56 ms·

Google pays ‘enormous’ sums to maintain search-engine dominance, DOJ says

404 points by helsinkiandrew 4y ago

kornhole 4y ago
The article did not mention specific numbers, but Google is estimated to pay Apple about $20B this year to stay integrated into their systems. That amount surely buys a lot of favors.
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
https://archive.ph/pfQWv https://archive.ph/pfQWv
hmate9 4y ago
If they didn’t pay so much then Bing or Yahoo would pay a slightly smaller amount to be the default and not Google. Would that be fair?
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Its not the money so much as the methods. Though the money does keep it out of reach.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I thought Yahoo shows Bing search results.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    Correct. Yahoo! Search is powered by Bing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search
- gausswho 4y ago
  If we're going for fair how about outlawing search engine defaults since they've proven to lead to unreasonable competitive advantage.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    What's the alternative? During setup you have to choose amongst hundreds of options, e.g. does "you.com" make the list?
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Maybe those engines could all bid on an annual basis to be positioned higher in the rankings? /s :)
    - Closi 4y ago
      Well it could be a small list chosen by Firefox as a result of an honest selection of the best options their users would most likely want, rather than just defaulting to the megacorp that bribed them with the most money. But I'm really solutionising here, and I'm sure some of the worlds brightest engineers can come up with a solution thats better for users than "we default to whoever pays us the most money".
      - kornhole 4y ago
        Let's create an extension that merely prompts for the URL of your desired search engine. On confirm, it makes all the technical browser settings to set as default.
        kyleee 4y ago
        good idea, where to start? do you have a good extension skeleton repo to start from? i've only worked on a firefox only extension but it probably should be chrome and ff compatible especially now with brave
        kornhole 4y ago
        I noticed that Ecosia, Startpage, and Brave search all have extensions that will set those as the default. I am not sure if their code is open, but I imagine the Brave extension is probably best place to start.
- n4r9 4y ago
  Not sure what you're getting at; ideally they're subject to the same anti-trust legislation as Google. The fact that others might also try to break the law doesn't make it pointless to uphold the law.
- rendaw 4y ago
  We're in a weird world where we're asking if it's okay for the public to be harmed because a company with lots of money (that they earned from the public) is paying another company lots of money.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Changing a default search engine is extremely easy and cheap. I struggle to define it as “harm”. Should a person not be expected to be able to do that much?
    - pydry 4y ago
      In theory it is and yet the extremely high price Google is willing to pay to keep it default suggests that it's harder than it looks. Plenty of non techies are deathly afraid of changing any settings. Google is paying a high price to erect an artificial barrier to entry against less well capitalized competitors looking to target them.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        Google paying a high price suggests people will not change the default. It does not suggest changing the default is hard. People may not change the default because they 1. find it too difficult 2. they do not believe they are negatively effected by not changing the default 3. they do not even know it is a choice 4. or they prefer Google. Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on educating people how to use computing devices than nannying them by barring two businesses from engaging in business. #1 thru #3 can be changed via public education, or even requiring more transparency from search engines to make comparing them easier. The physical actions of changing the default are not hard.
        pydry 4y ago
        >Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on educating people Yes, thats what most corporations engaged in abusive or anticompetitive business practices say. Credit card companies rake in the dough from abusive interest rates and then feign an interest in helping "educate" the consumers out of being exploited by them to keep regulators off their back and the senators they purchase do the same. Rinse and repeat, feigning concern for "financial literacy" for 30 years with nothing changing because nothing was supposed to. The system was "working". I say put the regulators on their backs. If a business transaction is bad for the public then f*king prohibit it. End of story. "Educating users" out of avoiding abusive practices isnt meant to work.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  So it's okay for me to rob you, because if I dont do it, the next criminal will?
O__________O 4y ago
Apple for sure would have already built or acquired a search engine if it was not for Google giving them billions to stay on the iPhone.
- paulcole 4y ago
  I’m not so sure about this. Apple doesn’t (seem to) mind killing off sources of revenue by doing something new.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Apple did build a search engine, but it doesn’t look like Google on the front end, it looks like a set of features in Siri, Maps, iOS, MacOS, etc.
  - O__________O 4y ago
    Google’s deal with Apple is specifically for iPhone’s built in web browser. Apple was working on a web search engine, but killed it off after Google renewed their deal the first time.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      > Apple was working on a web search engine, but killed it off after Google renewed their deal the first time. They might've said they killed it off (I haven't seen reports of that), but the Applebot crawler has been increasingly indexing the web for at least 8 years, ostensibly for services like Siri and Spotlight: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683 Also, we know Apple hates to be beholden to other companies, triply so for core platform capabilities. Search is surely that, especially as its importance extends beyond the web into meatspace — streets, stores, things, etc. Apple will introduce web search based on their search engine when it's clear that it beats Google in notable ways. If that takes another 5 years, I'd guess they're fine with that.
- treis 4y ago
  That's the interesting thing about this. It's an open question of which monopolist is abusing their power here. Apple threatening to use their iPhone monopoly to bully their way into search or Google paying off Apple to forestall competition.
manimino 4y ago
One thing I find amazing is that "single box" search engines are still the standard. The biggest pain point of using Google is when it incorrectly guesses what you are trying to search. But the user is only allowed to type in one little box, so it's hard for the user to even express what they want. If the user had multiple inputs, such as the ability to drill down, define general topics, etc., it would be way easier for them to express what they actually want. A Google competitor that did this well could win.
