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Google isn’t happy with Microsoft over online news

180 points by dsr12 6y ago

walrus01 6y ago
That's a rather funny claim coming from google, considering we are now back in the same situation as we were 20 year ago, when people were designing websites to work 'best' on microsoft's IE browser. Now a lot of things are being designed to work 'best' on Chrome. At least Microsoft has the benefit of the institutional knowledge of having once been as dominant as Google is now.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Has Google been breaking the web with non-compliant implementations of web standards?
  - walrus01 6y ago
    More like it's been using its dominant browser market position, and "Essential" nature as a search/cloud based services operator, to wag the dog of the web standardization process.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      Which Google-pushed standards were most at fault for making websites break on Firefox?
      - toyg 6y ago
        Have a read: https://mobile.twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871243301625856 https://mobile.twitter.com/johnath/status/111687124330162585... Google are just as bad as MS. End of story.
        Datagenerator 6y ago
        Deliberately breaking the performance of YouTube on Firefox is fine, because it shows how the non neutral net degrades into a television show with lots of commercial breaks. No way to opt out while trying to do work on your personal computer using the information shared on our Internet. None of that, if it's up to Microsoft and Google.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    They - break compability or make their sites slow in other browsers, sometimes in so interesting ways that it makes it hard to defend as just incompetence. Edit, example: didn't they go out of their way to find a way to make YouTube crawl in Firefox while performing well in Chrome a few months ago? IIRC instead of doing it the new straightforward way that was supported everywhere they went with a solution that was so backwards that it was already deprecated in Chrome as well or something? - make banners on the front page of the worlds most famous web property, urging people to change
    - hannob 6y ago
      I'm using Firefox and the only service that I have to use on a regular basis that does not really work in Firefox is actually Microsoft Teams. This is quite ironic given all the "Google killed Microsoft's own browser engine" stories.
      - happymellon 6y ago
        I find Excel in Firefox to be quite broken. Google is much better at working than Microsoft.
    - mmcnl 6y ago
      You're nitpicking. The situation is a night and day difference compared to 10-20 years ago.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Snarwin 6y ago
      The YouTube thing was back in 2018: https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-exec-says-google-slowed-youtube-down-on-non-chrome-browsers/ https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-exec-says-google-slowed-yo...
    - _flux 6y ago
      > break compability or make their sites slow in other browsers "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" > make banners on the front page of the worlds most famous web property Well, can't argue with that!
  - prepend 6y ago
    They sort of killed DNT.
- pxi 6y ago
  This story is not directly related to chrome. In the original version of the legislation, google and facebook were required to pay up each time they served an <a> tag that pointed news.com sites. That's what google meant by "breaking the open web" - having to pay <a href> tax. This was all fine by Microsoft. They apparently did some deal with Murdock in 2019 so appear to have been behind this all along. It's all echos of Gates era dealings.
  - mattrick 6y ago
    Chrome is tangential to the story, but Google calling Microsoft out for trying "to break the way the open web works" is super hypocritical. Its the pot calling the kettle black.
- mmcnl 6y ago
  This is not true at all. The web is at a much better state than 20 years ago. There may be some thing going on that are not ideal, but the it's a night and day difference. I don't know why this gets so many upvotes.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    It's in a better state because Chrome, at least, is actively developed, whereas IE was lagging behind. But in many other respects, it's quite similar. A better baseline for comparison would be circa 2010, when Firefox was still popular enough, and "best viewed in Chrome" wasn't really a thing yet.
- prepend 6y ago
  It can be really stupid too, I’ve had sites not load and suggest that I use “modern browsers like Chrome” when I’m trying to load it in Safari or Brave. So I think we’re back to dumdums literally checking user agent. For a little while, outlook and 365 web didn’t work properly in safari because of the third party cookies defaults, so the suggestion was to use Chrome (rather than just adjusting cookie settings).
- mbar84 6y ago
  I don't think that's a fair comparison. Today I develop mostly on Chrome, but I don't dread testing for compatibility on Firefox or Safari. The standardization is quite good across vendors. Add to that, back then Microsoft had no drive to move the web platform forward. IE was not getting better, which is why it was eventually eclipsed by Firefox and later Chrome.
- michaelbrave 6y ago
  I can't tell you how many times I have problems with a site in Firefox because they only designed it for chrome now, sites owned by google are the biggest offenders.
  - lowercased 6y ago
    oddly enough, most of the time I hit issues with stuff not working on safari, but fine on firefox or chrome. I just had a bill pay request from someone using 'bill4time.com' service. Broke in safari, worked in chrome. I seem to hit these situation perhaps once a week or so, where moving to chrome or firefox generally 'fixes' it.
    - patrickmcnamara 6y ago
      AWS is particularly bad with Safari. For some reason, AWS asserts that U2F doesn't work on Safari so I have been forced to remove 2fa from my account. Yay. And AWS Amplify never loads on Safari either.
- Jiejeing 6y ago
  Well, considering that microsoft essentially designs their websites (see also: teams) to only work on chrome, that is rich.
FridgeSeal 6y ago
Pot calls kettle black. Google has probably done more of this single handedly since the advent of Chrome than Microsoft has. Not that I’m absolving MS of any wrongdoing either, but google has definitely been far more malicious, and for them to pretend otherwise is unscrupulous at best.
- dontblink 6y ago
  You must have missed the entire 90s. Microsoft hasn't changed, it's just got better PR. Google has it's faults as well, but I vastly prefer Google's contribution over Microsoft's.
  - supernovae 6y ago
    The 90s was 30 years ago. I was an asshole to my parents in the 90s as an angsty teen. If my parents held on to the 90s like I could never change, grow or be something different my family would be torn apart. Perhaps you just need to grow up yourself.
    - dontblink 6y ago
      Sounds like you're still pretty angsty
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      The Microsoft of the 1990s was a crew of unethical adults led by unethical adults who systematically committed unethical acts. The Microsoft of the 2020s is composed of employees that while obviously not fully contiguous with the crew of the 20 not 30 years ago was replaced piece by piece by people that were trained by said unethical people or trained by the people who were in turned trained by same. Companies have a character and a culture that is retained which is why we often speak of them as contiguous entities because like the ship of theseus is an referant to a entity with a certain history and characteristics so to is a company. An ill chosen analogy merely doesn't highlight the characteristics that are alike. Yours seems to be chosen to deliberately highlight irrelevant characteristics in order to misdirect. I suggest you stick to talking about the facts.
threatofrain 6y ago
