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Will the Google Antitrust Ruling Change the Internet? (msn.com) 50
Though "It could take years to resolve," the Washington Post imagines six changes that could ultimately result from the two monopoly rulings on Google:
Imagine a Google-quality search engine but without ads — or one tailored to children, news junkies or Lego fans. It's possible that Google could be forced to let other companies access its search technology or its essential data to create search engines with the technical chops of Google — but without Google...
Would Apple create a search engine...? The likeliest scenario is you'd need to pick whether to use Google on your iPhone or something else. But technologists and stock analysts have also speculated for years that Apple could make its own search engine. It would be like when Apple started Apple Maps as an alternative to Google Maps.
What if Google weren't allowed to know so much about you? Jason Kint of Digital Content Next, an industry group that includes online news organizations, said one idea is Google's multiple products would no longer be allowed to commingle information about what you do. It would essentially be a divorce of Google's products without breaking the company up. That could mean, for example, that whatever you did on your Android phone or the websites you visit using Chrome would not feed into one giant Google repository about your activities and interests.
The article also wonders if the judge could order Google to be broken up, with separate companies formed out of Android, Google search, and Chrome. (Or if more search competition might make prices drop for the products advertised in search results — or lower the fees charged in Android's app store.) Android's app store might also lose its power to veto apps that compete with Google.
"This is educated speculation," the article acknowledges. "It's also possible that not much will really change. That's what happened after Google was found to have broken the European Union's anti-monopoly laws."
Google has also said it plans to appeal Monday's ruling.
Would Apple create a search engine...? The likeliest scenario is you'd need to pick whether to use Google on your iPhone or something else. But technologists and stock analysts have also speculated for years that Apple could make its own search engine. It would be like when Apple started Apple Maps as an alternative to Google Maps.
What if Google weren't allowed to know so much about you? Jason Kint of Digital Content Next, an industry group that includes online news organizations, said one idea is Google's multiple products would no longer be allowed to commingle information about what you do. It would essentially be a divorce of Google's products without breaking the company up. That could mean, for example, that whatever you did on your Android phone or the websites you visit using Chrome would not feed into one giant Google repository about your activities and interests.
The article also wonders if the judge could order Google to be broken up, with separate companies formed out of Android, Google search, and Chrome. (Or if more search competition might make prices drop for the products advertised in search results — or lower the fees charged in Android's app store.) Android's app store might also lose its power to veto apps that compete with Google.
"This is educated speculation," the article acknowledges. "It's also possible that not much will really change. That's what happened after Google was found to have broken the European Union's anti-monopoly laws."
Google has also said it plans to appeal Monday's ruling.
Oh (Score:3)
But technologists and stock analysts have also speculated for years that Apple could make its own search engine. It would be like when Apple started Apple Maps as an alternative to Google Maps.
Ah yes, that towering competitor to Google Maps. Well, sounds good!
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what iPhone users do in general, but if a large percentage use the default app (which seems likely) I would think that in the US apple maps is used more than Google maps.
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Remember when Tim Cook said to use Google maps instead of Apple maps?
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I don't know what iPhone users do in general, but if a large percentage use the default app (which seems likely) I would think that in the US apple maps is used more than Google maps.
Who knows ... maybe?
Here's someone trying to figure it out, 4 years ago ...
https://www.justinobeirne.com/how-many-people-use-google-maps-compared-to-apple-maps [justinobeirne.com]
Re: Oh (Score:4, Funny)
Lots of people use Apple Maps. It's just that no-one can find them.
Re: (Score:3)
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Apple Maps is good now. Is it better than Google Maps? Maybe not. But in some cases, yeah. Sometimes the info is more up-to-date, depending on the city you live in. When I moved into my current place, Google Maps showed a building that had been torn down 5 years prior, and Apple Maps had a photo from the year before I moved in.
I also find Apple Maps less cluttered by junk--Google has always been terrible at user interface design.
But Google Maps usually has passable cycling directions while Apple often has n
Re: (Score:2)
Until Apple gets that Aussie chick's voice on their map app, google's is better.
Again, kill tracking (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a Google problem, it's a tracking problem. The ad industry playing field is uneven as long as tracking is allowed.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be best. But that would mean so much loss of profit that a deeply corrupt system like the US one likely cannot do it.
Re:Again, kill tracking (Score:4, Interesting)
Agree, assuming you mean tracking of anonymous users. It seems normal to me, if you have chosen to be logged when doing searches on Google search or Youtube, that they associate these searches to the logged account (if Google was fair they would share revenue with you but that's another level). What is unfair is when you browse shinyshoes.com or bigdildos.com and Google ends up knowing your preferences while you never intended for them to know.
