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Microsoft CEO testifies that Google’s power in search is ubiquitous

204 points by wunderland 3y ago

vigilans 3y ago
[flagged]
- seydor 3y ago
  It takes one to know one right?
- FractalHQ 3y ago
  Adobe is just as bad if not worse, and their software has historically been the only reason to suffer through windows. Now that Linux (and Mac) are closing the gap for gamers, less and less people will be forced to suffer through the flaming shit show that is Windows.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- urbandw311er 3y ago
  While that’s all potentially true, I don’t think it does anything to lessen the case against Google.
- bobajeff 3y ago
  Also they force you to upgrade by refusing to activate old versions of Windows. Plus they force you tie your outlook account to your Windows install in order to make them stop asking you about it during login. Google search is useless now. Only now there is no competition so effectively all online search is overall useless. /Rant
- eddythompson80 3y ago
  > - that Windows is spyware so is macos, chromeos, and ubuntu. Debian and Arch shall rise!! > - that Microsoft is abusing their position by forcing Edge on users and bundling Teams, Outlook, Office365 I'd honestly be interested in 1 of their competitors who isn't doing this. > - MS software quality is atrocious and I wish we weren't stuck with their garbage. Even bill gates has to agree with this under oath or he would be perjuring himself No argument there. finally, what does this have to do with Google's antitrust?
  - vigilans 3y ago
    > finally, what does this have to do with Google's antitrust? Just having a laugh. Satya isn't the only one who gets to ;)
jiggawatts 3y ago
One way Google maintains their monopoly is that many websites block all bots except for the Google indexing bot. This makes it literally impossible for anyone to make a competing search engine because millions of doors are slammed in their face. There is no practical way to negotiate access at this scale either leaving no options for small startups — e.g.: AI-based search! One possible anti-monopoly measure would be to force Google to mask the identity of their bots. E.g.: force them to use a random IP address pool that third parties can also use without their permission. IMHO breaking up corporations is a bit heavy-handed and not the only remedy available.
- lp0_on_fire 3y ago
  Being only tangentially familiar with the indexing bots…what legal barriers are in place to prevent a competitor from impersonating a google indexing bot? Is it just a matter of the google bot originates from x subnet so that’s the only one webmasters allow? What’s to stop a competitor from running their own bot but sending user-agent: totally-the-google-indexing-bot-and-not-a-competitor?
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    Source addresses: the Google bot traffic comes from a small set of Google-owned IP address blocks. Third parties bake this into things like Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules. For example, Azure App Gateway WAF has a policy category for “known bots” which includes Google but excludes your tiny AI startup. It’s a moat built by giant corporations to keep tiny players in their place. Google "helpfully" publishes their bot source IP addresses: https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/go... AWS also provides named rules such as "bot:name:googlebot": https://docs.aws.amazon.com/waf/latest/developerguide/aws-managed-rule-groups-bot.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/waf/latest/developerguide/aws-ma...
    - creato 3y ago
      I agree it’s a moat, but why would azure restrain competition from google? I think it’s just yet another example of an anti-abuse collateral damage, like email anti-spam blocking small unknown servers or Cloudflare blocking unknown IPs.
jsnell 3y ago
> The image of the chief executive of a leading tech rival — Microsoft is one of the world’s biggest public companies, valued at $2.4 trillion — saying it could not easily fight Google was striking. Why is that striking? It's just a repeat of the playbook Microsoft used to great effect in the Activision trial. "Oh, woe is us, we've lost the console wars, we're in distant 3rd place and can't compete". They have absolutely no problem being mock-humiliated due to a supposed failure to compete if it gets them the result they need in court. (Which is the smart play, of course.) > But in court, Mr. Nadella said that argument was “bogus” because users generally don’t change their default search engine, even if they have the ability to do so. Oh, huh. Isn't Bing the default search engine for the default browser on Windows? I guess all those Windows users are searching on Bing then. Though I do wonder why Microsoft gets into the news on a regular cadence about yet again having reset the defaults with a Windows update. Seems like something that they wouldn't need to bother with if nobody changes the defaults.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  I don’t get why he saying “MS can’t compete” matters. It doesn’t mean it’s in any way true. MS has almost every opportunity that Google has when it comes to search. They fail to compete simply because they aren’t good enough. Google being default on Chrome the leading browser? Edge freaking comes with Windows and defaults to Bing. Google being default on iOS? MS has every opportunity to take Google's spot on iOS. The fact that Apple, a major competitor with Google in the mobile space, sides with Google says a lot about Bing's quality - can't be money because MS is worth like 2.4 trillion.
  - matteoraso 3y ago
    >Google being default on Chrome the leading browser? This is why Microsoft won't win. Google obviously isn't going to not use their own search engine on their own browser, and that's totally fine. I'm not sure what Google can even do to reduce the market share of their search engine besides intentionally making it worse than Bing.
    - 3y ago
scaredginger 3y ago
https://archive.is/ynX9Y https://archive.is/ynX9Y
