Google Faces Off With US Government in Attempt To Break Up Company in Search Monopoly Case (apnews.com) 47
Google is confronting an existential threat as the U.S. government tries to break up the company as punishment for turning its revolutionary search engine into an illegal monopoly. From a report: The drama began to unfold Monday in a Washington courtroom as three weeks of hearings kicked off to determine how the company should be penalized for operating a monopoly in search. In its opening arguments, federal antitrust enforcers also urged the court to impose forward-looking remedies to prevent Google from using artificial intelligence to further its dominance. "This is a moment in time, we're at an inflection point, will we abandon the search market and surrender them to control of the monopolists or will we let competition prevail and give choice to future generations," said Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist.
The proceedings, known in legal parlance as a "remedy hearing," are set to feature a parade of witnesses that includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser. Google's attorney, John Schmidtlein, said in his opening statement that the court should take a much lighter touch. He said the government's heavy-handed proposed remedies wouldn't boost competition but instead unfairly reward lesser rivals with inferior technology. "Google won its place in the market fair and square," Schmidtlein said.
The proceedings, known in legal parlance as a "remedy hearing," are set to feature a parade of witnesses that includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser. Google's attorney, John Schmidtlein, said in his opening statement that the court should take a much lighter touch. He said the government's heavy-handed proposed remedies wouldn't boost competition but instead unfairly reward lesser rivals with inferior technology. "Google won its place in the market fair and square," Schmidtlein said.
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>And nothing of value will be lost
No, unfortunately if Google search becomes less successfull, all the SEOs will target the other search engines more and thus make it more likely they will turn to trash too.
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Evolution at work. Google is trash. Some of the others will become trash as well, some will not.
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I've started using Google more. Mainly because they turned on their AI search and I know that's stupidly expensive for them. I'm hoping to teach them the importance of the right tool for the job.
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I'm hoping to teach them the importance of the right tool for the job.
Look at the arrogance on you! Holy shit!!!
Re: And nothing of value will be lost (Score:2)
K. I'm arrogant. I'm an asshole, too. I am not, however, telepathic. What's eating you?
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You also seem to be pretty dumb when it comes to evaluationg the consequences of your actions. Chances are Google comes out ahead with the ad revenue you generate for them.
Re: And nothing of value will be lost (Score:2)
K, but you're unironically using a rebuttal that you admit, up front, you don't know is true in an attempt to prove me wrong. Opinion first, facts can come later, amirite?
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Nope. You misunderstand. Not much of a surprise. I am pointing out that you have not though of this and hence made an unsubstantiated claim. Do not try to evade, the original claim, which is the one that needs to be solid, is yours. I only need to deliver FUD to cast doubt on it.
Re: And nothing of value will be lost (Score:2)
I didn't make any unsubstantiated claims. If you doubt the expense of Google's power usage while using AI, why not ask Google's AI about it. ;)
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So you are proud to cause more pollution? Good job! And so full of insight! And as a bonus, they can sell more ads due to your activities. Great job!
I hope they lose chrome. (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with chrome is that it's built with spyware included, and they put a lot of effort to hide that by making them mostly in the dependencies but you should understand that because there is a 150,000,000 lines of code in the chromium code base that there's a lot of remote access tools and a lot of security issues just plain as day added as services that self update, create telemetry, etc.
I would absolutely love it if they went over this in the court and actively called that out.
Call out how the buil
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... and then they'll fuck with the search engine to make it less useful to anyone using products that they haven't made deals with.
Already working on that. Google Search in LibreWolf has recently started throwing a bunch of captchas saying "We've detected unusual traffic from your network." Sometimes solving one captcha gets you search results, sometimes it just keeps throwing more. I assume I'm supposed to use a more tracking-friendly browser, but I typically just use a less tracking-oriented search en
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The newer captchas depend on newer browser technology ... and most of the alternative browsers that people are in love with are based on an ancient version of Firefox ...
I've got Palemoon, but I only use that for accessing ancient management GUIs that require SSL but can't speak modern dialects of it, or looking at local files with Flash in them. LibreWolf tracks Firefox upstream, and is generally within a minor version or two of current. Presumably Google's prickery toward it is based on detecting its user-agent string or its failure to implement desired tracking functionality. I haven't dug into the problem much.
Also, the problem isn't that the captchas don't work -- i
Re: I hope they lose chrome. (Score:2)
Re:I hope they lose chrome. (Score:5, Interesting)
We've kind of circled around back to the old Internet Explorer era, where it wasn't a monopoly for lack of options but out of consumer laziness. Plus, we're still stuck with the original dotcom problem of how do you make a company that only specializes a web browser, profitable?
By spinning off Chrome, either you're just creating yet another open source browser that you kind of hope will be maintained by the community (but realistically will probably become just another massive company's pet project, possibly X), or you go the for-profit route and are left scratching your head wondering why no one wants to hand over their hard earned cash to use what used to be free.
Re: I hope they lose chrome. (Score:2)
Indeed. The problem with Chrome is websites are increasingly not supporting other browsers and starting to limit access specifically to just Chrome. If Chrome were to become a paid product then suddenly the lesser used Firefox could become popular again.
But the interesting thing would be is if Chrome was sold as an operating system and not as a browser......
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Would that even be a bad thing?
Let's make the web do 'everything' isn't exactly vision of computing I want. I could also do with not having massive browser updates almost weekly.
Seeing some of the churn and burn in browser space stop as web developers have to deal with the fact that a large pool of their users isn't going to pay to update their browser, might be a good thing.