> In the middle of all of this, Microsoft was very public about its support of Australia’s new law, and it even teamed up with European publishers to call for online platforms to reach deals to pay news outlets for content. Google isn’t happy about Microsoft getting involved and this is the first big public spat we’ve seen since the Scroogled era.
gchokov 6y ago
Serious question - does anyone at all still liking Google?
- sMarsIntruder 6y ago
  Unfortunately a lot. I was one of them, loved the Android idea. Then a couple of years ago I started migrating to privacy oriented services (or at least alternatives), but it's a long process.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  Like might be too strong a word. I sometimes grudgingly use Google for search because DuckDuckGo - unfortunately, frustratingly, bizarrely - doesn't know what operands are.
- izacus 6y ago
  Liking has nothing to do with law prices about future of the web. We're not sampling chocolate here - think how propping up old media with mandatory charges actually helps us and the open web?
notRobot 6y ago
Both companies have tried to or successful broken "the way the open web works" time and time again and both of them should stop. Will they? Of course not.
uncledave 6y ago
Amp already did that.
- uncledave 6y ago
  Replying to self. Typical HN: America asleep -> upvote to 3 America (or Google) wakes up -> downvotes to -2. Fuck this politik and fuck Google. Amp is just internet cancer.
aemreunal 6y ago
Microsoft acted pretty sleazy (IMHO) on the Australian law situation but it's rich for Google to attack them since they caved first and paid. I'm all for taxing companies (tech or otherwise) in sensible ways but the Australian news law was far from sensible. Not to mention AMP and whatnot.
- markdown 6y ago
  > the Australian news law was far from sensible. For those out of the loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU
  - gdsdfe 6y ago
    Haha one thing for sure australian have a good sense of humor
  - u678u 6y ago
    Lol. This bit sums up the whole thing for me. "Will that help our ailing media?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU&t=77s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU&t=77s
- PoignardAzur 6y ago
  Honestly, I'm with Google on that one. I'm disappointed they caved in and paid the danegeld, but the way Microsoft went "We fully support the extraction from the danegeld, and if Google happens to lose any market share due to its refusal to pay it, we would be more than happy to have these customers use Bing instead. We fully support this law that has no effect on us and actively harms our main competitor" is just disgusting.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    They would be fine with it as long as they aren't subject to it. If they were subject to it, it would make it very difficult to operate Bing. Unless they just aren't doing algorithm changes very often, it would present a significant burden to be required to report out such changes weeks before deployment. Of course the forced "arbitration" for "fair" payment to news organizations would also be onerous for them. But fortunately for MS the law is highly selective in which companies it targets.
tester756 6y ago
Google Web Accelerator, Amp...
jimjimjim 6y ago
everybody likes piling on google but i'm still thanking them for killing ie. people have short memories
- zargon 6y ago
  Mozilla killed IE. Google swept in after Firefox did the hard work. (Ab)used their search monopoly to drive Chrome ads.
  - merb 6y ago
    thats a fairy tail. mozilla killed ie for home users, but on the business side (a way bigger market) that was not true. mozilla also basically did not target that market that much, I meaan they had no adm/admx templates and msi files for a very long time.
  - techrat 6y ago
    I stopped using Firefox because it was a bloated mess that frequently ended up with memory leaks despite shutting down the browser. Creating a new window with no history and killing all other windows still didn't get Firefox.exe to release all the ram it gobbled up. Mozilla has a habit of taking a decent, slimmed down browser (Phoenix, for those who remember that era), adopting it as their primary because their previous became a bloated mess... then taking the new fork, making it unwieldy and forcing people to create yet another fork to reign it in. Tell me again how this is Google's fault. They simply made a better browser.
    - zargon 6y ago
      Even though I disagree with that perspective, it has no bearing on the fact that Firefox had already dislodged IE from a dominant browser position before Chrome even appeared on the scene.
      - dontblink 6y ago
        Correct. But I also switched because chrome was better. There was no abuse by Google that impacted my decision. It was Chrome's per tab process that created more stability and overall less bloat.
nix23 6y ago
This time Google is really going to far with the 1. April jokes...oh wait..
codeulike 6y ago
'slam' is such a weird verb for this sort of thing, and it only seems to turn up in headlines. It is supposed to be a wrestling metaphor? Its such an odd mental image.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  It's slang from around the turn of the 20th century. No joke, it comes from birdsong hobbyists, when two birds were "competing" they would insert deliberately off and loud notes to intimidate and silence each other. They named those "slams" like a door slam. That became the slang for the patter of street hawkers when they negged you or heckled someone else for laughs and attention, and eventually became slang for any kind of insult or put down.
  - codeulike 6y ago
    Wow, thanks. Had no idea.
draklor40 6y ago
*cough* AMP *cough*
- supernovae 6y ago
  I find it curious Google pushes amp, yet the new google analytics 4 doesn't even support it. I have a feeling AMP is really dead and now they're looking for ways to get news back after forcing so many people to embrace that terrible tech.
  - bogomipz 6y ago
    I'd be curious to hear why you are sensing that AMP is really dead? It this just based on Google Analytics 4 or are there other signs as well?
    - supernovae 6y ago
      They wrote a commitment blog last year, then shortly after they re-did the entire AMP leadership board and with things gone quiet ever since - the GA4 not supporting analytics surely doesn't help. I filed a bug and nothing much has happened... https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/24621 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/24621 It appears that the current excuse is GA4 isn't ready for primetime? makes no sense...
intricatedetail 6y ago
This I don't understand. Why Google only has to pay for news content? Why only big news corporations get rewarded but a guy with a blog won't be?
- ewindal 6y ago
  Because this law is literally just about letting Murdoch cling to power. It’s such an obviosly corrupt law.
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    Where are the institutions that are supposed to protect us from corruption that we pay dearly in taxes? This is just so wrong. Strong towards the weak, weak towards the strong...
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Nobody ought to have to pay for linking to content it breaks how the internet works when you get to decide who can link to your content. Just because something would serve as a handle to allow one party to maximize their profit by controlling others behavior doesn't imply we should enshrine such a handle into law.
hownottowrite 6y ago
Half of Google’s profits should be set aside to pay content creators.
- foobar33333 6y ago
  Why? Content creators are free to negotiate with google themselves. If they can't come up with a good deal they can use robots.txt to remove their content from google.
  - kuschku 6y ago
    As long as Google only used links that was fine, but now with the Knowledge Graph often just quoting all the content of the site directly, and Google showing ads to profit from that, we're seeing a situation where Google profits by scraping content, but the creators never do. None of this would've been an issue 20 years ago when 90% of the web was noncommercial, but now it destroys an entire industry.
    - daniellarusso 6y ago