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dang 3y ago
Related ongoing thread: Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google – and Apple could fix it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37743634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37743634 - Oct 2023 (11 comments)
sylware 3y ago
lol, their significant share holders are big tech one: vanguard and blackrock. Same guys...
- nova22033 3y ago
  mutual funds and asset managers owning a vast swathe of the index isn't the big conspiracy you think it is...
  - sylware 3y ago
    And expecting that to have zero impact is no better than believing in conspiracies.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- delfinom 3y ago
  80% of all stock market money is tied up in retirement fund managers like them, yes.
  - sylware 3y ago
    yep, and blackrock and vanguard are tens of thousands of billions of $, not to mention big tech itself does manage billions of cash. There is ZERO real competition, at best some internal pet contests.
bettercallsalad 3y ago
I am not following these testimonies in anti-trust cases where they have a competitor of Google testify against Google. Isn’t testifying all about presenting evidence? If I am accused of theft in a criminal court and my arch rival is brought for testimony against me, it doesn’t sound like a fair process to me. Of course if it’s a substantiated material it would make sense but otherwise it doesn’t just makes sense at all. Google as a search engine is far better than Bing and that’s just a fact.
- havnagiggle 3y ago
  I am with you on this one. What the hell is this? Why is DOJ peddling for other trillion dollar companies? Microsft CEO is concerned for _Google's shareholders_? Are you serious? I don't believe a word of this guy. I'll just add, Bingbot has the same crawling opportunities as Googlebot. Nobody is stopping Bing from driving traffic to their website. It's also been 20+ years: Windows OS is constantly manipulating defaults and Edge is still not uninstallable.
  - JohnMakin 3y ago
    You’re confused why in an anti-trust case they may want to hear from competitors?
    - havnagiggle 3y ago
      No I am not confused about getting testimony from competitors. I am very interested in hearing from companies that probably have legitimate grievances: DDG, Kagi, Brave, etc. MS is not among those companies.
      - cmcaleer 3y ago
        Why shouldn't MS be in that group? Google pay far above the mark to be default search in FF, and own the most popular web browser.
        3y ago
zitsarethecure 3y ago
> "We believe the marketplace should determine what innovations consumers want." - Microsoft, 1998 https://news.microsoft.com/1998/04/09/microsoft-advertisements-promote-freedom-to-innovate-in-the-software-industry/ https://news.microsoft.com/1998/04/09/microsoft-advertisemen...
- BirAdam 3y ago
  Different CEO, probably different board, probably different majority share holders, different attitude toward customers, different products and principles, essentially a completely different company.
  - timmg 3y ago
    You forgot: different defendant.
    - lsh123 3y ago
      Their unlawful spies and our brave intelligence officers.
  - AraceliHarker 3y ago
    Microsoft is still engaging in vendor lock-in, such as making it difficult to use Microsoft 365 on platforms other than Azure and Windows. In the open source community, Microsoft is also practicing the 3E strategy, such as implementing specific features in .NET only for Microsoft products. In essence, Microsoft is the same today as it was in the past.
  - tgv 3y ago
    May I also add: a "different" browser, that they're again trying to make unavoidable?
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  It's not super surprising that a company is saying potentially contradicting things (over a period of 28 years) to defend or promote their interests...
GuB-42 3y ago
This is a prisoner dilemma situation. Both Microsoft and Google abuse their position, they could shut up about it, but instead it looks like Microsoft is defecting. I wonder if Google intends to counterattack. What Google does with Android, Microsoft does it with Windows, but worse.
- somsak2 3y ago
  how would google counterattack? this is a court case brought by the government.
zeruch 3y ago
...a power MSFT deeply wishes it had and would argue is fine if they were in Google shoes. There are some deep ironies in this case.
anacrolix 3y ago
Good. It is. For a company that pretended to be a startup as late as 2014, and had the motto Don't Be Evil, they are the reverse of that. They have destructive product handling, regularly destroying alternatives with their own versions then EOL them when the market is destroyed. Their Ads monopoly is awful. Google is a bane on the internet.
charles_f 3y ago
I donno, I've been using only duckduckgo for a few years and I don't feel any worse than on google
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  I've been using primarily DuckDuckGo for over a year now, and while I agree that for most things it's on par with Google, it's much worse on obscure stuff and on regional stuff (Norway in my case). That said, I think the parity on most searches is partially due to Google sucking more than it did. Often the thing I'm looking for isn't in the top 10 hits in either.
  - l33tman 3y ago
    Yes, I came to the same conclusion. DDG doesn't feel as good as Google once was, but Google is almost unusable now, the entire first screen is almost always 5 paid placements and 5 SEO scam sites.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"Google has argued that the default positions are not overwhelmingly powerful and that users can switch to a new search engine if they like." OK, then why pay Apple close to $20 billion annually to be the "default". "Mr. Schmidtlein hammered Mr. Nadella with questions about instances in which Bing had been the default on mobile phones, only for users to switch back to Google." If Google search is so great, and Apple needs to use it as a default, then shouldn't Apple be paying Google. If users switch without Google paying to be default, then why pay.