- eganist 4y ago
  https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search This?
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Yes, and very few people use that because most users can't tell an app from a website, spell URL correctly or tell you what "" does in google. When I need those features I use the operators directly in the search field anyway. The single omniscient search field is an amazing interface, it's incredible at what it does, which is understanding what our idiodic human brain is attempting to express with sausage fingers a monday morning.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > spell URL correctly That's impossiboe by design. There are different cuaracters that look identical, foreign alphabets and special characters. Then there are GUids and queries in url
  - manimino 4y ago
    Oof. That's really complicated and still doesn't do the trick. Concrete example -- when searching Reddit, I can check a box to confine the search to the current subreddit I'm on. That does a wonderful job of restricting results, and... it's one checkbox. You don't need to make search feel like filing your taxes to make it better.
meltyness 4y ago
I default to Bing on desktop, and DDG on mobile. For a specific search, I often give-up, and begrudgingly revert. It's obvious that Google search has become the better product, but quality has wavered in the past 5 years, it's been on an uptrend. That on occasion the search task reports a 1.4s delay is actually reassuring. Functioning operator search, Scholar, and Books seem to be the distinct advantage Google has for many of my use cases. My biggest issue with all of the big players is the gaslighting and erosion. They need to dogfood everything. When my keyboard ime is suddenly under attack, and it gets stuck that way for months, it's time to look at how you're doing things.
- russianGuy83829 4y ago
  What is your reason for using bing instead of DDG on the desktop? DDG uses results from bing, so in theory the quality should be the same?
  - meltyness 4y ago
    Bing's results tend to be a lot more crowded and visually distracting, I'd really just rather have search results on my tiny phone screen.
    - jonas-w 4y ago
      But why would you want the distraction on desktop?
asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
Wouldn’t it be really good for google if the DOJ banned paying for default placement? I mean it seems like an untenable result to say that anyone but google can pay for default placement. So if paying for default is not okay, then that just saves google a lot of money (since google knows most people will pick them if presented a slate of options).
- matt_attack 4y ago
  If they knew most people would pick them, then why are they paying?
  - eloisant 4y ago
    To prevent their competitors for making deals to be the default.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
      Bingo. Google is less paying for default placement and more paying so that they aren’t locked out by default.
  - bigyikes 4y ago
    Most people would pick Google if there was no default option. Most people don’t change the default option though. If Google didn’t (or couldn’t by law) pay such large sums, someone else (e.g. Bing) would pay a bit less and become the default. Even though most people prefer Google over Bing, there is still a significant incumbent advantage for being the default option.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And because little old Microsoft couldn’t afford to pay Apple to be the default search engine?
      - selectodude 4y ago
bogwog 4y ago
> The revenue-sharing deals that Google offers to browsers are essential to companies like Mozilla Corp., he said, because they offer their products to users for free. > “The reason they partner with Google isn’t because they had to; it’s because they want to,” Schmidtlein said. Mozilla would disappear overnight if Google stopped paying them. Good riddance IMO (even though I love FF and it's the only browser I use). They haven't been able to build a sustainable business despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars per year from Google. A flower shop on a street corner can get a better ROI. Mozilla's management is incompetent and shady.
- polote 4y ago
  The current Mozilla might disappear but if it brings back the old Mozilla it can only be a good news
  - prox 4y ago
    Yeah it seems like the right kind of attrition. I would definitely pay patreon-wise for Firefox.
    - klysm 4y ago
      Unfortunately you would be in the vast minority. I’m not sure there’d be enough individuals willing to do it to keep up with chrome
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        A big part of the reason browsers are so expensive to build and maintain is because Google keeps expanding the set of features browsers are expected to implement (and Mozilla offers no meaningful resistance to this.) Google creates a problem so large that only Google has the funds to solve it.
    - speed_spread 4y ago
      Right kind of attrition? Execs would fire every dev rather than themselves take a pay cut. The fact that this would actually kill the project is beyond them because they'd stay in office a little longer.
superkuh 4y ago
It's a shame that google never returns more than 400 results (num results per page * num pages < 400). Maybe if they spent some money on actually better and more search they wouldn't need to spend so much on buying markets.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
spaghettiToy 4y ago
I know I should hate google for some reason, but despite the SEO spam, they are still better than bing and duck duck go. I think my cocktail of degoogled Google products + adblock solutions + being that person who doesn't care about privacy has made Google 'fine'. I avoid using Google products unless they are FOSS. I'm not going to get screwed by "play music" or similar again. Out of FAAMG, I think I like Google the best. But that doesn't say much.
- kayson 4y ago
  I've long since switched to DDG nearly exclusively and I've rarely felt like I am unable to find what I'm looking for. When I can't, I switch to Google (easily using DDG's !g bang) and almost always can't find it there either.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Ddg works for me for technical searches, google is better for digging up stuff though. I default to ddg but use google as needed.
- lofatdairy 4y ago
  >FAAMG Is that with Netflix swapped with Microsoft? If that's the case, we might as well change the entire acronym to GAMMA to account for the Facebook -> Meta rename.
  - theandrewbailey 4y ago
    F*** the MMAAAN: Meta Microsoft Alphabet Apple Amazon Netflix
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Netflix never deserved to be in the same sentence as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. Their market influence and market cap were never in the same realm.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
crazygringo 4y ago
