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Google is a "monopoly" because their competitors with massive cash reserves (Microsoft, Apple, Meta) are too risk averse to compete in the marketplace and are h

by xnx 2y ago

Google is a "monopoly" because their competitors with massive cash reserves (Microsoft, Apple, Meta) are too risk averse to compete in the marketplace and are hoping that the courtroom will deliver them a win.

voytec 2y ago
No. The US vs. Google antitrust cases scope are Google's monopolistic practices in the search and adtech markets, not the browser market. The DOJ pushing for Google to sell Chrome is related to the search-related case.
deleted 2y ago
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slater 2y ago
Am I misremembering, or doesn’t Apple already have its own “stealth” search engine they could deploy at the drop of a hat, but instead use it as a bargaining chip w/ Google? Coulda sworn I read about it a decade ago in breathless “Is Apple working on its own search engine???” articles
lolinder 2y ago
Which market are you talking about specifically? The outstanding cases against them are in search and in adtech. This amicus brief is for the Search case (this one [0]). In search (the relevant market here), Microsoft does compete in the marketplace, and Microsoft's evidence that Google's anticompetitive practices have prevented them from gaining any meaningful ground in search were a keystone of the government's case, including the fact that Microsoft has invested nearly $100 billion into Bing [1]. In adtech much the same can be said about Meta. So, again, I'm curious: in which market does Google not have competitors spending massive amounts of cash which Google still manages to hold back from being able to meaningfully compete? [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1.0_6.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.837.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...
- drivebyhooting 2y ago
  Bing has a brand problem.
  - KHRZ 2y ago
    You have been a bad user. Bing has been a good Bing.
    - drivebyhooting 2y ago
      Bing sounds to my ears ridiculous. Is it a Chinese pancake? Or Mr. Bing? Also as a verb it’s hard to pronounce.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        It shouldn't be any harder to pronounce than "sing", surely?
  - immibis 2y ago
    This. You can tell by the popularity of DuckDuckGo, which is just reskinned rebranded Bing.
    - yegg 2y ago
      We are not just a "reskinned rebranded Bing." I know we're talking about search here, but to be clear DuckDuckGo is way more than search at this point and that is a large part of why we are popular. For example, we have a browser, duck.ai, VPN, email protection, app tracking protection, etc. We were first known for search (and maybe mostly on this forum since that's where I started), but we're now popular for all this other stuff as well that works to keep you more generally protected (see https://duckduckgo.com/compare-privacy https://duckduckgo.com/compare-privacy). In search in particular, search results have been more than web links since the early 2000s when instant answers started to appear on Yahoo. Since then, more and more of the page is instant answers of one kind or another (aka search modules, oneboxes, etc.) and less and less of it is traditional web links. AI-assisted answers has accelerated this even more in the past two years, and we get 0 of that from Bing. Same with knowledge graph answers before that (e.g., info from Wikipedia and other quick facts, which became the most prevalent search module on desktop), again, 0 from Bing. And same for the most prevalent search module on mobile too — local results — 0 from Bing. That is to say, a lot of our search results content is not coming from Bing. We have hundreds of team members and millions of lines of search code at this point. We’re constantly working on search, and looking to improve it. We post updates quarterly to https://duckduckgo.com/updates https://duckduckgo.com/updates (along with updates on our other products and services). In terms of traditional web links, yes, we primarily use Bing as an input in the same way Kagi primarily uses Google as an input. As Vlad has said publicly (most recently heard him on The Talk Show) and has been made clear from this US v Google case from Google/Bing/Apple/OpenAI/etc. testimony, it costs upwards of a billion dollars a year to maintain a competitive index of web links. Only the biggest companies can afford that. Nevertheless, we still work on actively crawling and indexing, but the reality is small companies cannot do it all themselves. In fact, that's true for most products in most industries -- they rely on a supply chain for various components, some of them critical. Finally, even if you have the same traditional links, but you put instant answers above or beside or in between them, change the design significantly, or otherwise add to them (all of which we do), then the actual user experience of the search results ends up being significantly different in terms of how it is perceived and what people click on. For the latter, people engage with a section above another section about twice as much, so for example, if you just put a different box/answer on top you've drastically changed the experience of the search engine.
georgeecollins 2y ago
A shareholder in those companies wouldn’t support it. You could easily spend $10b trying to win back a fraction of the search market and Google could just spend $10b back to greater effect to bury you. Google is entrenched at every level: consumer awareness, browser, SEO, advertisers, ad-tech.
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timewizard 2y ago
A country as large and prosperous as the United States should have more than 4 providers. We should have more than 3 cellular companies. We should have more than 8 major ISPs. These are monopolies. You might not see it because the economy is so _over monopolized_ it's hard to have perspective. YCombinator loves to pretend it invented the idea of startups and entreprenourism but those have been vigorous and healthy throughout _most_ of America's existence. When they weren't we wrote some of the most comprehensive and consumer friendly anti-trust laws in the entire world. A feat which still stands today.
- light_hue_1 2y ago
  We don't have 8 major ISPs. That's a joke. We have 8 monoplies that live together. I have never once lived in a house where I had a choice of ISP in the US (unless you count getting a mobile router).