- granzymes 3y ago
  For me, the fact that Google has >50% market share on Edge is proof that Google is right. Consumers clearly know how to change defaults when they want to.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    If they only have 50%+ market share, vs the 90%+ they have on android for instance, I'd argue it's a sign the defaults have a serious impact.
    - granzymes 3y ago
      Defaults definitely matter (that's why Google pays Apple for default status), but legally what matters is if the contracts are exclusive. That's what this fight over the "power of defaults" is about. Microsoft and the government argue that they are exclusive because, while consumers can change the default, they don't in practice. But the fact that consumers clearly know how to change the default on Edge fatally undercuts that argument. And if the contracts with Apple aren't exclusive, Google can't be liable for them under the antitrust laws.
      - makeitdouble 3y ago
        I forgot the scope were so limited in the US. Going back to the Microsoft trials vs the EU, there was no exclusivity limitation, users could use other browser, or install other OSes, the point was solely on what pressure MS put to be the first choice.
pokerhobo 3y ago
Seems like the responses ignore that fact that it’s not illegal to have a monopoly. It’s illegal to unfairly use your monopoly to prevent competition. That’s what this is about.
- octacat 3y ago
  Extending on that. Google has special treatment for their services in the search results. I.e. different look for their market, prefers youtube to the search results which has a better text version. Now it shows their hotels booking service instead of actually searching for hotel sites (they had the same thing with online shops). Pretty much killed Yelp by copying features with maps and showing their reviews when searching. On another hand, MS/FB/twitter do the same.
Woodi 3y ago
But actually what we want from "search" providers ? What "search" actually is ?? Some OS that monopoly is impossible to avoid ?? Or hardware you can't don't have because your own government or law require it ? Or other dead end, shorter or longer ? Last week I installed some Debian and Duck was default in FF... What a unpleasant experience... 90's Yahoo catalog or pre-google "search engines" - all was working as expected. Only with Bing and that so called "privacy preserving" clone you are shocked that trivial things to find/match are absent in results... So Google search is "ubiquitous", simple the best. But is's trivial to avoid ! Not like Microsoft monopoly on OS-like trap. Or Android :) I personally would pay for good search app, offline, open-source, with _data_ updates. Or probably app is not needed here, just [pretty legal] data to buy. But Unity had some troubles just previous week... Free stuff is hard to match :>
blagund 3y ago
I, for one, find myself from time to time wondering, what are these subpar search results I'm getting? And then realize I haven't yet set Kagi as default search engine on this device yet.
graycat 3y ago
This post is aimed at the lawyers and judges in the current DoJ/Google legal case. From this case, I'm concerned, apparently threatened: (A) I have some expertise in computing, worked in and with computing for decades, written some serious software, taught computer science in college and graduate school of famous universities, and published peer-reviewed original research in artificial intelligence. (B) Now computing is my main activity and the foundation of my business startup. (C) From credible quotes in the media and (A) and (B) just above, my opinion is that the lawyers and judges in the Google case (a) are poorly informed on and have no meaningful understanding of computing, (b) are often seriously misinformed on computing, and (c) are on the way to doing serious harm to computing, the economy, and my work. I see no opportunity for this legal case to do any good and would like the DoJ just to say: "Sorry, never mind. We made a HUGE mistake and now drop the case." For example: (1) Operating System. I use versions of Microsoft's Windows, really want to use only one operating system, considered the choices, and picked Windows. It seems to me that Microsoft continually makes changes to improve Windows. Some of the changes are for the user experience and user interface. Mostly I find the changes poorly designed and irritating but not a serious problem. Other changes are for, e.g., computer security and new hardware, and I like those changes a LOT. I REALLY LIKE their .NET software and its documentation. I REALLY like the Windows NTFS file system. And I REALLY like the fact that the basics of Windows has been quite reliable, with lots of utility, for 10+ years. And I intend to start using Windows Server 2019. Versions of Windows Server may be the most important software in the economy of the world. (2) I have lots of computer programs installed. Some of the programs I've written myself in various computer languages. Of course, for me the most important of these programs is the Web site server program I've written for my startup. Otherwise my most heavily used program is the text editor KEdit, first written by an IBM employee in France, and for that program I've written dozens of macros. Next is Rexx written by an IBM employee in England, and for that language I've written dozens of programs. I have the D. Knuth mathematical word processing software TeX which I use for writing nearly all documents, letters, etc. For TeX I've written dozens of macros. I have a spell checking program Aspell I use heavily. I have Adobe's Acrobat installed and use it to read some important PDF files. To keep up with some changes in email standards, I intend to install a recent version of Microsoft Office. I am a heavy user of the Internet and, thus, of Web browsers. As I type this, the computer has installed Firefox, Chrome, Brave, and Edge. I use all of them, use Firefox the most, may change to use Brave the most, and may install the current version of Chrome. So, each of these Web browsers is an installed computer program