Isn't this the kind of argument that bites the government in the foot? On the one hand, plenty of antitrust people argue that Google is a natural monopoly and needs to be broken up because the regular rules of competition aren't working. On the other hand, here's the DOJ seemingly arguing the opposite -- that Google needs to fight so hard to maintain competitive dominance that it's forced to pay billions of dollars just to keep its market position. You can't have it both ways. And companies strike exclusivity deals all the time, that's normal capitalism. Really this is just ammunition for why Google isn't abusing anything, it's just competing normally.
- scarmig 4y ago
  Sure you can. The ability to establish a noncompetitive monopoly via paying billions of dollars to maintain a market position that allows them to make those payments and still make billions of dollars of profit is perfectly compatible with and even evidence for a monopoly. DDG isn't going to be able to write those checks. Though perhaps simply banning these types of exclusivity deals would be sufficient to return to a competitive market. It seems lighter touch than breaking up Google.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Google needs to fight so hard to maintain competitive dominance These are words you're putting in their mouths. > pay billions of dollars just to keep its market position. This is what they're doing. It's not a desperate fight, it's a bribe of what is a trivial amount for Google. It's a network of patronage run by a monopolist, not desperate street-fighting bribes, or whatever it is that the DOJ can't have both ways. Imagine a similar scenario where a local businessman is paying off local politicians and judges. Would you actually make the argument that the fact that the businessman is paying everyone off shows that his position is so precarious that he can't possibly be running the town? Monopolistic behavior as evidence against monopoly?
  - Spivak 4y ago
    This argument falls down because if all it took was a few billion in capital to buy a bunch of ads and the right partnerships and then extract 100x the value from your newfound monopoly it would be the easiest business opportunity in all of existence. You can't compare this to government bribes because the bidding process isn't open. If politicians sold their votes publicly to the highest bidder the market dynamics would be different and maintaining power would be ludicrously expensive. If Google really is paying "trivial" amounts of money then those partnerships must not really be as market swaying as argued. Google paying tiny amounts is evidence of a monopoly. Google paying large amounts is evidence of a competitive market.
kvetching 4y ago
Google does this yet lies about their searches to maintain an illusion of competence. For example, you can type in something like "purpose of life" and it will say it has 2 billion results, yet if you try to go to result 500, you can't, it will stop at 400, then change the number to 400 results only on the last page. This happens for every query. Google lies about the astronomical number of search results, then only shows a few hundred at most.
- alas44 4y ago
  Could the number be valid from indexing standpoint but irrelevant search results are deemed unworthy of display to user? Unworthy + maybe costly on back-end side e.g. because infrequently accessed data is in cold storage?
  - kevincox 4y ago
    That's exactly what it is. Each page is more expensive to serve than the last (it is basically joining a bunch of indexes for each term and then skipping the first N). At some number of pages they drew a line and decided that the value of these pages isn't worth the cost (and DoS vulnerability) to serve them.
    - JacobThreeThree 4y ago
      Nevertheless, it's a dark pattern. They should make it clear to the user how many results are available to them.
      - kevincox 4y ago
        They are "available". Just the way to get there isn't by going through the result pages but by refining your search.
        wolpoli 4y ago
        It made sense back then when you could tell Google the exact words that you are looking for. But now that Google drops random words from our query, it's not exactly easy to refine the search query.
stainablesteel 4y ago
it's true~ish but laughable because google sucks compared to ten years ago, bing and yandex aren't useless either i only use it to find things on specific websites like SO or reddit if I want to find a newer website I try newer search engines
fareesh 4y ago
Google search results have become quite terrible over the past few years. Have important people on the search team moved on?
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
phpthrowaway99 4y ago
My personal moment when I realized Google isn't as smart as I thought, came from searching phone numbers. A number calls me. I type in the number with spaces to Google to try and find it. No results. Nothing. I add dashes. Results come up. I put the area code in parentheses, different results come up. If google can't figure out how to search 9 digit numbers against phone numbers correctly, I'm not sure I can trust them for anything.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  Wow, you're smarter than I am, or at least more persistent. I ran into the same thing and I figured it was some sort of privacy issue or something and just switched to looking the numbers up on Bing. Pretty sure it used to work to google numbers without the dashes.
- abraham 4y ago
  Identifying something as a phone number is very difficult. https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHOODS.md https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHO...
  - phpthrowaway99 4y ago
    Those things are all true, but if I search Google for: 510 555 1212 It shouldn't take massive AI and 25 phds to find a result for a company that lists 510-555-1212 as their phone number. Ok maybe it does. But it's not like Google is a startup and they haven't had time to get around to it. And add in the fact that if I do search 510 555-1212 I really wish they could atleast bring up (510) 555-1212. I guess for now I'll give them a pass on 510.555.1212
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  I was under the impression spam callers in particular actively randomize and spoof their numbers.
  - phpthrowaway99 4y ago
gernb 4y ago
I'm curious how much other major brands pay to stay in their places Coke arguably pays megabucks to have giant displays in prime locations. Those locations have limited space so Coke taking up one is Similarly, IIUC, companies pay to have their products put in conspicuous places in stores like Walmart, Target, etc. Only rich companies can afford to always get the spots that stick out the most. I don't know if those are compariable. Google pays Apple to be the default search engine seems no different than Coke paying to be the first soda on the aisle or to be featured on the edge of the aisle. People are still free to pick a different search engine or go into the soda aisle. Of course in retail another tactic is to make a bunch of products that appear to be different but are all basically the same. I think Crest or Colgate and 15 kinds of mouthwash all of which have the same "active ingredient" at the same concentration. The goal is to fill up the shelves with your products so there is no room left for the competition's products since shelf space is limited.
