have no longer works, so you can't fine tune your searches any more. Instead you are fed what the algorithm allows - not what you searched for.
Google "was" the better search (Score:3)
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I know financially Google probably benefits from the results being bad, and people having to spend more time and more clicks to get what they're looking for. But then I wonder how much do they really care what search engine you're using if the results still lead you to websites using their ad network.
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Re: Google "was" the better search (Score:2)
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I prefer Stack Exchange or Linux Questions if I looking to solve an OS or software related problem
Depends on the required Response Time vs. "Depth" of Question.
Re: Google "was" the better search (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s also better for anything where you want results from your country. If I search for (for example) âoesoldering ironsâ I get a bunch of reviews (fair enough but probably all AI generated nonsense), and then results for lowes, Amazon.com, and McMaster Carr.
All of those would be fine results if I were in the US, but Iâ(TM)m not, and DDG knows it. These are its results for someone in the UK.
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Bing is near useless as a search engine. I feel bad for you if you think it is returning better results than Google.
Re: Google "was" the better search (Score:2)
Really depends. Google has in fact gotten really bad, though on occasion its very broad index will yield stuff the others won't. I default to ddg mainly because Google is hostile to VPN users.
Changing Use Case (Score:3)
It is better for the way that most people use Google... not to search, but to ask questions. You get stupid answers now, and these may be wrong about 50% of the time, but at least you don't have to read as much!
Simple query question for Google (Score:2)
How come I can clearly state the three words I want to be included in the search results and yet some of the three words are completely ignored from the search results?
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Maybe a genius manager found that more ads were served when visitors hopelessly searched 10 pages of results instead of just clicking on the first result of the first page?
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That's pretty much it. Google returns garbage just close enough to keep you engaged. eBay seemed to be the lone holdout for accurate searching. You type in a specific part number and boom that's what you get back. Now they went the google route and return close part numbers. So you better ctrl+f to double check or wrap it in quotes.
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I wasn't aware of this feature until someone told me about it. Besides wrapping quotes around words you want included, you have to get your page of shitty results back, click on Tools, then All Results, then change it to Verbatim. Now it starts listening to you again. Too bad you can't make this permanent. Hell these days when google returns shit I give Yandex a spin because it doesn't concentrate nearly as much on English language results.
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How come I can clearly state the three words I want to be included in the search results and yet some of the three words are completely ignored from the search results?
I thought enclosing a phrase in quotes means "exactly this phrase", and preceding a word or words with + (e.g. +blue +jeans) means "must include each of these words".
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How come I can clearly state the three words I want to be included in the search results and yet some of the three words are completely ignored from the search results?
I thought enclosing a phrase in quotes means "exactly this phrase", and preceding a word or words with + (e.g. +blue +jeans) means "must include each of these words".
Sorry to Reply to myself.
I tried my "boolean search rules" on DDG (my usual Search Selection), and it performed precisely as expected.
Then, I gritted my teeth and changed my Search to Google. Results: The "+" Rules seem to work; but the "my search phrase" Enclosing in Quotes is still FAR too "Fuzzy" for my tastes, and certainly not interpreted as a Strict Filter.
So, back to DDG. . .
"...better product?" Really? (Score:2)
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Not necessarily a barriers to entry problem (Score:1)
Search Isn't the Problem (Score:2)
I am unconcerned about default search settings - that can be changed to DDG.
I am far more concerned about things where there is no option at all to disable. Windows 11 doesn't allow turning off telemetry, for example, only turning it down. Actually, Microsoft in general is far more of a threat than Google/Alphabet is to privacy. All of Windows 11 is spyware. They bought Github and trained their LLMs on GPLed code and use it to produce derivative works without having the resultant code be GPLed. They bundle
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They bought Github and trained their LLMs on GPLed code and use it to produce derivative works without having the resultant code be GPLed.
Do you have examples of this? Is this known or are you just guessing?
Windows is a problem, along with the rest of Microsoft's services, but they're also more avoidable than Google is. Microsoft will likely need to be addressed through privacy legislation (and possibly copyright, if what you say above is true), rather than anti-trust.
There's a better option (Score:1)
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I had not heard of this one so I gave it a try.
Clean, simple, like Google of yore. But it draws the page in a distracting blinking fashion.
I'll keep using it for a while, but I found it too odd to use.
And even more wild... (Score:2)
> Alphabet paid Apple $20bn in 2022 alone ... that's only 28% of the income from those links. They're hauling in something like 50 billion in ad revenue from this one deal alone.
Nice work if you can get it.