out of some dozens I have installed. With these Web browsers, I visit Web sites -- thousands of them. Some of the Web sites are search engines or other means of finding content. Some of the search engines are Google, Bing, and DDG. But I also do searches at Wikipedia, YouTube, Stackoverflow, etc. (3) Defaults. The legal case has a lot of emphasis on "defaults" in Web browsers and search engines, and to me this emphasis is, understated and in just one word, bad. For the only such "default", I have set Firefox as my "default" Web browser, but this setting has almost no effect. E.g., if I am using Adobe's Acrobat to read the PDF (portable document format) file for the paper "Tensor Programs I: Wide Feedforward or Recurrent Neural Networks of Any Architecture are Gaussian Processes" and in the Acrobat display click on a URL (uniform resource locator) of a Web page, then Acrobat will use my default Web browser to read and display that Web page. I rarely do any such thing and there are other approaches that are plenty easy. For a "default search engine", I don't have one. In recent months I've noticed that I can do some Web searches from an HTML single line text box displayed by Firefox, but so far I've never done this. I don't like this feature by Firefox because I see no reason to use it and it takes up limited space in the Firefox window. Google is just a Web site, and I get to that site just like I get to any of the thousands of other Web sites I go to. No "defaults" are involved. DoJ, lawyers, judges, please, Please, PLEASE forget about computing, the Internet, computer operating systems, computer programs, Web browsers, Web sites, and search engines. Just FORGET about them. PLEASE. Anything you do will be a threat to the economy, my work, and me.
fractalb 3y ago
I don't know how the US anti-trust works, but I'm wondering why hasn't Microsoft ever been investigated about being a monopoly in desktop operating systems?
- treve 3y ago
  They have. It was quite a big deal at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
  - fractalb 3y ago
    Thanks. I didn't know it. Microsoft is still a monopoly on desktop OS, even after this anti-trust investigation. To me, that's weird. Anti-trust didn't work?
    - l33tman 3y ago
      Just having the most popular product doesn't mean you're liable in an anti-trust case, you have to abuse the position as well (IANAL though). There are no viable competitors for a PC desktop OS for them to abuse and haven't been since the 80-90's I guess. A bit off topic, but to me it's interesting that they couldn't extend their desktop OS dominance to the mobile world when they launched Windows Phone with a huge war chest. That must have demonstrated how huge the disjunction is between desktop and mobile use-cases in general, or the strategy should have worked (and could have re-fuelled the anti-trust aspects)
      - deafpolygon 3y ago
        Or it was just cheaper to launch an inferior product and say "welp, no monopoly here."
petesergeant 3y ago
If I was Facebook or Apple, I’d drop a bunch of cash into common crawl or build my own equiv, give it away virtually for free, and let fancy AI search startups take aim at Google
mjan22640 3y ago
Microsoft CEO: "bing s*cks"
Paul_S 3y ago
I think Google is not going to keep its monopoly. Last Saturday I was searching for something on Google and not getting anything and just for laughs I tried bing. I have been using it for second opinion since. And I don't think bing got any better, but my god has Google got a lot worse.
- nunodonato 3y ago
  I rarely search these days. Between chatgpt, perplexity.ai and ocasionally bing chat (to get AI results but with sources), google looks mostly outdated. I use it for maps and finding places/businesses, though
mupuff1234 3y ago
Did he actually provide any meaningful evidence or was it all just rhetorics?
pjmlp 3y ago
Just like Windows happens to be on the desktop, regardless of the WinDev and marketing department attempts to mess it up, one cannot win in every front.
king_magic 3y ago
I mean Bing still sucks compared to Google. I keep giving it a chance, but it is just nowhere as good. Make it better, and people might use Google less?
nologic01 3y ago
A duopoly in search that throws some crumbs to the former big-tech monopoly would be a definite improvement over the current monopoly /s. IANAL and don't particularly care about the minutiae and merits and politics of individual cases in the context of antiquated anti-trust laws. A lucrative monopoly allowed to operate over long periods can and will identify its own weak points and the abilities and competitive threats of the market. It will have more than ample resources to mitigate them. Whether that monopoly dominance is secured in legal, border-line legal or illegal ways is a mute point. In a healthy economy there should not be any monopolies unless they are very heavily regulated. We should celebrate commercial success up to a point but be deeply suspicious of winner-takes-all degeneration that is justified on the basis of bogus arguments (network effects, superior quality etc). This rationale is even more important in the context of digital technology where the foundations of the current and future digital economy are being laid. And no, a Google Web [1] is not a good blueprint for the digital economy. Neither is a cozily arranged Google-Microsoft Web for that matter. For this new type of economy to flourish the "web" should be really neutral, not the fiefdom of this or that oligopoly extracting rents and holding everything back. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/10/02/the-internet-is-really-just-the-google-web-microsoft-ceo-says-during-googles-antitrust-trial/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/10/02/the-in...
nojvek 3y ago
Without paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20231002181005/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/technology/microsoft-ceo-testifies-google-search.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231002181005/https://www.nytim...
mickmcq 3y ago
In other news, Dracula testifies against Frankenstein.