- andrewxdiamond 4y ago
  Coke gives Disney unlimited free beverages as long as they only sell coke products in their parks
  - NavinF 4y ago
    Sounds like bullshit and at least one site agrees with my intuition: > Legend: Because of the advertising value of having its products featured at Disney theme parks, Coca Cola provides Disneyland with all of its beverage products free of charge. >Behind the Legend: This is true, but highly misleading. For years, Coke has had an advantage over rival Pepsi because it provides its products free of charge to all of its customers. The company makes up the loss by requiring that beverages only be sold in official cups or containers -- and charging an enormous amount for those contains. The container charge is based on a sliding scale depending on the customer. Individual consumers, purchasing beverages at a grocery or convenience store, pay only a few cents for the can or bottle in which their beverage comes. At the other end of the scale, movie theaters and theme parks like Disneyland pay as much as $2.00 for a single drink cup, making the exorbitant prices charged for drinks at those locations completely understandable.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Where can I find the actual information from the DOJ about this? Also: > a lawsuit from 2014 revealed that Google paid Apple $1 billion to be the main search engine on iPhone Why does it take a lawsuit to discover these cashflows? Google can pay Apple billions and nobody knows until there is a lawsuit?
- nickff 4y ago
  Everyone knew that Google was paying Apple, they just didn't know exactly how much.
RunSet 4y ago
I remember when Firefox's motto was "your web the way you like it." Now users have to install an extension to set a home page, which- and I'm sure this is pure coincidence- might interfere with users interaction with the search bar, known in bygone days as the URL bar. By the way, Firefox's default search engine is google.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  Mozilla also wants to deplatform/ban anyone they disagree with politically, which is the entire opposite of "your web the way you like it".
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    You're being down voted, but I must say this is one of the things that has been most slowly driving me away from Mozilla. They are not only developing a browser, but they also have an economical and political agenda. That's okay if you agree with them, but it just feels so wrong that when I'm using their browser or donate to the Mozilla foundation I'm in some ways supporting this. If you're reading this and you're not aware what we're talking about check out their blog post from last year [0]. Generally free software is already pretty political, just take a look at the FSF, but Mozilla takes this to the next level, and makes it even worse by having this confusing corporation/foundation setup where you are kind of deceived of donating for the foundation to help develop Firefox (their only important product) when that money can never (legally) be used for that purpose. It just doesn't feel genuine. I am back to using Firefox though because Blink being the only browser engine is a monopolistic nightmare waiting to happen (in fact it already is, any web spec is just a suggestion, the true spec is what Google decides to do with their browser). PS: I should also put a disclaimer that I'm not American, do not live in the USA, and do not care much about what happens there, and that's kind of what bothers me so much, not so much the political-alignment of Mozilla itself. Although I do think that de-platforming is enough, and I'm not really a fan of "factual voices", being someone that lives in a third world country which has already taken this path, where both extreme right and left claim to be the holders of the absolute truth. [0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/we-need-more-...
bane 4y ago
Back in the day, one of my first developer jobs was to build a "meta-search" system that issued queries and scraped results from something like a dozen different search engines - it supported pagination, direct links, annotations etc. all written in Perl. The 30 or 40 folks I supported found it insanely useful, and it ran on a spare decrepit laptop in a corner of my office with literal dozens of MB of RAM. This was maybe...2002? I sort of miss the days when there were different engines with different strengths and weaknesses and an endless set of matches for very literal queries. Users knew exactly why they got the responses they got from Altavista or whatever other engine and understood it was mostly a matter of what they indexed instead of a black-box of "optimizations" that give semi-random results most of which are spam sites. I miss the old days.
- kyleee 4y ago
  i'm pretty sure the timing is right to jump back in the game, people are paying kagi, the marginalia threads on here are getting lots of comments and good discussion. people are tired of google and the fact they've let google search rot and even made it intentionally worse and worse for users who aren't ad cows. so here's to hoping some of the optimism and beauty of the niche search solution you ran can return and is not just relegated to the past
dreamcompiler 4y ago
> Google faces competition from dozens of other companies, he said, including ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Grubhub Inc. Google faces competition from Grubhub like General Motors faces competition from Schwinn.
ineedasername 4y ago
Chrome showed us that people will change the default when something is clearly a better experience for the user, even when the entrenched giant was Microsoft. Just like with what happened with IE, as Google Search becomes worse and worse quality with advertising cruft, SEO spam etc. filling the first pages of results there will come a point where they’ve lowered the bar enough for a competitor to come in. That said, I’d still prefer to be asked on first use “which search engine would you like to use?”.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Chrome leveraged Google Web Search, itself already an established monopoly in search, to facilitate that spread.
- MikusR 4y ago
  The entrenched giant was Mozilla with Firefox. Chrome was distributed as malware included in various installers including Flash updates. And as scareware when using Google services.
xattt 4y ago
Is everyone in here getting nerd-sniped into search result numbers versus the enormous sums sugar daddy Google pays to maintain dominance?
- utopcell 4y ago
  yeah. Or rather, forced to pay.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Rather. I'm disappointed in HN comments on this thread.
scarface74 4y ago
Just for a point of reference: Unless Google has someone increased their profit dramatically with respect to Android over the past 5 years and I don’t see how since Android’s market share hasn’t changed that much since 2016, Apple makes far more from Google in mobile than Google makes from Android. https://www.engadget.com/2016-01-21-android-22-billion-in-profit-oracle.html https://www.engadget.com/2016-01-21-android-22-billion-in-pr...
Raziarazzi 4y ago
Yes, and here's hoping that trend continues and Google searches become extinct.