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The problem is that tracking is also enabling a lot of services that would be otherwise impossible. Services that vast majority of young people worldwide have grown with and take for granted.
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Makes one wonder whether Google has made search intentionally so bad that they could claim not to be a monopoly.
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I suspect that there has been a hollowing out of strong engineering expertise in Google, and the systems are continuously being wrapped in further layers of software in an attempt to ta
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Yes, looks like it. Essentially an accident waiting to happen. I do know some good engineers that left Google saying the company had gotten stagnant, risk-averse and boring. And now Google is in this panicky rush. That will go well.
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Exactly what I was thinking. Google search and quality results?! Not anymore.
I think between an explosion of generated garbage and the filtering required on the search, we've seen a noticeable decrease in search result quality in the last few years.
Regarding monopolies, I expect there will be some tinkering in the surveillance/advertising industry for window dressing and the whole thing will lumber on getting worse for consumers wit
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine google just buys off the system (Score:2)
Re: Imagine google just buys off the system (Score:2)
Reality check (Score:5, Informative)
There is a clear misunderstanding of technology.
Google quality search only exists because of cash required to build and maintain it. Ads fund that. If you split search and ads, then the search company needs a partner ad company, which mean the ad company becomes a middle-man requiring higher prices to generate revenue for its search partner as well as itself. It also opens the risk of foreign ownership by nations seeking to data harvest for intelligence operations.
The search company will partner with whichever ad partner pays the most. Ad tracking is the privacy issue - so nothing has changed in terms of privacy. The ad partner still sees every search, they still know every user, they still place ads all over the internet and know where you visit.
All that happens in a forced split is ad prices increase and there is less control and accountability for bad privacy practices.
Re:Reality check (Score:4, Interesting)
The irony, of course, is that people visit less and less websites. 6 or 7 big ones hold the majority of the traffic, and the rest are just fighting over scraps. Outside of the big four I visit daily, my daily browsing is either limited to a couple of niche hobby websites, or to asking a question on DDG and following an ever more convoluted trail of AI website that have no useful information and are just regurgitating the same thing.
Maybe this will be the new shape of the internet. Any question you have, an AI will (pretend to) answer it, for the rest, you can always just visit one of the Big Six.
In the end, there might not be any need for a search engine, they can just partner between themselves and sell you the answers you want. There are less and less reasons to leave their walled gardens anyway.
scraps are important (Score:1)
You don't need to be top-10 to get eyeballs.
Only 1 of the sites I visit every day is in the top 10 of this top-20 list [archive.org].
If Slashdot was in the top 10, then it would be 2.
Re: (Score:3)
"Google quality search"
lol
"ad prices increase"
Boo hoo?
"less control and accountability for bad privacy practices"
So, it will become like it already is?
The problem with your spiel is, nobody - not the public, the industry, or even the government anymore - has a positive view of Google. Trying to garner sympathy for poor Google will likely be met with the reaction "Off with their heads".
Positive view of Google (Score:1)
Google's doodles still entertain me.
I'm easily entertained.
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Google quality search only exists because of cash required to build and maintain it.
I thought you were being facetious. Google search quality has been in conistent decline for years. If you haven't noticed then you're in a bubble. Blame it on whatever you like, it's still much worse than it used to be.
I don't dispute that it requires cash.
Re: (Score:2)
Not "a partner company." Several suppliers.
The point of breaking up monopolies is to encourage competition. Google can charge higher prices for their ads, annoy people with as many of them as they want, and compromise their search to a certain degree, because they are the guaranteed sole provider of ads to their dominant search service.
Back in the olden days Google became popular by providing search results people wanted with only unobtrusive text ads. They also became successful doing that. So successful t
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Do the outcomes in summary interest anyone ?
Is history any guide? (Score:3, Interesting)
While nobody alive today remembers the breakup of Standard Oil in the 1910s [wikipedia.org], many of us are young enough to remember the breakup of the old AT&T monopoly in the 1980s [wikipedia.org].
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A better one would be Microsoft, who was ruled to be a monopoly. They used their monopoly and scare tactics to kill off competing products such as DR-DOS and Corel / WordPerfect suite and the entirety of Novell.
Nothing really happened.
Most of the daydream idyllic outcomes postulated by the original article will require changes not just privacy laws, but the way the IT industries are structured. As long as companies are allowed to profit off of our information, nothing will change.
I don't even expect this
Re: Is history any guide? (Score:4, Insightful)
You say nothing really happened.