204 points by wunderland 3y ago

vigilans 3y ago

[flagged]

seydor 3y ago
It takes one to know one right?
FractalHQ 3y ago
Adobe is just as bad if not worse, and their software has historically been the only reason to suffer through windows. Now that Linux (and Mac) are closing the gap for gamers, less and less people will be forced to suffer through the flaming shit show that is Windows.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
urbandw311er 3y ago
While that’s all potentially true, I don’t think it does anything to lessen the case against Google.
bobajeff 3y ago
Also they force you to upgrade by refusing to activate old versions of Windows. Plus they force you tie your outlook account to your Windows install in order to make them stop asking you about it during login. Google search is useless now. Only now there is no competition so effectively all online search is overall useless. /Rant
eddythompson80 3y ago
> - that Windows is spyware so is macos, chromeos, and ubuntu. Debian and Arch shall rise!! > - that Microsoft is abusing their position by forcing Edge on users and bundling Teams, Outlook, Office365 I'd honestly be interested in 1 of their competitors who isn't doing this. > - MS software quality is atrocious and I wish we weren't stuck with their garbage. Even bill gates has to agree with this under oath or he would be perjuring himself No argument there. finally, what does this have to do with Google's antitrust?
- vigilans 3y ago
  > finally, what does this have to do with Google's antitrust? Just having a laugh. Satya isn't the only one who gets to ;)

jiggawatts 3y ago

One way Google maintains their monopoly is that many websites block all bots except for the Google indexing bot. This makes it literally impossible for anyone to make a competing search engine because millions of doors are slammed in their face. There is no practical way to negotiate access at this scale either leaving no options for small startups — e.g.: AI-based search! One possible anti-monopoly measure would be to force Google to mask the identity of their bots. E.g.: force them to use a random IP address pool that third parties can also use without their permission. IMHO breaking up corporations is a bit heavy-handed and not the only remedy available.

lp0_on_fire 3y ago
Being only tangentially familiar with the indexing bots…what legal barriers are in place to prevent a competitor from impersonating a google indexing bot? Is it just a matter of the google bot originates from x subnet so that’s the only one webmasters allow? What’s to stop a competitor from running their own bot but sending user-agent: totally-the-google-indexing-bot-and-not-a-competitor?
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  Source addresses: the Google bot traffic comes from a small set of Google-owned IP address blocks. Third parties bake this into things like Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules. For example, Azure App Gateway WAF has a policy category for “known bots” which includes Google but excludes your tiny AI startup. It’s a moat built by giant corporations to keep tiny players in their place. Google "helpfully" publishes their bot source IP addresses: https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/go... AWS also provides named rules such as "bot:name:googlebot": https://docs.aws.amazon.com/waf/latest/developerguide/aws-managed-rule-groups-bot.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/waf/latest/developerguide/aws-ma...
  - creato 3y ago
    I agree it’s a moat, but why would azure restrain competition from google? I think it’s just yet another example of an anti-abuse collateral damage, like email anti-spam blocking small unknown servers or Cloudflare blocking unknown IPs.

jsnell 3y ago

> The image of the chief executive of a leading tech rival — Microsoft is one of the world’s biggest public companies, valued at $2.4 trillion — saying it could not easily fight Google was striking. Why is that striking? It's just a repeat of the playbook Microsoft used to great effect in the Activision trial. "Oh, woe is us, we've lost the console wars, we're in distant 3rd place and can't compete". They have absolutely no problem being mock-humiliated due to a supposed failure to compete if it gets them the result they need in court. (Which is the smart play, of course.) > But in court, Mr. Nadella said that argument was “bogus” because users generally don’t change their default search engine, even if they have the ability to do so. Oh, huh. Isn't Bing the default search engine for the default browser on Windows? I guess all those Windows users are searching on Bing then. Though I do wonder why Microsoft gets into the news on a regular cadence about yet again having reset the defaults with a Windows update. Seems like something that they wouldn't need to bother with if nobody changes the defaults.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
I don’t get why he saying “MS can’t compete” matters. It doesn’t mean it’s in any way true. MS has almost every opportunity that Google has when it comes to search. They fail to compete simply because they aren’t good enough. Google being default on Chrome the leading browser? Edge freaking comes with Windows and defaults to Bing. Google being default on iOS? MS has every opportunity to take Google's spot on iOS. The fact that Apple, a major competitor with Google in the mobile space, sides with Google says a lot about Bing's quality - can't be money because MS is worth like 2.4 trillion.
- matteoraso 3y ago
  >Google being default on Chrome the leading browser? This is why Microsoft won't win. Google obviously isn't going to not use their own search engine on their own browser, and that's totally fine. I'm not sure what Google can even do to reduce the market share of their search engine besides intentionally making it worse than Bing.
  - 3y ago

scaredginger 3y ago

https://archive.is/ynX9Y https://archive.is/ynX9Y

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dang 3y ago

Related ongoing thread: Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google – and Apple could fix it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37743634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37743634 - Oct 2023 (11 comments)

sylware 3y ago

lol, their significant share holders are big tech one: vanguard and blackrock. Same guys...