The article did not mention specific numbers, but Google is estimated to pay Apple about $20B this year to stay integrated into their systems. That amount surely buys a lot of favors.

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

https://archive.ph/pfQWv https://archive.ph/pfQWv

hmate9 4y ago

If they didn’t pay so much then Bing or Yahoo would pay a slightly smaller amount to be the default and not Google. Would that be fair?

spywaregorilla 4y ago
Its not the money so much as the methods. Though the money does keep it out of reach.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
I thought Yahoo shows Bing search results.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  Correct. Yahoo! Search is powered by Bing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search
gausswho 4y ago
If we're going for fair how about outlawing search engine defaults since they've proven to lead to unreasonable competitive advantage.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  What's the alternative? During setup you have to choose amongst hundreds of options, e.g. does "you.com" make the list?
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Maybe those engines could all bid on an annual basis to be positioned higher in the rankings? /s :)
  - Closi 4y ago
    Well it could be a small list chosen by Firefox as a result of an honest selection of the best options their users would most likely want, rather than just defaulting to the megacorp that bribed them with the most money. But I'm really solutionising here, and I'm sure some of the worlds brightest engineers can come up with a solution thats better for users than "we default to whoever pays us the most money".
    - kornhole 4y ago
      Let's create an extension that merely prompts for the URL of your desired search engine. On confirm, it makes all the technical browser settings to set as default.
      - kyleee 4y ago
        good idea, where to start? do you have a good extension skeleton repo to start from? i've only worked on a firefox only extension but it probably should be chrome and ff compatible especially now with brave
        kornhole 4y ago
        I noticed that Ecosia, Startpage, and Brave search all have extensions that will set those as the default. I am not sure if their code is open, but I imagine the Brave extension is probably best place to start.
n4r9 4y ago
Not sure what you're getting at; ideally they're subject to the same anti-trust legislation as Google. The fact that others might also try to break the law doesn't make it pointless to uphold the law.
rendaw 4y ago
We're in a weird world where we're asking if it's okay for the public to be harmed because a company with lots of money (that they earned from the public) is paying another company lots of money.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Changing a default search engine is extremely easy and cheap. I struggle to define it as “harm”. Should a person not be expected to be able to do that much?
  - pydry 4y ago
    In theory it is and yet the extremely high price Google is willing to pay to keep it default suggests that it's harder than it looks. Plenty of non techies are deathly afraid of changing any settings. Google is paying a high price to erect an artificial barrier to entry against less well capitalized competitors looking to target them.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Google paying a high price suggests people will not change the default. It does not suggest changing the default is hard. People may not change the default because they 1. find it too difficult 2. they do not believe they are negatively effected by not changing the default 3. they do not even know it is a choice 4. or they prefer Google. Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on educating people how to use computing devices than nannying them by barring two businesses from engaging in business. #1 thru #3 can be changed via public education, or even requiring more transparency from search engines to make comparing them easier. The physical actions of changing the default are not hard.
      - pydry 4y ago
        >Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on educating people Yes, thats what most corporations engaged in abusive or anticompetitive business practices say. Credit card companies rake in the dough from abusive interest rates and then feign an interest in helping "educate" the consumers out of being exploited by them to keep regulators off their back and the senators they purchase do the same. Rinse and repeat, feigning concern for "financial literacy" for 30 years with nothing changing because nothing was supposed to. The system was "working". I say put the regulators on their backs. If a business transaction is bad for the public then f*king prohibit it. End of story. "Educating users" out of avoiding abusive practices isnt meant to work.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
So it's okay for me to rob you, because if I dont do it, the next criminal will?

O__________O 4y ago

Apple for sure would have already built or acquired a search engine if it was not for Google giving them billions to stay on the iPhone.

paulcole 4y ago
I’m not so sure about this. Apple doesn’t (seem to) mind killing off sources of revenue by doing something new.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Apple did build a search engine, but it doesn’t look like Google on the front end, it looks like a set of features in Siri, Maps, iOS, MacOS, etc.
- O__________O 4y ago
  Google’s deal with Apple is specifically for iPhone’s built in web browser. Apple was working on a web search engine, but killed it off after Google renewed their deal the first time.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    > Apple was working on a web search engine, but killed it off after Google renewed their deal the first time. They might've said they killed it off (I haven't seen reports of that), but the Applebot crawler has been increasingly indexing the web for at least 8 years, ostensibly for services like Siri and Spotlight: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683 Also, we know Apple hates to be beholden to other companies, triply so for core platform capabilities. Search is surely that, especially as its importance extends beyond the web into meatspace — streets, stores, things, etc. Apple will introduce web search based on their search engine when it's clear that it beats Google in notable ways. If that takes another 5 years, I'd guess they're fine with that.
treis 4y ago
That's the interesting thing about this. It's an open question of which monopolist is abusing their power here. Apple threatening to use their iPhone monopoly to bully their way into search or Google paying off Apple to forestall competition.

manimino 4y ago

One thing I find amazing is that "single box" search engines are still the standard. The biggest pain point of using Google is when it incorrectly guesses what you are trying to search. But the user is only allowed to type in one little box, so it's hard for the user to even express what they want. If the user had multiple inputs, such as the ability to drill down, define general topics, etc., it would be way easier for them to express what they actually want. A Google competitor that did this well could win.