      Parent’s robots.txt solution would work in your scenario, but they would not be listed at all on the results page. If they are never going to get the traffic anyway, why be listed? Interesting.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    That is not the IP extortion model used by YouTube.
  - hownottowrite 6y ago
    If a better web experience is core to Google’s interests, paying for content should pay off in the long run. That's what they're demanding of content creators anyway, so they should put their money where there mouth is.
  - mar13032021 6y ago
    Negotiate with a company that bans accounts randomly and does not have a helpline? Nah, let government go after them, I bet they will be taking _those_ phone calls.
kgeist 6y ago
In 2021, it looks like Google is more predatory than Microsoft
sullyj3 6y ago
They're not wrong, but coming from the creators of AMP this is a bit rich.
- izacus 6y ago
  AMP was the defense against all content moving into native apps like Facebook. Antithesis of open web, with completely locked down content, applied DRM and no ability to contribute without the review of platform owners. It's that the endgame you'd have preferred? Ecosystem of apps because news web developers refused to make their ad and autoplay video ridden websites usable on the mobile devices? Look at the trends and tell me if you'd have preferred to read all your content in an Apple News walled garden instead?
  - fakedang 6y ago
    > AMP was the defense against all content moving into native apps like Facebook. Google: We will defend you but we'll also strangle you while at it.
    - izacus 6y ago
      Of course, they're a corporation. The question is - why did noone else step up and try to address the issue? Other corpos just wanted to silo all data into their proprietary platforms and opensource/openweb teams just pretended that the issue never existed.
onlyfortoday2 6y ago
ahahahahha funny
nojito 6y ago
> News organizations have ad inventory to sell, but they can no longer sell directly to those who want to place ads,” says Microsoft president Brad Smith. “Instead, for all practical purposes they must use Google’s tools, operate on Google’s ad exchanges, contribute data to Google’s operations, and pay Google money. All this impacts the ability of news organizations to benefit economically even from advertising on their own sites.” I’m not too versed in the Australia news thing, but is this statement true?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sMarsIntruder 6y ago
Says who invented and imposed FLoC.
smaryjerry 6y ago
Google, the company that actively tries to make YouTube not work on any Amazon device simple because Amazon is a competitor, is complaining about someone breaking the open web? Google refused to build an app for Amazon devices and even when Amazon had a working app that was essentially a browser that visited YouTube on their Alexa devices with screens, YouTube changed their website for the sole purpose of breaking it on Amazon devices. Google has no right to complain here.
- bqmjjx0kac 6y ago
  IIRC, Amazon built their own UI around YouTube which meant YouTube was not monetizing those views. Edit: > A person familiar with Google's thinking on the matter told Engadget that a big point of contention had been the fact that Amazon implemented what was essentially a hacked version of YouTube on both the Echo Show and Fire TV. Rather than work with Google to build versions of its apps that work on Amazon's devices, Amazon has been trying to do it itself -- a move that cuts out features and also likely affects Google's ability to collect on some of the ad revenue that comes from its videos. https://www.engadget.com/2017-12-05-google-blocking-youtube-on-amazon-echo-show-fire-tv.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-12-05-google-blocking-youtube-...
  - smaryjerry 6y ago
    The update at the bottom details amazons side of the story: Amazon has responded, and its response points to the unfair nature of Google effectively blocking access to the YouTube web site based on the type of device being used to access it. "Echo Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube's existing website," Amazon's statement reads. "Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website. We hope to resolve this with Google as soon as possible."
- HJain13 6y ago
  > Amazon isn’t without fault either. The company dragged its feet for years in releasing a proper Prime Video app for Android in the Google Play Store. Previously, you had to install Amazon’s own, separate app store and only then could you install Prime Video. It was a sad, convoluted attempt at luring users to the Amazon Appstore. Even now, Prime Video still doesn’t support Chromecast. > And that’s directly tied to Chromecast’s absence on Amazon.com. Since there’s no easy way of watching Prime Video, Amazon won’t sell it. But it’s Amazon’s own fault that Prime Video doesn’t work with Chromecast. Amazon has the power to make it happen. What’s Google supposed to do in this scenario? > Amazon’s decision to remove popular, well-liked products from its store over this spat — or never sell them to begin with — is an ugly example of the company throwing its weight and power around. No one should be surprised that Google is crying foul. Is the company under any obligation to sell Google Home — the chief rival to its own Echo? Of course not. Them’s the breaks. But the Chromecast situation is troubling, and Amazon’s recent halting of sales for certain Nest hardware (with no real explanation) seems juvenile. Prime shipping is still a very powerful incentive, and Amazon is well aware of that. https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16738752/google-youtube-amazon-punishing-customers-feud https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16738752/google-youtube-a... Amazon is nowhere near innocent in their feud
Shadonototro 6y ago
The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft They used the same techniques for Stadia, they bashed it while praising Xbox Cloud The same with Team vs Zoom And the same with AWS/GCE vs Azure Hmm
- throwaway53453 6y ago
  The media is institutionally biased against Google and Facebook because they are 'direct competitors' in their heads. Don't get me wrong, there are issues with Big Tech, but I don't believe the news industry's collapse to be one of them. It's like arguing with the printing press or railroads galvanizing the dinosaurs of their era.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    Facebook is also the favorite most hated company on social media sites like Reddit, Hacker News. Imo there’s no logic behind the degree of disliking FB over some other big tech.
- supernovae 6y ago
  This entire thread is depression and responses like this are pure depression. Why does any of this matter? All I see are a bunch of apologists or a bunch of people making assumptions and no one really discussing anything without their extreme bias and prejudices in the way. The first comments here are people bashing the Microsoft of 20 years ago.. And this one... "The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft" - for no other reason than to perpetuate the bias here. Why do we do this to ourselves people? This is absurd. The Verge is very much in love with Apple, they're not in love with Google. That doesn't make them Pro-Microsoft. The verge DID hire a a fantastic Microsoft writer who knows Microsoft inside and out, so they're not Oblivious to Microsoft - but that doesn't make them "Pro Microsoft". And for Christ's sake - NONE of what is mentioned here makes Microsoft bad. They're a business making products and building services doing what businesses do and its certainly not Balmer's Microsoft anymore. Who cares what Google isn't happy with when its painfully apparent no one is is happy with anything around here...
gerash 6y ago
Some pretend Microsoft has turned into this benevolent corporation lately with their "Microsoft <heart> Linux" and adopting Android and Chrome. Well all those were done because they'd lost market share in servers, mobile OS and desktop browsers despite being the dominant player and forcing their offerings the whole time. Microsoft used to run smear campaigns (remember Scroogled?) when they hired Hillary Clinton's strategist. This last case shows they don't even care if it means everyone can be sued for not paying for a hyperlink. Say whatever you want about AMP or Google reader or whatnot but when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival? Microsoft's corporate tactics have remained the same.