nova22033 3y ago
mutual funds and asset managers owning a vast swathe of the index isn't the big conspiracy you think it is...
- sylware 3y ago
  And expecting that to have zero impact is no better than believing in conspiracies.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
delfinom 3y ago
80% of all stock market money is tied up in retirement fund managers like them, yes.
- sylware 3y ago
  yep, and blackrock and vanguard are tens of thousands of billions of $, not to mention big tech itself does manage billions of cash. There is ZERO real competition, at best some internal pet contests.

bettercallsalad 3y ago

I am not following these testimonies in anti-trust cases where they have a competitor of Google testify against Google. Isn’t testifying all about presenting evidence? If I am accused of theft in a criminal court and my arch rival is brought for testimony against me, it doesn’t sound like a fair process to me. Of course if it’s a substantiated material it would make sense but otherwise it doesn’t just makes sense at all. Google as a search engine is far better than Bing and that’s just a fact.

havnagiggle 3y ago
I am with you on this one. What the hell is this? Why is DOJ peddling for other trillion dollar companies? Microsft CEO is concerned for _Google's shareholders_? Are you serious? I don't believe a word of this guy. I'll just add, Bingbot has the same crawling opportunities as Googlebot. Nobody is stopping Bing from driving traffic to their website. It's also been 20+ years: Windows OS is constantly manipulating defaults and Edge is still not uninstallable.
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  You’re confused why in an anti-trust case they may want to hear from competitors?
  - havnagiggle 3y ago
    No I am not confused about getting testimony from competitors. I am very interested in hearing from companies that probably have legitimate grievances: DDG, Kagi, Brave, etc. MS is not among those companies.
    - cmcaleer 3y ago
      Why shouldn't MS be in that group? Google pay far above the mark to be default search in FF, and own the most popular web browser.
      - 3y ago

zitsarethecure 3y ago

> "We believe the marketplace should determine what innovations consumers want." - Microsoft, 1998 https://news.microsoft.com/1998/04/09/microsoft-advertisements-promote-freedom-to-innovate-in-the-software-industry/ https://news.microsoft.com/1998/04/09/microsoft-advertisemen...

BirAdam 3y ago
Different CEO, probably different board, probably different majority share holders, different attitude toward customers, different products and principles, essentially a completely different company.
- timmg 3y ago
  You forgot: different defendant.
  - lsh123 3y ago
    Their unlawful spies and our brave intelligence officers.
- AraceliHarker 3y ago
  Microsoft is still engaging in vendor lock-in, such as making it difficult to use Microsoft 365 on platforms other than Azure and Windows. In the open source community, Microsoft is also practicing the 3E strategy, such as implementing specific features in .NET only for Microsoft products. In essence, Microsoft is the same today as it was in the past.
- tgv 3y ago
  May I also add: a "different" browser, that they're again trying to make unavoidable?
madeofpalk 3y ago
It's not super surprising that a company is saying potentially contradicting things (over a period of 28 years) to defend or promote their interests...

GuB-42 3y ago

This is a prisoner dilemma situation. Both Microsoft and Google abuse their position, they could shut up about it, but instead it looks like Microsoft is defecting. I wonder if Google intends to counterattack. What Google does with Android, Microsoft does it with Windows, but worse.

somsak2 3y ago
how would google counterattack? this is a court case brought by the government.

zeruch 3y ago

...a power MSFT deeply wishes it had and would argue is fine if they were in Google shoes. There are some deep ironies in this case.

anacrolix 3y ago

Good. It is. For a company that pretended to be a startup as late as 2014, and had the motto Don't Be Evil, they are the reverse of that. They have destructive product handling, regularly destroying alternatives with their own versions then EOL them when the market is destroyed. Their Ads monopoly is awful. Google is a bane on the internet.

charles_f 3y ago

I donno, I've been using only duckduckgo for a few years and I don't feel any worse than on google

magicalhippo 3y ago
I've been using primarily DuckDuckGo for over a year now, and while I agree that for most things it's on par with Google, it's much worse on obscure stuff and on regional stuff (Norway in my case). That said, I think the parity on most searches is partially due to Google sucking more than it did. Often the thing I'm looking for isn't in the top 10 hits in either.
- l33tman 3y ago
  Yes, I came to the same conclusion. DDG doesn't feel as good as Google once was, but Google is almost unusable now, the entire first screen is almost always 5 paid placements and 5 SEO scam sites.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"Google has argued that the default positions are not overwhelmingly powerful and that users can switch to a new search engine if they like." OK, then why pay Apple close to $20 billion annually to be the "default". "Mr. Schmidtlein hammered Mr. Nadella with questions about instances in which Bing had been the default on mobile phones, only for users to switch back to Google." If Google search is so great, and Apple needs to use it as a default, then shouldn't Apple be paying Google. If users switch without Google paying to be default, then why pay.