Google and Apple both happened because of Microsoft being timid in the wake of their antitrust ruling.
Apple was actually propped up by Microsoft.
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Yes, but Microsoft gave that money to Apple to prove they weren't a monopoly.
And I don't know why you think Google became a thing because of the lawsuit-- Microsoft has admitted they didn't jump on search as soon as they should, and google started up 3 years before the antitrust lawsuit even began.
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And neither of these bear any resemblance to this issue, so they really don't need to be discussed.
Especially the outcomes.
"Google-quality search engine" (Score:5, Insightful)
Lately that's a pretty low bar. I switched to DuckDuckGo years ago (in part) because Google search results were so infuriatingly bad. (For example, I would search for a very specific term along with some more generic ones included for context. Google would just show me results for the generic terms, omitting THE ONE TERM critical to my search. So I put the term in quotes to force it to be included. Again, Google would just ignore it and show me useless results. DuckDuckGo /was/ better but is now nearly as bad. And current-day search results are so polluted with AI-generated crap that I'm on the verge of giving up altogether.)
Ironically, TFA is hosted on msn.com (Score:3)
Because when it comes to monopolies, it takes one to know one.
Remember when AT&T was broken up? (Score:1)
If Google gets siloed, will we pay for Gmail? (Score:2)
I keep wondering when the cost benefit math is going to make Google start charging for Gmail, and if theyâ(TM)ll price it properly so that most current users continue using.
The end of Firefox (Score:2)
Pfft (Score:2)
They are not going to break Google up.
They are not going to allow other companies to access Google's technology.
They might institute some PI sharing firewalls, but those will be easily overcome through seamless data integration when requested.
In short, nothing will change from this.
Good luck enforcing that (Score:2)
That could mean, for example, that whatever you did on your Android phone or the websites you visit using Chrome would not feed into one giant Google repository about your activities and interests.
How will any regulatory body ever have a hope of knowing about clandestine sharing and trading of personal data? Almost the entirety of Google's business model is predicated on that sharing and trading - if they were JUST a company serving ads they would be a small fraction of their current size. So they have a huge incentive to continue this behaviour regardless of regulation.
Then there's the consideration that the law enforcement agencies which would be responsible for investigating infractions and enforc
Power GOOG (Score:2)
anti-trust is all about - breaking up distribution-power – monopolist data-power — privacy-power over network
Google Search - the gateway drug into GOOG silos, where peoples privacy is sorted, anonymized – resold as Google Adv access to what people are looking for — where and when
gmail has you back, your convos: every thought-bit you committed - to print – err send
Google Maps GPS your every move, turn and even tracks when your phone has phone-sex with another phone – its
... Change the Internet? (Score:2)
Slap on the wrist at best (Score:1)
Free Isn't Free (Score:1)
That Stuff costs money (you know, there are actually people working on it, data centers hosting the content,
I much prefer the latter for one.
Mozilla Stands To Lose The Most (Score:2)
Of all the changes, it may be that we see Mozilla and Firefox go away. Right now, Google pays over $400 million of the $500 million in revenue that Mozilla makes each year. If they lose 4/5 of their revenue overnight, it could spell the end for them.
Apple receives billions but they have a diverse income stream to fall back on. They'll be just fine without the Google search revenue.
Share the data (Score:3)
Look, the reason why Google is the best is because they get the most data, and it lets them refine their algorithm faster. I'm a DDG user, but I fall back to google searches a few times a week because DDG will often just ignore words that I think are important, and no amount of quoting can save me. But Google surfaces the right results.
But consider this thought experiment: you split Google up into GoogleA and GoogleB, and 50.1% of people go to A and 49.9% of people go to B for the first week, say, and then they pick whichever one gives them the best results after that.
GoogleA will eventually wipe the floor with GoogleB, because that extra 0.1% start advantage will grow over time (all things being equal).
Google's dominance is self-sustaining. Better search leads to more searches which leads to better search. Locking people in by being the default cooks the books a bit, but mostly it's unnecessary.
So it may be that the only real remedy (which will never happen and Google will never agree to--I think they'd delete their data first) is to make some of that data shared for any provider to access any time and contribute back to. They can write their own algorithms to sift through it and feed back into it, but search really is kind of a zero-sum game until someone comes up with an absolutely game-breaking innovation in search. (ChatGPT/AI search does not appear to be it.)
hilarity (Score:2)
"Imagine a Google-quality search engine but without ads "
Because of COURSE something like that would exist without resources to fund it.
If you handwave the existence of something you want without even faintly considering how it gets there, you might be a Marxist.