- ggambetta 6y ago
  Some people are too young to remember. I recently worked with new grads in a startup, and for these 20-somethings Microsoft has always been somewhat cool, and Bill Gates has always been this benevolent old guy that cures diseases. They were very surprised where I shared the articles where they were saying literally LINUX IS CANCER. With a mixture of time passing and billions of dollars, it looks like they've successfully "cleaned" their image :(
  - tpmx 6y ago
    High-end, (long-term) consistent PR management works very well. (Remember how everyone used to hate George W. Bush with the passion of a thousand burning suns?)
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      I think there might have been something else that helped dim that hatred than just PR management. A sort of comparative effect as it were.
      - tpmx 6y ago
        A key element of this long-term consistent PR is timing. Time makes old criminal idiocy pale, and there'll always be another clown.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Microsoft owns MSNBC, huge conflicts of interest.
- Paianni 6y ago
  Microsoft hasn't owned any part of MSNBC since 2012.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  "Microsoft divested itself of its stakes in the MSNBC channel in 2005 and in msnbc.com in July 2012" ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
saagarjha 6y ago
If you haven’t read the blog post already, give it a minute: https://blog.google/products/news/google-commitment-supporting-journalism/ https://blog.google/products/news/google-commitment-supporti.... It’s a mudslinging embarrassment. I’m not a huge fan of the new rules, but it’s clear that they’ve scared Google to the point where their PR department is unable to moderate themselves anymore, a trend I’ve noticed with every large tech company when placed in a difficult position. Until you see more companies doing this I think it’s mostly safe to assume that any regulations you’re applying to them are toothless and just a cost of doing business.
- LegitShady 6y ago
  wow it's hard to believe that's official google messaging. It looks like someone lost their cool and hit 'submit' without giving it a day and re-reading it.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  > They are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival That's rich coming from Google.
  - path411 6y ago
    Yeah at first I read it the other way and thought maybe microsoft was criticizing amp or something
- bogomipz 6y ago
  Agreed. The following is particularly cringeworthy: >"And it’s no coincidence that Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us comes on the heels of the SolarWinds attack and at a moment when they’ve allowed tens of thousands of their customers — including government agencies in the U.S., NATO allies, banks, nonprofits, telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations — to be actively hacked via major Microsoft vulnerabilities." What does the Solar Winds hack have to do with news publishing regulation? Mentioning Bing here would have been logical but this poorly written run-on sentence is just pure mud slinging of the same type he is accusing MS of. Are there no corporate PR officers at Google who need to approve such posts prior to publishing? What an embarrassment.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
I'd like to recap the issue here: An Australian law was based on the premise that it was unfair for Google to reap benefits from sending traffic to AU media sites. The law also forced search engines to firehose user data (w/o implementing privacy protections [1]) to Australian media interests (eg: Rupert Murdoch). Google said, "Ok. We'll comply with the law, forgo those benefits and stop sending traffic." Oddly, this did not satisfy the interests behind the law. Microsoft stepped in and said "We're totally down with this law" - including, apparently, the egregious gift of user data to AU media interests. [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200817/22554345133/google-warns-australians-that-governments-plan-to-tax-google-to-give-money-to-newspapers-will-harm-search-youtube.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200817/22554345133/googl...
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  This is an absurdly biased and fact-free recap. Any framing that posits that Google is benevolently "sending traffic" betrays that it should be discarded at the outset. Google (like Facebook and most other "make money on your content" empires) desperately tries to send as little traffic as possible to anyone, which is why they have AMP, scrape content and provide a dubious "expert engine", and provided a news dashboard where they summarized every news site. I see this same ludicrous argument made re: Facebook. When Facebook temporarily blocked news, downloads of news site apps rose dramatically. It turns out that they weren't helpful whatsoever to anyone. They are a desperate suckerfish just trying to live off of the creation of other people.
- oezi 6y ago
  The monopoly powers Google holds over search have given them such a strong position, that Google is more than reaping benefits. It is in the public's interest to prevent such powers to destroy the 4th column of balance in democracies that journalism should strive to be. This is not to say that Murdoch's news empire isn't bad as well, but no country should sit back and watch while Google and Facebook siphon money out of the countries.
  - koboll 6y ago
    The traditional way to do this would be something like building a domestic search engine and levying steep taxes on foreign ad buys, rather than this bizarre attempt at backhanded protectionism.
EasyTiger_ 6y ago
> Google has launched a scathing attack on Microsoft today, accusing it of trying “to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival.” That is some pathological levels of projection.
bogomipz 6y ago
I'm in no way defending the Australian legislation but It's absurd to me that Google and recently Facebook have positioned themselves as defenders of "the open web." Google with their AMP, Project Dragonfly and Chrome dominance and FB with their walled garden seem to reach for the "open web" argument whenever something threatens their status quo.
cturner 6y ago
The Australian situation has created an incentive for tech companies to consider getting into news-content production, a sector that was previously not-lucrative. Find a struggling newspaper to purchase for a song. That gets you a masthead and a basic editorial pipeline. Then, use strong salary packages to raid the content talent from the existing participants. Alphabet could do this with pocket change. This is similar to the play the media titans use to capture sports broadcast rights - World Series Cricket in the 70s, SuperLeague in the 90s.
rdiddly 6y ago
Wow, quite the display of projective hypocrisy between the pot and kettle.
jimnotgym 6y ago
“The Kettles are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival,” says Mr Pot.
whatever_dude 6y ago
Tangential, but am I the only one who thinks that Google News is really bad nowadays? It used to be my main source of news, but I can't stand it anymore. It's clear that it's trying to drive engagement by offering links more likely to be clicked. My custom topics are hidden away, stuff I don't want to read about is brought to the top... just overall bad in every way.
- ceras 6y ago
  I still use it, but also feel it's not really showing me the right content. What do you use instead?
  - whatever_dude 6y ago
    I just moved back to RSS (using Feedly). Took a while to get the right set of sources, but the experience is orders of magnitude better. I would even say that had an actual impact on my mental health, as I'm not bombarded with clickbait, outrage-driven crap anymore; I'm still informed with some responsible new RSS sources, I just don't need a firehose.
nano-erud 6y ago
bitch fight