granzymes 3y ago
For me, the fact that Google has >50% market share on Edge is proof that Google is right. Consumers clearly know how to change defaults when they want to.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  If they only have 50%+ market share, vs the 90%+ they have on android for instance, I'd argue it's a sign the defaults have a serious impact.
  - granzymes 3y ago
    Defaults definitely matter (that's why Google pays Apple for default status), but legally what matters is if the contracts are exclusive. That's what this fight over the "power of defaults" is about. Microsoft and the government argue that they are exclusive because, while consumers can change the default, they don't in practice. But the fact that consumers clearly know how to change the default on Edge fatally undercuts that argument. And if the contracts with Apple aren't exclusive, Google can't be liable for them under the antitrust laws.
    - makeitdouble 3y ago
      I forgot the scope were so limited in the US. Going back to the Microsoft trials vs the EU, there was no exclusivity limitation, users could use other browser, or install other OSes, the point was solely on what pressure MS put to be the first choice.

pokerhobo 3y ago

Seems like the responses ignore that fact that it’s not illegal to have a monopoly. It’s illegal to unfairly use your monopoly to prevent competition. That’s what this is about.

octacat 3y ago
Extending on that. Google has special treatment for their services in the search results. I.e. different look for their market, prefers youtube to the search results which has a better text version. Now it shows their hotels booking service instead of actually searching for hotel sites (they had the same thing with online shops). Pretty much killed Yelp by copying features with maps and showing their reviews when searching. On another hand, MS/FB/twitter do the same.

Woodi 3y ago

But actually what we want from "search" providers ? What "search" actually is ?? Some OS that monopoly is impossible to avoid ?? Or hardware you can't don't have because your own government or law require it ? Or other dead end, shorter or longer ? Last week I installed some Debian and Duck was default in FF... What a unpleasant experience... 90's Yahoo catalog or pre-google "search engines" - all was working as expected. Only with Bing and that so called "privacy preserving" clone you are shocked that trivial things to find/match are absent in results... So Google search is "ubiquitous", simple the best. But is's trivial to avoid ! Not like Microsoft monopoly on OS-like trap. Or Android :) I personally would pay for good search app, offline, open-source, with _data_ updates. Or probably app is not needed here, just [pretty legal] data to buy. But Unity had some troubles just previous week... Free stuff is hard to match :>

blagund 3y ago

I, for one, find myself from time to time wondering, what are these subpar search results I'm getting? And then realize I haven't yet set Kagi as default search engine on this device yet.

graycat 3y ago

This post is aimed at the lawyers and judges in the current DoJ/Google legal case. From this case, I'm concerned, apparently threatened: (A) I have some expertise in computing, worked in and with computing for decades, written some serious software, taught computer science in college and graduate school of famous universities, and published peer-reviewed original research in artificial intelligence. (B) Now computing is my main activity and the foundation of my business startup. (C) From credible quotes in the media and (A) and (B) just above, my opinion is that the lawyers and judges in the Google case (a) are poorly informed on and have no meaningful understanding of computing, (b) are often seriously misinformed on computing, and (c) are on the way to doing serious harm to computing, the economy, and my work. I see no opportunity for this legal case to do any good and would like the DoJ just to say: "Sorry, never mind. We made a HUGE mistake and now drop the case." For example: (1) Operating System. I use versions of Microsoft's Windows, really want to use only one operating system, considered the choices, and picked Windows. It seems to me that Microsoft continually makes changes to improve Windows. Some of the changes are for the user experience and user interface. Mostly I find the changes poorly designed and irritating but not a serious problem. Other changes are for, e.g., computer security and new hardware, and I like those changes a LOT. I REALLY LIKE their .NET software and its documentation. I REALLY like the Windows NTFS file system. And I REALLY like the fact that the basics of Windows has been quite reliable, with lots of utility, for 10+ years. And I intend to start using Windows Server 2019. Versions of Windows Server may be the most important software in the economy of the world. (2) I have lots of computer programs installed. Some of the programs I've written myself in various computer languages. Of course, for me the most important of these programs is the Web site server program I've written for my startup. Otherwise my most heavily used program is the text editor KEdit, first written by an IBM employee in France, and for that program I've written dozens of macros. Next is Rexx written by an IBM employee in England, and for that language I've written dozens of programs. I have the D. Knuth mathematical word processing software TeX which I use for writing nearly all documents, letters, etc. For TeX I've written dozens of macros. I have a spell checking program Aspell I use heavily. I have Adobe's Acrobat installed and use it to read some important PDF files. To keep up with some changes in email standards, I intend to install a recent version of Microsoft Office. I am a heavy user of the Internet and, thus, of Web browsers. As I type this, the computer has installed Firefox, Chrome, Brave, and Edge. I use all of them, use Firefox the most, may change to use Brave the most, and may install the current version of Chrome. So, each of these Web browsers is an installed computer program out of some dozens I have installed. With these Web browsers, I visit Web sites -- thousands of them. Some of the Web sites are search engines or other means of finding content. Some of the search engines are Google, Bing, and DDG. But I also do searches at Wikipedia, YouTube, Stackoverflow, etc. (3) Defaults. The legal case has a lot of emphasis on "defaults" in Web browsers and search engines, and to me this emphasis is, understated and in just one word, bad. For the only such "default", I have set Firefox as my "default" Web browser, but this setting has almost no effect. E.g., if I am using Adobe's Acrobat to read the PDF (portable document format) file for the paper "Tensor Programs I: Wide Feedforward or Recurrent Neural Networks of Any Architecture are Gaussian Processes" and in the Acrobat display click on a URL (uniform resource locator) of a Web page, then Acrobat will use my default Web browser to read and display that Web page. I rarely do any such thing and there are other approaches that are plenty easy. For a "default search engine", I don't have one. In recent months I've noticed that I can do some Web searches from an HTML single line text box displayed by Firefox, but so far I've never done this. I don't like this feature by Firefox because I see no reason to use it and it takes up limited space in the Firefox window. Google is just a Web site, and I get to that site just like I get to any of the thousands of other Web sites I go to. No "defaults" are involved. DoJ, lawyers, judges, please, Please, PLEASE forget about computing, the Internet, computer operating systems, computer programs, Web browsers, Web sites, and search engines. Just FORGET about them. PLEASE. Anything you do will be a threat to the economy, my work, and me.