eganist 4y ago
https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search This?
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Yes, and very few people use that because most users can't tell an app from a website, spell URL correctly or tell you what "" does in google. When I need those features I use the operators directly in the search field anyway. The single omniscient search field is an amazing interface, it's incredible at what it does, which is understanding what our idiodic human brain is attempting to express with sausage fingers a monday morning.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > spell URL correctly That's impossiboe by design. There are different cuaracters that look identical, foreign alphabets and special characters. Then there are GUids and queries in url
- manimino 4y ago
  Oof. That's really complicated and still doesn't do the trick. Concrete example -- when searching Reddit, I can check a box to confine the search to the current subreddit I'm on. That does a wonderful job of restricting results, and... it's one checkbox. You don't need to make search feel like filing your taxes to make it better.

meltyness 4y ago

I default to Bing on desktop, and DDG on mobile. For a specific search, I often give-up, and begrudgingly revert. It's obvious that Google search has become the better product, but quality has wavered in the past 5 years, it's been on an uptrend. That on occasion the search task reports a 1.4s delay is actually reassuring. Functioning operator search, Scholar, and Books seem to be the distinct advantage Google has for many of my use cases. My biggest issue with all of the big players is the gaslighting and erosion. They need to dogfood everything. When my keyboard ime is suddenly under attack, and it gets stuck that way for months, it's time to look at how you're doing things.

russianGuy83829 4y ago
What is your reason for using bing instead of DDG on the desktop? DDG uses results from bing, so in theory the quality should be the same?
- meltyness 4y ago
  Bing's results tend to be a lot more crowded and visually distracting, I'd really just rather have search results on my tiny phone screen.
  - jonas-w 4y ago
    But why would you want the distraction on desktop?

asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago

Wouldn’t it be really good for google if the DOJ banned paying for default placement? I mean it seems like an untenable result to say that anyone but google can pay for default placement. So if paying for default is not okay, then that just saves google a lot of money (since google knows most people will pick them if presented a slate of options).

matt_attack 4y ago
If they knew most people would pick them, then why are they paying?
- eloisant 4y ago
  To prevent their competitors for making deals to be the default.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
    Bingo. Google is less paying for default placement and more paying so that they aren’t locked out by default.
- bigyikes 4y ago
  Most people would pick Google if there was no default option. Most people don’t change the default option though. If Google didn’t (or couldn’t by law) pay such large sums, someone else (e.g. Bing) would pay a bit less and become the default. Even though most people prefer Google over Bing, there is still a significant incumbent advantage for being the default option.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And because little old Microsoft couldn’t afford to pay Apple to be the default search engine?
    - selectodude 4y ago

bogwog 4y ago

> The revenue-sharing deals that Google offers to browsers are essential to companies like Mozilla Corp., he said, because they offer their products to users for free. > “The reason they partner with Google isn’t because they had to; it’s because they want to,” Schmidtlein said. Mozilla would disappear overnight if Google stopped paying them. Good riddance IMO (even though I love FF and it's the only browser I use). They haven't been able to build a sustainable business despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars per year from Google. A flower shop on a street corner can get a better ROI. Mozilla's management is incompetent and shady.

polote 4y ago
The current Mozilla might disappear but if it brings back the old Mozilla it can only be a good news
- prox 4y ago
  Yeah it seems like the right kind of attrition. I would definitely pay patreon-wise for Firefox.
  - klysm 4y ago
    Unfortunately you would be in the vast minority. I’m not sure there’d be enough individuals willing to do it to keep up with chrome
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      A big part of the reason browsers are so expensive to build and maintain is because Google keeps expanding the set of features browsers are expected to implement (and Mozilla offers no meaningful resistance to this.) Google creates a problem so large that only Google has the funds to solve it.
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    Right kind of attrition? Execs would fire every dev rather than themselves take a pay cut. The fact that this would actually kill the project is beyond them because they'd stay in office a little longer.

superkuh 4y ago

It's a shame that google never returns more than 400 results (num results per page * num pages < 400). Maybe if they spent some money on actually better and more search they wouldn't need to spend so much on buying markets.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

spaghettiToy 4y ago

I know I should hate google for some reason, but despite the SEO spam, they are still better than bing and duck duck go. I think my cocktail of degoogled Google products + adblock solutions + being that person who doesn't care about privacy has made Google 'fine'. I avoid using Google products unless they are FOSS. I'm not going to get screwed by "play music" or similar again. Out of FAAMG, I think I like Google the best. But that doesn't say much.

kayson 4y ago
I've long since switched to DDG nearly exclusively and I've rarely felt like I am unable to find what I'm looking for. When I can't, I switch to Google (easily using DDG's !g bang) and almost always can't find it there either.
_8j50 4y ago
Ddg works for me for technical searches, google is better for digging up stuff though. I default to ddg but use google as needed.
lofatdairy 4y ago
>FAAMG Is that with Netflix swapped with Microsoft? If that's the case, we might as well change the entire acronym to GAMMA to account for the Facebook -> Meta rename.
- theandrewbailey 4y ago
  F*** the MMAAAN: Meta Microsoft Alphabet Apple Amazon Netflix
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Netflix never deserved to be in the same sentence as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. Their market influence and market cap were never in the same realm.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago

crazygringo 4y ago

Isn't this the kind of argument that bites the government in the foot? On the one hand, plenty of antitrust people argue that Google is a natural monopoly and needs to be broken up because the regular rules of competition aren't working. On the other hand, here's the DOJ seemingly arguing the opposite -- that Google needs to fight so hard to maintain competitive dominance that it's forced to pay billions of dollars just to keep its market position. You can't have it both ways. And companies strike exclusivity deals all the time, that's normal capitalism. Really this is just ammunition for why Google isn't abusing anything, it's just competing normally.