180 points by dsr12 6y ago

That's a rather funny claim coming from google, considering we are now back in the same situation as we were 20 year ago, when people were designing websites to work 'best' on microsoft's IE browser. Now a lot of things are being designed to work 'best' on Chrome. At least Microsoft has the benefit of the institutional knowledge of having once been as dominant as Google is now.

threatofrain 6y ago
Has Google been breaking the web with non-compliant implementations of web standards?
- walrus01 6y ago
  More like it's been using its dominant browser market position, and "Essential" nature as a search/cloud based services operator, to wag the dog of the web standardization process.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    Which Google-pushed standards were most at fault for making websites break on Firefox?
    - toyg 6y ago
      Have a read: https://mobile.twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871243301625856 https://mobile.twitter.com/johnath/status/111687124330162585... Google are just as bad as MS. End of story.
      - Datagenerator 6y ago
        Deliberately breaking the performance of YouTube on Firefox is fine, because it shows how the non neutral net degrades into a television show with lots of commercial breaks. No way to opt out while trying to do work on your personal computer using the information shared on our Internet. None of that, if it's up to Microsoft and Google.
- skinkestek 6y ago
  They - break compability or make their sites slow in other browsers, sometimes in so interesting ways that it makes it hard to defend as just incompetence. Edit, example: didn't they go out of their way to find a way to make YouTube crawl in Firefox while performing well in Chrome a few months ago? IIRC instead of doing it the new straightforward way that was supported everywhere they went with a solution that was so backwards that it was already deprecated in Chrome as well or something? - make banners on the front page of the worlds most famous web property, urging people to change
  - hannob 6y ago
    I'm using Firefox and the only service that I have to use on a regular basis that does not really work in Firefox is actually Microsoft Teams. This is quite ironic given all the "Google killed Microsoft's own browser engine" stories.
    - happymellon 6y ago
      I find Excel in Firefox to be quite broken. Google is much better at working than Microsoft.
  - mmcnl 6y ago
    You're nitpicking. The situation is a night and day difference compared to 10-20 years ago.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Snarwin 6y ago
    The YouTube thing was back in 2018: https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-exec-says-google-slowed-youtube-down-on-non-chrome-browsers/ https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-exec-says-google-slowed-yo...
  - _flux 6y ago
    > break compability or make their sites slow in other browsers "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" > make banners on the front page of the worlds most famous web property Well, can't argue with that!
- prepend 6y ago
  They sort of killed DNT.
pxi 6y ago
This story is not directly related to chrome. In the original version of the legislation, google and facebook were required to pay up each time they served an <a> tag that pointed news.com sites. That's what google meant by "breaking the open web" - having to pay <a href> tax. This was all fine by Microsoft. They apparently did some deal with Murdock in 2019 so appear to have been behind this all along. It's all echos of Gates era dealings.
- mattrick 6y ago
  Chrome is tangential to the story, but Google calling Microsoft out for trying "to break the way the open web works" is super hypocritical. Its the pot calling the kettle black.
mmcnl 6y ago
This is not true at all. The web is at a much better state than 20 years ago. There may be some thing going on that are not ideal, but the it's a night and day difference. I don't know why this gets so many upvotes.
- int_19h 6y ago
  It's in a better state because Chrome, at least, is actively developed, whereas IE was lagging behind. But in many other respects, it's quite similar. A better baseline for comparison would be circa 2010, when Firefox was still popular enough, and "best viewed in Chrome" wasn't really a thing yet.
prepend 6y ago
It can be really stupid too, I’ve had sites not load and suggest that I use “modern browsers like Chrome” when I’m trying to load it in Safari or Brave. So I think we’re back to dumdums literally checking user agent. For a little while, outlook and 365 web didn’t work properly in safari because of the third party cookies defaults, so the suggestion was to use Chrome (rather than just adjusting cookie settings).
mbar84 6y ago
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Today I develop mostly on Chrome, but I don't dread testing for compatibility on Firefox or Safari. The standardization is quite good across vendors. Add to that, back then Microsoft had no drive to move the web platform forward. IE was not getting better, which is why it was eventually eclipsed by Firefox and later Chrome.
michaelbrave 6y ago
I can't tell you how many times I have problems with a site in Firefox because they only designed it for chrome now, sites owned by google are the biggest offenders.
- lowercased 6y ago
  oddly enough, most of the time I hit issues with stuff not working on safari, but fine on firefox or chrome. I just had a bill pay request from someone using 'bill4time.com' service. Broke in safari, worked in chrome. I seem to hit these situation perhaps once a week or so, where moving to chrome or firefox generally 'fixes' it.
  - patrickmcnamara 6y ago
    AWS is particularly bad with Safari. For some reason, AWS asserts that U2F doesn't work on Safari so I have been forced to remove 2fa from my account. Yay. And AWS Amplify never loads on Safari either.
Jiejeing 6y ago
Well, considering that microsoft essentially designs their websites (see also: teams) to only work on chrome, that is rich.

FridgeSeal 6y ago

Pot calls kettle black. Google has probably done more of this single handedly since the advent of Chrome than Microsoft has. Not that I’m absolving MS of any wrongdoing either, but google has definitely been far more malicious, and for them to pretend otherwise is unscrupulous at best.

dontblink 6y ago
You must have missed the entire 90s. Microsoft hasn't changed, it's just got better PR. Google has it's faults as well, but I vastly prefer Google's contribution over Microsoft's.
- supernovae 6y ago
  The 90s was 30 years ago. I was an asshole to my parents in the 90s as an angsty teen. If my parents held on to the 90s like I could never change, grow or be something different my family would be torn apart. Perhaps you just need to grow up yourself.
  - dontblink 6y ago
    Sounds like you're still pretty angsty
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    The Microsoft of the 1990s was a crew of unethical adults led by unethical adults who systematically committed unethical acts. The Microsoft of the 2020s is composed of employees that while obviously not fully contiguous with the crew of the 20 not 30 years ago was replaced piece by piece by people that were trained by said unethical people or trained by the people who were in turned trained by same. Companies have a character and a culture that is retained which is why we often speak of them as contiguous entities because like the ship of theseus is an referant to a entity with a certain history and characteristics so to is a company. An ill chosen analogy merely doesn't highlight the characteristics that are alike. Yours seems to be chosen to deliberately highlight irrelevant characteristics in order to misdirect. I suggest you stick to talking about the facts.