by xnx 2y ago

voytec 2y ago

No. The US vs. Google antitrust cases scope are Google's monopolistic practices in the search and adtech markets, not the browser market. The DOJ pushing for Google to sell Chrome is related to the search-related case.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

slater 2y ago

Am I misremembering, or doesn’t Apple already have its own “stealth” search engine they could deploy at the drop of a hat, but instead use it as a bargaining chip w/ Google? Coulda sworn I read about it a decade ago in breathless “Is Apple working on its own search engine???” articles

lolinder 2y ago

Which market are you talking about specifically? The outstanding cases against them are in search and in adtech. This amicus brief is for the Search case (this one [0]). In search (the relevant market here), Microsoft does compete in the marketplace, and Microsoft's evidence that Google's anticompetitive practices have prevented them from gaining any meaningful ground in search were a keystone of the government's case, including the fact that Microsoft has invested nearly $100 billion into Bing [1]. In adtech much the same can be said about Meta. So, again, I'm curious: in which market does Google not have competitors spending massive amounts of cash which Google still manages to hold back from being able to meaningfully compete? [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1.0_6.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.837.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...

drivebyhooting 2y ago
Bing has a brand problem.
- KHRZ 2y ago
  You have been a bad user. Bing has been a good Bing.
  - drivebyhooting 2y ago
    Bing sounds to my ears ridiculous. Is it a Chinese pancake? Or Mr. Bing? Also as a verb it’s hard to pronounce.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      It shouldn't be any harder to pronounce than "sing", surely?
- immibis 2y ago
  This. You can tell by the popularity of DuckDuckGo, which is just reskinned rebranded Bing.
  - yegg 2y ago
    We are not just a "reskinned rebranded Bing." I know we're talking about search here, but to be clear DuckDuckGo is way more than search at this point and that is a large part of why we are popular. For example, we have a browser, duck.ai, VPN, email protection, app tracking protection, etc. We were first known for search (and maybe mostly on this forum since that's where I started), but we're now popular for all this other stuff as well that works to keep you more generally protected (see https://duckduckgo.com/compare-privacy https://duckduckgo.com/compare-privacy). In search in particular, search results have been more than web links since the early 2000s when instant answers started to appear on Yahoo. Since then, more and more of the page is instant answers of one kind or another (aka search modules, oneboxes, etc.) and less and less of it is traditional web links. AI-assisted answers has accelerated this even more in the past two years, and we get 0 of that from Bing. Same with knowledge graph answers before that (e.g., info from Wikipedia and other quick facts, which became the most prevalent search module on desktop), again, 0 from Bing. And same for the most prevalent search module on mobile too — local results — 0 from Bing. That is to say, a lot of our search results content is not coming from Bing. We have hundreds of team members and millions of lines of search code at this point. We’re constantly working on search, and looking to improve it. We post updates quarterly to https://duckduckgo.com/updates https://duckduckgo.com/updates (along with updates on our other products and services). In terms of traditional web links, yes, we primarily use Bing as an input in the same way Kagi primarily uses Google as an input. As Vlad has said publicly (most recently heard him on The Talk Show) and has been made clear from this US v Google case from Google/Bing/Apple/OpenAI/etc. testimony, it costs upwards of a billion dollars a year to maintain a competitive index of web links. Only the biggest companies can afford that. Nevertheless, we still work on actively crawling and indexing, but the reality is small companies cannot do it all themselves. In fact, that's true for most products in most industries -- they rely on a supply chain for various components, some of them critical. Finally, even if you have the same traditional links, but you put instant answers above or beside or in between them, change the design significantly, or otherwise add to them (all of which we do), then the actual user experience of the search results ends up being significantly different in terms of how it is perceived and what people click on. For the latter, people engage with a section above another section about twice as much, so for example, if you just put a different box/answer on top you've drastically changed the experience of the search engine.

georgeecollins 2y ago

A shareholder in those companies wouldn’t support it. You could easily spend $10b trying to win back a fraction of the search market and Google could just spend $10b back to greater effect to bury you. Google is entrenched at every level: consumer awareness, browser, SEO, advertisers, ad-tech.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

timewizard 2y ago

A country as large and prosperous as the United States should have more than 4 providers. We should have more than 3 cellular companies. We should have more than 8 major ISPs. These are monopolies. You might not see it because the economy is so _over monopolized_ it's hard to have perspective. YCombinator loves to pretend it invented the idea of startups and entreprenourism but those have been vigorous and healthy throughout _most_ of America's existence. When they weren't we wrote some of the most comprehensive and consumer friendly anti-trust laws in the entire world. A feat which still stands today.

light_hue_1 2y ago
We don't have 8 major ISPs. That's a joke. We have 8 monoplies that live together. I have never once lived in a house where I had a choice of ISP in the US (unless you count getting a mobile router).