It's not 'search' but 'online ads' (Score:5, Insightful)
It might fit Google's narrative to define this as "US going after the best search engine", but if you actually read the ruling, it's clear the illegal monopoly is in how Google has set up mechanisms to sell, distribute and display ads, and they did so in a way that gave their own 'selling software' an advantage in the auctions. https://www.documentcloud.org/... [documentcloud.org]
So no, this is not about "the success of Google search", despite what they want you to think. It's about how Google built the ad empire, laying it on top of Google Search and expanding it to most other commercial websites.
Re:It's not 'search' but 'online ads' (Score:4, Informative)
There's actually two DOJ cases. One is regarding Google's search offering, the second is regarding Google's adtech offering.
The article above is regarding the former. What you linked is regarding the latter.
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YES, You are absolutely correct. I'm sorry I got them confused.
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It's about how Google built the ad empire, laying it on top of Google Search and expanding it to most other commercial websites.
How else are they supposed to turn a profit? I hate ads as much as the next guy, but they're what keeps the lights on. Look at the subscription plans on every AI service and that's the future of the internet you're possibly advocating for.
"Sorry, you've reached your free search limit for today. It will reset at 4:00am, or your can subscribe to Google Premium, Google Premium Ultra, or Google Premium Unlimited."
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I would rather enter my credit card info to get more credits than be subjected to constant ongoing behavior modification experiments without my knowledge or consent.
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Realistically of course they'll try to change the laws by moving fast and breaking things. The breaking of things makes them vulnerable to prosecution.
And here we are.
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The criminally-mindes typically lie when caught. Google is no exception. Obviously, this is about ad-selection and targetting, not about "search".
To be fair, Google search is abysmally bad these days and nothing of value would be lost there.
Tracking (Score:2)
Maybe they should bring up all the insane tracking that Alphabet, Meta, et al do. I use Brave mostly, and some websites I go are filtered of like 100 trackers, ads, and crap. The count right now on this Slashdot page is 13.
I'd be curious to learn of peoples' favorite browsers, search engines, and plugins at this point.
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I prefer Safari and Google. I have no interest in or need for anything else.
I could not possibly give less of a shit about Google's ad technology, let alone "competing advertising companies" that can't compete with Google. Fuck them.
IF YOU CAN'T COMPETE, LOBBY THE FEDS (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to be a competitor of Google but YOU'RE NOT THAT GOOD then what you do is hire lobbyists, buy some congress-critters (not hard nowadays when the top criminal in charge encourages corruption, destruction, and devastation) and then get them to say:
"Google. You're too good so you have to change to NOT BE SO GOOD!"
and for good measure add:
"And one day AI may be a thing YOU WILL BE GOOD AT so none of that either."
Corrupt government. Inept competition. Somehow this is Google's fault and they, their
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Sure, but google is giving their own products top billing on their monopolistic search engine. Maybe instead of automatically putting gmail at the top of the search results for "email", google could make a good web-based email client and write a few blog posts about it to increase its page rank.
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So what? It's their fucking search results! Why shouldn't they post their own product before a competitor's?
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Oh, I thought we were talking about how people should win because they make better products.
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Moron that screams around is screaming moron. Incidetally, being a morion, you have zero clue why working anti-trust is critically important.
No, they are not. (Score:2)
Google is confronting an existential threat
Fuck no they are not.
If they got split up there would still be a Google. It would only be a smaller Google. And, it would still have the money it got from selling off whatever pieces they were not allowed to keep.
Whoever wrote that summary has a notable taste for boot leather.
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Indeed. But any concentration of power atracks its boot-lickers that think things are just fine. No idea what makes these defectives tick.
"Fair and Square" is tactical mistake. (Score:1)
It seems to me that they should be saying "yeah we abused our position in a few instances" and "we promise not to do that anymore" and "we propose these specific remedies instead".
Saying they did everything "Fair and Square" when that is clearly not the case smacks of lying, and people generally like to punish liars. Whereas if you own up to mistakes and propose remedies, people are more forgiving and willing to listen and work together.
Let's make a deal (Score:2)
'Cause that's how the fair playing field in the land of the free works now.
Microsoft (Score:2)
Why aren't they getting prosecuted and split up?
I mean, they're actively sabotaging competition, bribing government officials, buying out competition, making it impossible for competition to be compatible, commit industrial sabotage, and the list goes on and on.
Walk into a given office, odds are good you'll see:
- Windows
- MS Office
They haven't reached this position through playing it nice. When will they be appropriately punished?
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I mean, they're actively sabotaging competition
That's not a bribe, it's a gratuity and they're legal because the supreme court said it's legal to brituity the justices lots and lots of money if you like the rulings.
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Let's hope they are next. My take is MS has just been far more effective at bribing the right people.
I can't believe (Score:2)
I can't believe I once fell for Google's "do no evil" bullshit. This fucker was the devil in plain sight.
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I was sceptical from the beginning, even when I was in a room with Page or Brin wayy back when they did a hiring event at my university. Struck me as a cult, and not something I want to be part of. Conformed that klater when a former university coworker wanted to hire me for his team at Google. Fortunately they did not take me. In hindsight, I was massively overqualified and not the single-minded tech-expert with no understanding of the real world they were looking for at that time. The skill of the intervi
Split them all (Score:2)
Meaningless with Trump in charge (Score:5, Funny)
I know nobody wants to hear that but it is what it is. There's going to be zero antitrust law enforcement for the next 4 years. Maybe longer. At least at the federal level. The states of course can do their own.