scarmig 4y ago
Sure you can. The ability to establish a noncompetitive monopoly via paying billions of dollars to maintain a market position that allows them to make those payments and still make billions of dollars of profit is perfectly compatible with and even evidence for a monopoly. DDG isn't going to be able to write those checks. Though perhaps simply banning these types of exclusivity deals would be sufficient to return to a competitive market. It seems lighter touch than breaking up Google.
pessimizer 4y ago
> Google needs to fight so hard to maintain competitive dominance These are words you're putting in their mouths. > pay billions of dollars just to keep its market position. This is what they're doing. It's not a desperate fight, it's a bribe of what is a trivial amount for Google. It's a network of patronage run by a monopolist, not desperate street-fighting bribes, or whatever it is that the DOJ can't have both ways. Imagine a similar scenario where a local businessman is paying off local politicians and judges. Would you actually make the argument that the fact that the businessman is paying everyone off shows that his position is so precarious that he can't possibly be running the town? Monopolistic behavior as evidence against monopoly?
- Spivak 4y ago
  This argument falls down because if all it took was a few billion in capital to buy a bunch of ads and the right partnerships and then extract 100x the value from your newfound monopoly it would be the easiest business opportunity in all of existence. You can't compare this to government bribes because the bidding process isn't open. If politicians sold their votes publicly to the highest bidder the market dynamics would be different and maintaining power would be ludicrously expensive. If Google really is paying "trivial" amounts of money then those partnerships must not really be as market swaying as argued. Google paying tiny amounts is evidence of a monopoly. Google paying large amounts is evidence of a competitive market.

kvetching 4y ago

Google does this yet lies about their searches to maintain an illusion of competence. For example, you can type in something like "purpose of life" and it will say it has 2 billion results, yet if you try to go to result 500, you can't, it will stop at 400, then change the number to 400 results only on the last page. This happens for every query. Google lies about the astronomical number of search results, then only shows a few hundred at most.

alas44 4y ago
Could the number be valid from indexing standpoint but irrelevant search results are deemed unworthy of display to user? Unworthy + maybe costly on back-end side e.g. because infrequently accessed data is in cold storage?
- kevincox 4y ago
  That's exactly what it is. Each page is more expensive to serve than the last (it is basically joining a bunch of indexes for each term and then skipping the first N). At some number of pages they drew a line and decided that the value of these pages isn't worth the cost (and DoS vulnerability) to serve them.
  - JacobThreeThree 4y ago
    Nevertheless, it's a dark pattern. They should make it clear to the user how many results are available to them.
    - kevincox 4y ago
      They are "available". Just the way to get there isn't by going through the result pages but by refining your search.
      - wolpoli 4y ago
        It made sense back then when you could tell Google the exact words that you are looking for. But now that Google drops random words from our query, it's not exactly easy to refine the search query.

stainablesteel 4y ago

it's true~ish but laughable because google sucks compared to ten years ago, bing and yandex aren't useless either i only use it to find things on specific websites like SO or reddit if I want to find a newer website I try newer search engines

fareesh 4y ago

Google search results have become quite terrible over the past few years. Have important people on the search team moved on?

phpthrowaway99 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

phpthrowaway99 4y ago

My personal moment when I realized Google isn't as smart as I thought, came from searching phone numbers. A number calls me. I type in the number with spaces to Google to try and find it. No results. Nothing. I add dashes. Results come up. I put the area code in parentheses, different results come up. If google can't figure out how to search 9 digit numbers against phone numbers correctly, I'm not sure I can trust them for anything.

rufus_foreman 4y ago
Wow, you're smarter than I am, or at least more persistent. I ran into the same thing and I figured it was some sort of privacy issue or something and just switched to looking the numbers up on Bing. Pretty sure it used to work to google numbers without the dashes.
abraham 4y ago
Identifying something as a phone number is very difficult. https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHOODS.md https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHO...
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  Those things are all true, but if I search Google for: 510 555 1212 It shouldn't take massive AI and 25 phds to find a result for a company that lists 510-555-1212 as their phone number. Ok maybe it does. But it's not like Google is a startup and they haven't had time to get around to it. And add in the fact that if I do search 510 555-1212 I really wish they could atleast bring up (510) 555-1212. I guess for now I'll give them a pass on 510.555.1212
wildrhythms 4y ago
I was under the impression spam callers in particular actively randomize and spoof their numbers.
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago

gernb 4y ago

I'm curious how much other major brands pay to stay in their places Coke arguably pays megabucks to have giant displays in prime locations. Those locations have limited space so Coke taking up one is Similarly, IIUC, companies pay to have their products put in conspicuous places in stores like Walmart, Target, etc. Only rich companies can afford to always get the spots that stick out the most. I don't know if those are compariable. Google pays Apple to be the default search engine seems no different than Coke paying to be the first soda on the aisle or to be featured on the edge of the aisle. People are still free to pick a different search engine or go into the soda aisle. Of course in retail another tactic is to make a bunch of products that appear to be different but are all basically the same. I think Crest or Colgate and 15 kinds of mouthwash all of which have the same "active ingredient" at the same concentration. The goal is to fill up the shelves with your products so there is no room left for the competition's products since shelf space is limited.