threatofrain 6y ago

> In the middle of all of this, Microsoft was very public about its support of Australia’s new law, and it even teamed up with European publishers to call for online platforms to reach deals to pay news outlets for content. Google isn’t happy about Microsoft getting involved and this is the first big public spat we’ve seen since the Scroogled era.

gchokov 6y ago

Serious question - does anyone at all still liking Google?

sMarsIntruder 6y ago
Unfortunately a lot. I was one of them, loved the Android idea. Then a couple of years ago I started migrating to privacy oriented services (or at least alternatives), but it's a long process.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
Like might be too strong a word. I sometimes grudgingly use Google for search because DuckDuckGo - unfortunately, frustratingly, bizarrely - doesn't know what operands are.
izacus 6y ago
Liking has nothing to do with law prices about future of the web. We're not sampling chocolate here - think how propping up old media with mandatory charges actually helps us and the open web?

notRobot 6y ago

Both companies have tried to or successful broken "the way the open web works" time and time again and both of them should stop. Will they? Of course not.

uncledave 6y ago

Amp already did that.

uncledave 6y ago
Replying to self. Typical HN: America asleep -> upvote to 3 America (or Google) wakes up -> downvotes to -2. Fuck this politik and fuck Google. Amp is just internet cancer.

aemreunal 6y ago

Microsoft acted pretty sleazy (IMHO) on the Australian law situation but it's rich for Google to attack them since they caved first and paid. I'm all for taxing companies (tech or otherwise) in sensible ways but the Australian news law was far from sensible. Not to mention AMP and whatnot.

markdown 6y ago
> the Australian news law was far from sensible. For those out of the loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU
- gdsdfe 6y ago
  Haha one thing for sure australian have a good sense of humor
- u678u 6y ago
  Lol. This bit sums up the whole thing for me. "Will that help our ailing media?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU&t=77s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU&t=77s
PoignardAzur 6y ago
Honestly, I'm with Google on that one. I'm disappointed they caved in and paid the danegeld, but the way Microsoft went "We fully support the extraction from the danegeld, and if Google happens to lose any market share due to its refusal to pay it, we would be more than happy to have these customers use Bing instead. We fully support this law that has no effect on us and actively harms our main competitor" is just disgusting.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  They would be fine with it as long as they aren't subject to it. If they were subject to it, it would make it very difficult to operate Bing. Unless they just aren't doing algorithm changes very often, it would present a significant burden to be required to report out such changes weeks before deployment. Of course the forced "arbitration" for "fair" payment to news organizations would also be onerous for them. But fortunately for MS the law is highly selective in which companies it targets.

tester756 6y ago

Google Web Accelerator, Amp...

jimjimjim 6y ago

everybody likes piling on google but i'm still thanking them for killing ie. people have short memories

zargon 6y ago
Mozilla killed IE. Google swept in after Firefox did the hard work. (Ab)used their search monopoly to drive Chrome ads.
- merb 6y ago
  thats a fairy tail. mozilla killed ie for home users, but on the business side (a way bigger market) that was not true. mozilla also basically did not target that market that much, I meaan they had no adm/admx templates and msi files for a very long time.
- techrat 6y ago
  I stopped using Firefox because it was a bloated mess that frequently ended up with memory leaks despite shutting down the browser. Creating a new window with no history and killing all other windows still didn't get Firefox.exe to release all the ram it gobbled up. Mozilla has a habit of taking a decent, slimmed down browser (Phoenix, for those who remember that era), adopting it as their primary because their previous became a bloated mess... then taking the new fork, making it unwieldy and forcing people to create yet another fork to reign it in. Tell me again how this is Google's fault. They simply made a better browser.
  - zargon 6y ago
    Even though I disagree with that perspective, it has no bearing on the fact that Firefox had already dislodged IE from a dominant browser position before Chrome even appeared on the scene.
    - dontblink 6y ago
      Correct. But I also switched because chrome was better. There was no abuse by Google that impacted my decision. It was Chrome's per tab process that created more stability and overall less bloat.

nix23 6y ago

This time Google is really going to far with the 1. April jokes...oh wait..

codeulike 6y ago

'slam' is such a weird verb for this sort of thing, and it only seems to turn up in headlines. It is supposed to be a wrestling metaphor? Its such an odd mental image.

kthejoker2 6y ago
It's slang from around the turn of the 20th century. No joke, it comes from birdsong hobbyists, when two birds were "competing" they would insert deliberately off and loud notes to intimidate and silence each other. They named those "slams" like a door slam. That became the slang for the patter of street hawkers when they negged you or heckled someone else for laughs and attention, and eventually became slang for any kind of insult or put down.
- codeulike 6y ago
  Wow, thanks. Had no idea.

draklor40 6y ago

*cough* AMP *cough*

supernovae 6y ago
I find it curious Google pushes amp, yet the new google analytics 4 doesn't even support it. I have a feeling AMP is really dead and now they're looking for ways to get news back after forcing so many people to embrace that terrible tech.
- bogomipz 6y ago
  I'd be curious to hear why you are sensing that AMP is really dead? It this just based on Google Analytics 4 or are there other signs as well?
  - supernovae 6y ago
    They wrote a commitment blog last year, then shortly after they re-did the entire AMP leadership board and with things gone quiet ever since - the GA4 not supporting analytics surely doesn't help. I filed a bug and nothing much has happened... https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/24621 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/24621 It appears that the current excuse is GA4 isn't ready for primetime? makes no sense...

intricatedetail 6y ago

This I don't understand. Why Google only has to pay for news content? Why only big news corporations get rewarded but a guy with a blog won't be?

ewindal 6y ago
Because this law is literally just about letting Murdoch cling to power. It’s such an obviosly corrupt law.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Where are the institutions that are supposed to protect us from corruption that we pay dearly in taxes? This is just so wrong. Strong towards the weak, weak towards the strong...
michaelmrose 6y ago
Nobody ought to have to pay for linking to content it breaks how the internet works when you get to decide who can link to your content. Just because something would serve as a handle to allow one party to maximize their profit by controlling others behavior doesn't imply we should enshrine such a handle into law.

hownottowrite 6y ago

Half of Google’s profits should be set aside to pay content creators.