fractalb 3y ago

I don't know how the US anti-trust works, but I'm wondering why hasn't Microsoft ever been investigated about being a monopoly in desktop operating systems?

treve 3y ago
They have. It was quite a big deal at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- fractalb 3y ago
  Thanks. I didn't know it. Microsoft is still a monopoly on desktop OS, even after this anti-trust investigation. To me, that's weird. Anti-trust didn't work?
  - l33tman 3y ago
    Just having the most popular product doesn't mean you're liable in an anti-trust case, you have to abuse the position as well (IANAL though). There are no viable competitors for a PC desktop OS for them to abuse and haven't been since the 80-90's I guess. A bit off topic, but to me it's interesting that they couldn't extend their desktop OS dominance to the mobile world when they launched Windows Phone with a huge war chest. That must have demonstrated how huge the disjunction is between desktop and mobile use-cases in general, or the strategy should have worked (and could have re-fuelled the anti-trust aspects)
    - deafpolygon 3y ago
      Or it was just cheaper to launch an inferior product and say "welp, no monopoly here."

petesergeant 3y ago

If I was Facebook or Apple, I’d drop a bunch of cash into common crawl or build my own equiv, give it away virtually for free, and let fancy AI search startups take aim at Google

mjan22640 3y ago

Microsoft CEO: "bing s*cks"

Paul_S 3y ago

I think Google is not going to keep its monopoly. Last Saturday I was searching for something on Google and not getting anything and just for laughs I tried bing. I have been using it for second opinion since. And I don't think bing got any better, but my god has Google got a lot worse.

nunodonato 3y ago
I rarely search these days. Between chatgpt, perplexity.ai and ocasionally bing chat (to get AI results but with sources), google looks mostly outdated. I use it for maps and finding places/businesses, though

mupuff1234 3y ago

Did he actually provide any meaningful evidence or was it all just rhetorics?

pjmlp 3y ago

Just like Windows happens to be on the desktop, regardless of the WinDev and marketing department attempts to mess it up, one cannot win in every front.

king_magic 3y ago

I mean Bing still sucks compared to Google. I keep giving it a chance, but it is just nowhere as good. Make it better, and people might use Google less?

nologic01 3y ago

A duopoly in search that throws some crumbs to the former big-tech monopoly would be a definite improvement over the current monopoly /s. IANAL and don't particularly care about the minutiae and merits and politics of individual cases in the context of antiquated anti-trust laws. A lucrative monopoly allowed to operate over long periods can and will identify its own weak points and the abilities and competitive threats of the market. It will have more than ample resources to mitigate them. Whether that monopoly dominance is secured in legal, border-line legal or illegal ways is a mute point. In a healthy economy there should not be any monopolies unless they are very heavily regulated. We should celebrate commercial success up to a point but be deeply suspicious of winner-takes-all degeneration that is justified on the basis of bogus arguments (network effects, superior quality etc). This rationale is even more important in the context of digital technology where the foundations of the current and future digital economy are being laid. And no, a Google Web [1] is not a good blueprint for the digital economy. Neither is a cozily arranged Google-Microsoft Web for that matter. For this new type of economy to flourish the "web" should be really neutral, not the fiefdom of this or that oligopoly extracting rents and holding everything back. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/10/02/the-internet-is-really-just-the-google-web-microsoft-ceo-says-during-googles-antitrust-trial/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/10/02/the-in...

nojvek 3y ago

Without paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20231002181005/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/technology/microsoft-ceo-testifies-google-search.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231002181005/https://www.nytim...

mickmcq 3y ago

In other news, Dracula testifies against Frankenstein.