andrewxdiamond 4y ago
Coke gives Disney unlimited free beverages as long as they only sell coke products in their parks
- NavinF 4y ago
  Sounds like bullshit and at least one site agrees with my intuition: > Legend: Because of the advertising value of having its products featured at Disney theme parks, Coca Cola provides Disneyland with all of its beverage products free of charge. >Behind the Legend: This is true, but highly misleading. For years, Coke has had an advantage over rival Pepsi because it provides its products free of charge to all of its customers. The company makes up the loss by requiring that beverages only be sold in official cups or containers -- and charging an enormous amount for those contains. The container charge is based on a sliding scale depending on the customer. Individual consumers, purchasing beverages at a grocery or convenience store, pay only a few cents for the can or bottle in which their beverage comes. At the other end of the scale, movie theaters and theme parks like Disneyland pay as much as $2.00 for a single drink cup, making the exorbitant prices charged for drinks at those locations completely understandable.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Where can I find the actual information from the DOJ about this? Also: > a lawsuit from 2014 revealed that Google paid Apple $1 billion to be the main search engine on iPhone Why does it take a lawsuit to discover these cashflows? Google can pay Apple billions and nobody knows until there is a lawsuit?

nickff 4y ago
Everyone knew that Google was paying Apple, they just didn't know exactly how much.

RunSet 4y ago

I remember when Firefox's motto was "your web the way you like it." Now users have to install an extension to set a home page, which- and I'm sure this is pure coincidence- might interfere with users interaction with the search bar, known in bygone days as the URL bar. By the way, Firefox's default search engine is google.

ThunderSizzle 4y ago
Mozilla also wants to deplatform/ban anyone they disagree with politically, which is the entire opposite of "your web the way you like it".
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  You're being down voted, but I must say this is one of the things that has been most slowly driving me away from Mozilla. They are not only developing a browser, but they also have an economical and political agenda. That's okay if you agree with them, but it just feels so wrong that when I'm using their browser or donate to the Mozilla foundation I'm in some ways supporting this. If you're reading this and you're not aware what we're talking about check out their blog post from last year [0]. Generally free software is already pretty political, just take a look at the FSF, but Mozilla takes this to the next level, and makes it even worse by having this confusing corporation/foundation setup where you are kind of deceived of donating for the foundation to help develop Firefox (their only important product) when that money can never (legally) be used for that purpose. It just doesn't feel genuine. I am back to using Firefox though because Blink being the only browser engine is a monopolistic nightmare waiting to happen (in fact it already is, any web spec is just a suggestion, the true spec is what Google decides to do with their browser). PS: I should also put a disclaimer that I'm not American, do not live in the USA, and do not care much about what happens there, and that's kind of what bothers me so much, not so much the political-alignment of Mozilla itself. Although I do think that de-platforming is enough, and I'm not really a fan of "factual voices", being someone that lives in a third world country which has already taken this path, where both extreme right and left claim to be the holders of the absolute truth. [0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/we-need-more-...

bane 4y ago

Back in the day, one of my first developer jobs was to build a "meta-search" system that issued queries and scraped results from something like a dozen different search engines - it supported pagination, direct links, annotations etc. all written in Perl. The 30 or 40 folks I supported found it insanely useful, and it ran on a spare decrepit laptop in a corner of my office with literal dozens of MB of RAM. This was maybe...2002? I sort of miss the days when there were different engines with different strengths and weaknesses and an endless set of matches for very literal queries. Users knew exactly why they got the responses they got from Altavista or whatever other engine and understood it was mostly a matter of what they indexed instead of a black-box of "optimizations" that give semi-random results most of which are spam sites. I miss the old days.

kyleee 4y ago
i'm pretty sure the timing is right to jump back in the game, people are paying kagi, the marginalia threads on here are getting lots of comments and good discussion. people are tired of google and the fact they've let google search rot and even made it intentionally worse and worse for users who aren't ad cows. so here's to hoping some of the optimism and beauty of the niche search solution you ran can return and is not just relegated to the past

dreamcompiler 4y ago

> Google faces competition from dozens of other companies, he said, including ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Grubhub Inc. Google faces competition from Grubhub like General Motors faces competition from Schwinn.

ineedasername 4y ago

Chrome showed us that people will change the default when something is clearly a better experience for the user, even when the entrenched giant was Microsoft. Just like with what happened with IE, as Google Search becomes worse and worse quality with advertising cruft, SEO spam etc. filling the first pages of results there will come a point where they’ve lowered the bar enough for a competitor to come in. That said, I’d still prefer to be asked on first use “which search engine would you like to use?”.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Chrome leveraged Google Web Search, itself already an established monopoly in search, to facilitate that spread.
MikusR 4y ago
The entrenched giant was Mozilla with Firefox. Chrome was distributed as malware included in various installers including Flash updates. And as scareware when using Google services.

xattt 4y ago

Is everyone in here getting nerd-sniped into search result numbers versus the enormous sums sugar daddy Google pays to maintain dominance?

utopcell 4y ago
yeah. Or rather, forced to pay.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Rather. I'm disappointed in HN comments on this thread.

scarface74 4y ago

Just for a point of reference: Unless Google has someone increased their profit dramatically with respect to Android over the past 5 years and I don’t see how since Android’s market share hasn’t changed that much since 2016, Apple makes far more from Google in mobile than Google makes from Android. https://www.engadget.com/2016-01-21-android-22-billion-in-profit-oracle.html https://www.engadget.com/2016-01-21-android-22-billion-in-pr...

Raziarazzi 4y ago

Yes, and here's hoping that trend continues and Google searches become extinct.