foobar33333 6y ago
Why? Content creators are free to negotiate with google themselves. If they can't come up with a good deal they can use robots.txt to remove their content from google.
- kuschku 6y ago
  As long as Google only used links that was fine, but now with the Knowledge Graph often just quoting all the content of the site directly, and Google showing ads to profit from that, we're seeing a situation where Google profits by scraping content, but the creators never do. None of this would've been an issue 20 years ago when 90% of the web was noncommercial, but now it destroys an entire industry.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    Parent’s robots.txt solution would work in your scenario, but they would not be listed at all on the results page. If they are never going to get the traffic anyway, why be listed? Interesting.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  That is not the IP extortion model used by YouTube.
- hownottowrite 6y ago
  If a better web experience is core to Google’s interests, paying for content should pay off in the long run. That's what they're demanding of content creators anyway, so they should put their money where there mouth is.
- mar13032021 6y ago
  Negotiate with a company that bans accounts randomly and does not have a helpline? Nah, let government go after them, I bet they will be taking _those_ phone calls.

kgeist 6y ago

In 2021, it looks like Google is more predatory than Microsoft

sullyj3 6y ago

They're not wrong, but coming from the creators of AMP this is a bit rich.

izacus 6y ago
AMP was the defense against all content moving into native apps like Facebook. Antithesis of open web, with completely locked down content, applied DRM and no ability to contribute without the review of platform owners. It's that the endgame you'd have preferred? Ecosystem of apps because news web developers refused to make their ad and autoplay video ridden websites usable on the mobile devices? Look at the trends and tell me if you'd have preferred to read all your content in an Apple News walled garden instead?
- fakedang 6y ago
  > AMP was the defense against all content moving into native apps like Facebook. Google: We will defend you but we'll also strangle you while at it.
  - izacus 6y ago
    Of course, they're a corporation. The question is - why did noone else step up and try to address the issue? Other corpos just wanted to silo all data into their proprietary platforms and opensource/openweb teams just pretended that the issue never existed.

onlyfortoday2 6y ago

ahahahahha funny

nojito 6y ago

> News organizations have ad inventory to sell, but they can no longer sell directly to those who want to place ads,” says Microsoft president Brad Smith. “Instead, for all practical purposes they must use Google’s tools, operate on Google’s ad exchanges, contribute data to Google’s operations, and pay Google money. All this impacts the ability of news organizations to benefit economically even from advertising on their own sites.” I’m not too versed in the Australia news thing, but is this statement true?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sMarsIntruder 6y ago

Says who invented and imposed FLoC.

smaryjerry 6y ago

Google, the company that actively tries to make YouTube not work on any Amazon device simple because Amazon is a competitor, is complaining about someone breaking the open web? Google refused to build an app for Amazon devices and even when Amazon had a working app that was essentially a browser that visited YouTube on their Alexa devices with screens, YouTube changed their website for the sole purpose of breaking it on Amazon devices. Google has no right to complain here.

bqmjjx0kac 6y ago
IIRC, Amazon built their own UI around YouTube which meant YouTube was not monetizing those views. Edit: > A person familiar with Google's thinking on the matter told Engadget that a big point of contention had been the fact that Amazon implemented what was essentially a hacked version of YouTube on both the Echo Show and Fire TV. Rather than work with Google to build versions of its apps that work on Amazon's devices, Amazon has been trying to do it itself -- a move that cuts out features and also likely affects Google's ability to collect on some of the ad revenue that comes from its videos. https://www.engadget.com/2017-12-05-google-blocking-youtube-on-amazon-echo-show-fire-tv.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-12-05-google-blocking-youtube-...
- smaryjerry 6y ago
  The update at the bottom details amazons side of the story: Amazon has responded, and its response points to the unfair nature of Google effectively blocking access to the YouTube web site based on the type of device being used to access it. "Echo Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube's existing website," Amazon's statement reads. "Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website. We hope to resolve this with Google as soon as possible."
HJain13 6y ago
> Amazon isn’t without fault either. The company dragged its feet for years in releasing a proper Prime Video app for Android in the Google Play Store. Previously, you had to install Amazon’s own, separate app store and only then could you install Prime Video. It was a sad, convoluted attempt at luring users to the Amazon Appstore. Even now, Prime Video still doesn’t support Chromecast. > And that’s directly tied to Chromecast’s absence on Amazon.com. Since there’s no easy way of watching Prime Video, Amazon won’t sell it. But it’s Amazon’s own fault that Prime Video doesn’t work with Chromecast. Amazon has the power to make it happen. What’s Google supposed to do in this scenario? > Amazon’s decision to remove popular, well-liked products from its store over this spat — or never sell them to begin with — is an ugly example of the company throwing its weight and power around. No one should be surprised that Google is crying foul. Is the company under any obligation to sell Google Home — the chief rival to its own Echo? Of course not. Them’s the breaks. But the Chromecast situation is troubling, and Amazon’s recent halting of sales for certain Nest hardware (with no real explanation) seems juvenile. Prime shipping is still a very powerful incentive, and Amazon is well aware of that. https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16738752/google-youtube-amazon-punishing-customers-feud https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16738752/google-youtube-a... Amazon is nowhere near innocent in their feud

Shadonototro 6y ago

The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft They used the same techniques for Stadia, they bashed it while praising Xbox Cloud The same with Team vs Zoom And the same with AWS/GCE vs Azure Hmm

throwaway53453 6y ago
The media is institutionally biased against Google and Facebook because they are 'direct competitors' in their heads. Don't get me wrong, there are issues with Big Tech, but I don't believe the news industry's collapse to be one of them. It's like arguing with the printing press or railroads galvanizing the dinosaurs of their era.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Facebook is also the favorite most hated company on social media sites like Reddit, Hacker News. Imo there’s no logic behind the degree of disliking FB over some other big tech.
supernovae 6y ago
This entire thread is depression and responses like this are pure depression. Why does any of this matter? All I see are a bunch of apologists or a bunch of people making assumptions and no one really discussing anything without their extreme bias and prejudices in the way. The first comments here are people bashing the Microsoft of 20 years ago.. And this one... "The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft" - for no other reason than to perpetuate the bias here. Why do we do this to ourselves people? This is absurd. The Verge is very much in love with Apple, they're not in love with Google. That doesn't make them Pro-Microsoft. The verge DID hire a a fantastic Microsoft writer who knows Microsoft inside and out, so they're not Oblivious to Microsoft - but that doesn't make them "Pro Microsoft". And for Christ's sake - NONE of what is mentioned here makes Microsoft bad. They're a business making products and building services doing what businesses do and its certainly not Balmer's Microsoft anymore. Who cares what Google isn't happy with when its painfully apparent no one is is happy with anything around here...

gerash 6y ago

Some pretend Microsoft has turned into this benevolent corporation lately with their "Microsoft <heart> Linux" and adopting Android and Chrome. Well all those were done because they'd lost market share in servers, mobile OS and desktop browsers despite being the dominant player and forcing their offerings the whole time. Microsoft used to run smear campaigns (remember Scroogled?) when they hired Hillary Clinton's strategist. This last case shows they don't even care if it means everyone can be sued for not paying for a hyperlink. Say whatever you want about AMP or Google reader or whatnot but when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival? Microsoft's corporate tactics have remained the same.

ggambetta 6y ago
Some people are too young to remember. I recently worked with new grads in a startup, and for these 20-somethings Microsoft has always been somewhat cool, and Bill Gates has always been this benevolent old guy that cures diseases. They were very surprised where I shared the articles where they were saying literally LINUX IS CANCER. With a mixture of time passing and billions of dollars, it looks like they've successfully "cleaned" their image :(
- tpmx 6y ago
  High-end, (long-term) consistent PR management works very well. (Remember how everyone used to hate George W. Bush with the passion of a thousand burning suns?)
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I think there might have been something else that helped dim that hatred than just PR management. A sort of comparative effect as it were.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      A key element of this long-term consistent PR is timing. Time makes old criminal idiocy pale, and there'll always be another clown.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Microsoft owns MSNBC, huge conflicts of interest.

Paianni 6y ago
Microsoft hasn't owned any part of MSNBC since 2012.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
"Microsoft divested itself of its stakes in the MSNBC channel in 2005 and in msnbc.com in July 2012" ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

saagarjha 6y ago

If you haven’t read the blog post already, give it a minute: https://blog.google/products/news/google-commitment-supporting-journalism/ https://blog.google/products/news/google-commitment-supporti.... It’s a mudslinging embarrassment. I’m not a huge fan of the new rules, but it’s clear that they’ve scared Google to the point where their PR department is unable to moderate themselves anymore, a trend I’ve noticed with every large tech company when placed in a difficult position. Until you see more companies doing this I think it’s mostly safe to assume that any regulations you’re applying to them are toothless and just a cost of doing business.

LegitShady 6y ago
wow it's hard to believe that's official google messaging. It looks like someone lost their cool and hit 'submit' without giving it a day and re-reading it.
alpaca128 6y ago
> They are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival That's rich coming from Google.
- path411 6y ago
  Yeah at first I read it the other way and thought maybe microsoft was criticizing amp or something
bogomipz 6y ago
Agreed. The following is particularly cringeworthy: >"And it’s no coincidence that Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us comes on the heels of the SolarWinds attack and at a moment when they’ve allowed tens of thousands of their customers — including government agencies in the U.S., NATO allies, banks, nonprofits, telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations — to be actively hacked via major Microsoft vulnerabilities." What does the Solar Winds hack have to do with news publishing regulation? Mentioning Bing here would have been logical but this poorly written run-on sentence is just pure mud slinging of the same type he is accusing MS of. Are there no corporate PR officers at Google who need to approve such posts prior to publishing? What an embarrassment.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

I'd like to recap the issue here: An Australian law was based on the premise that it was unfair for Google to reap benefits from sending traffic to AU media sites. The law also forced search engines to firehose user data (w/o implementing privacy protections [1]) to Australian media interests (eg: Rupert Murdoch). Google said, "Ok. We'll comply with the law, forgo those benefits and stop sending traffic." Oddly, this did not satisfy the interests behind the law. Microsoft stepped in and said "We're totally down with this law" - including, apparently, the egregious gift of user data to AU media interests. [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200817/22554345133/google-warns-australians-that-governments-plan-to-tax-google-to-give-money-to-newspapers-will-harm-search-youtube.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200817/22554345133/googl...

bfgoodrich 6y ago
This is an absurdly biased and fact-free recap. Any framing that posits that Google is benevolently "sending traffic" betrays that it should be discarded at the outset. Google (like Facebook and most other "make money on your content" empires) desperately tries to send as little traffic as possible to anyone, which is why they have AMP, scrape content and provide a dubious "expert engine", and provided a news dashboard where they summarized every news site. I see this same ludicrous argument made re: Facebook. When Facebook temporarily blocked news, downloads of news site apps rose dramatically. It turns out that they weren't helpful whatsoever to anyone. They are a desperate suckerfish just trying to live off of the creation of other people.
oezi 6y ago
The monopoly powers Google holds over search have given them such a strong position, that Google is more than reaping benefits. It is in the public's interest to prevent such powers to destroy the 4th column of balance in democracies that journalism should strive to be. This is not to say that Murdoch's news empire isn't bad as well, but no country should sit back and watch while Google and Facebook siphon money out of the countries.
- koboll 6y ago
  The traditional way to do this would be something like building a domestic search engine and levying steep taxes on foreign ad buys, rather than this bizarre attempt at backhanded protectionism.

EasyTiger_ 6y ago

> Google has launched a scathing attack on Microsoft today, accusing it of trying “to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival.” That is some pathological levels of projection.

bogomipz 6y ago

I'm in no way defending the Australian legislation but It's absurd to me that Google and recently Facebook have positioned themselves as defenders of "the open web." Google with their AMP, Project Dragonfly and Chrome dominance and FB with their walled garden seem to reach for the "open web" argument whenever something threatens their status quo.

cturner 6y ago

The Australian situation has created an incentive for tech companies to consider getting into news-content production, a sector that was previously not-lucrative. Find a struggling newspaper to purchase for a song. That gets you a masthead and a basic editorial pipeline. Then, use strong salary packages to raid the content talent from the existing participants. Alphabet could do this with pocket change. This is similar to the play the media titans use to capture sports broadcast rights - World Series Cricket in the 70s, SuperLeague in the 90s.

rdiddly 6y ago

Wow, quite the display of projective hypocrisy between the pot and kettle.

jimnotgym 6y ago

“The Kettles are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival,” says Mr Pot.

whatever_dude 6y ago

Tangential, but am I the only one who thinks that Google News is really bad nowadays? It used to be my main source of news, but I can't stand it anymore. It's clear that it's trying to drive engagement by offering links more likely to be clicked. My custom topics are hidden away, stuff I don't want to read about is brought to the top... just overall bad in every way.

ceras 6y ago
I still use it, but also feel it's not really showing me the right content. What do you use instead?
- whatever_dude 6y ago
  I just moved back to RSS (using Feedly). Took a while to get the right set of sources, but the experience is orders of magnitude better. I would even say that had an actual impact on my mental health, as I'm not bombarded with clickbait, outrage-driven crap anymore; I'm still informed with some responsible new RSS sources, I just don't need a firehose.

nano-erud 6y ago

bitch fight