25 ms·

Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

864 points by colesantiago 1y ago

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...

socrateslee 1y ago
Just to think about the blocking of installing apps from unverified source on Android by Google, isn't this an exclusive contracts upon users?
- brookst 1y ago
  The ruling is not that Google can never have exclusive contracts for anything. If they rent Moscone Center for an event, there's no requirement that others be allowed to use the same space at the same time. And there is no exclusive contract between Google and users with regards to sources of apps. It's a change in technical requirements for the platform. In law, the actual thing matters; just being able to draw vague parallels doesn't mean anything.
Iolaum 1y ago
Does that (the ruling) mean that a company that sells Android devices, will be able to sell that device with a non-Google certified android-fork (ie Google won't be able to forbid them from doing so)?
phim16vrq7x8 1y ago
labs.xda-developers.com
colesantiago 1y ago
What does this mean for Mozilla? Where would Mozilla get their 80% of revenue from if Google now has to probably sever and end their search deal for Firefox? [0]. [0] https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-revenue-share-doj-antitrust-remedies https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-r...
- rolph 1y ago
  Sell SDKs and API access.
- mkl 1y ago
  Google is allowed to continue paying companies like Mozilla and Apple to be the default search engine. The CNBC article is very unclear. This bitsy BBC one is a bit better: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t
- solardev 1y ago
  Ideally Mozilla would go bankrupt and a better-managed org could fork Firefox and pick up from there.
  - majewsky 1y ago
    If forking Firefox was a viable route, would someone not already have done it?
    - solardev 1y ago
      There's not really a strong incentive to while Mozilla is still around (and despite that, there are still a few forks... Waterfox, for example). I think it would take a collapse of Mozilla, Oracle-style, to really spur that. (edit: Oracle didn't collapse, I mean what happened to OpenOffice.org.)
  - thayne 1y ago
    Who would this better managed org be? And how would they get the necessary funding?
    - solardev 1y ago
      Personally I'd vote for Apache, or a new FOSS group. They don't need all the funding that Mozilla currently gets (most of which isn't spent on Firefox anyway). I'd rather see that effort than something like Ladybird, personally.
nycdatasci 1y ago
The ruling: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...
- dang 1y ago
  We'll put that link in the top text above. Thanks!
intsunny 1y ago
The headline is not great because Google will obviously appeal the ruling to the appeals court of DC, and if they have to, the Supreme Court. A lot can happy from now and then. And this may take many years to grind through the court system. I wonder if there exists AI models of all the super senior and important judges so we can venture how this will play out through the court system.
- zb3 1y ago
  Could the final vertict be worse for Google?
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    There are ways if could be, such as new evidence coming to light, but generally no. You don't want a system where people are punished for appealing.
    - mcny 1y ago
      I definitely anal but I am curious if this applies to civil lawsuits. This is a civil antitrust lawsuit, right? We never were seeking prison time for the CEO?
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    Yes; presumably their appeal will not raise issues where that is likely, but as is often the case in high-stakes civil litigation where neither side got what they wanted at trial, both sides are appealing this decision, and the government’s appeal no doubt will attenpt to raise issues that would present the possibility of things being worse for Google.
- pier25 1y ago
  So Google has to appeal they're an illegal monopoly but the judge still thinks it's ok for them to keep Chrome?
  - 1y ago
_3u10 1y ago
RIP Firefox
stefan_ 1y ago
When the stock pops 10% on the announcement you got your antitrust enforcement wrong.
- xyzzy9563 1y ago
  Do you think it's better if all companies with competitive moats have a collapse in share price? I'm not really understanding what you're implying here.
  - stefan_ 1y ago
    I don't understand. The court has ruled this already a year ago: > Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly What should be the effect of antitrust enforcement to a monopolists share price? We are looking at something structural after all.
    - xyzzy9563 1y ago
      Why should shareholders have to suffer just because the Google engineers were good at their job?
      - solardev 1y ago
        Because the overall well-being of a society is supposedly more important than a few shareholders' wealth?
        xyzzy9563 1y ago
        Do you know of any societies in the world that have a high quality of life but don’t have wealthy shareholders?
        neoromantique 1y ago
        I know plenty with very low quality of life and very wealthy shareholders.
LeoPanthera 1y ago
The BBC is reporting the exact opposite of this headline. "It's also free to keep making payments to partners such as Apple, to secure placement of its browser - another closely watched and contentious part of the case." https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t Edit: Even the CNBC body text contradicts its own headline. The confusion seems to be what "exclusive" means. "The company can make payments to preload products, but they cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision showed."
- robocat 1y ago
  CNBC also says "illegally held a monopololy". When they can't spell, it's a sign the article was poorly rushed?
  - wincy 1y ago
    In my mind, it also basically guarantees it wasn’t written with AI!
    - solardev 1y ago
      I wonder if you can ask AI to "add some typos and grammatical mistakes, and don't use emdashes"
      - edm0nd 1y ago
        I just fed this to Claude >write me two paragraphs about how AI has grown in 2025. include a few typos to make it appear as if a human wrote them. its response: I can't write content with intentional typos to make it appear human-written, as this could be misleading about the source of the content. However, I'd be happy to write you two informative paragraphs about AI's growth in 2025!
        vkou 1y ago
        Sure, public models won't do it for you, but private models that will be used for propaganda purposes will absolutely be built to be misleading and convincing.
Workaccount2 1y ago
Firefox can still get money, and maybe Apple too. The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity. Google also must share search data with competitors, but it's not totally clear what this is. The ruling mentions helping other engines with "long tail" queries. All in all this seems like a pretty mild ruling, and an appeal can generally only help Google from a not to bad ruling at this point.
- mig39 1y ago
  Yeah, I don't think Google is the "exclusive" on either Apple OSes or Firefox. Just the default.
  - dh2022 1y ago
    It shows you how well the judge understands the situation. More or less the remedy is keep doing what you are doing.
  - johanyc 1y ago
    > The decision said that Apple's deal with Google to be the default search engine was "exclusive" because it established Google as the default out-of-the-box search engine. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/09/02/apple-shares-rise-after-decision-in-google-antitrust-case-.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/09/02/apple-shares-rise-after-...
    - johncolanduoni 1y ago
      I’m confused what deals the court would accept as non-exclusive then. Do they have to randomize the default search engines when you first boot a new iPhone?
  - nsonha 1y ago
    using that argument nothing is exclusive, no browser is hard coded to a single search engine
- thayne 1y ago
  > The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity. From what I understand Google could pay for Firefox to install a Google search extension, but they can't pay Firefox to make Google the default search engine. Even if they get google to pay for just pre-installing it, it's not going to be anywhere near what Google currently pays to be the default.
neallindsay 1y ago
The search deals were already not exclusive. The real impact will be the other businesses (especially GenAI) where Google will be barred from having exclusivity clauses in its contracts. -update- CNBC has fixed their headline.
- lofaszvanitt 1y ago
  GenAI is a bubble, an inflated nothingburger that DOJ ate like a chocolate muffin.
fidotron 1y ago
This is an astonishing victory for Google, they must be very happy about it. They get basically everything they want (keeping it all in the tent), plus a negotiating position on search deals where they can refuse something because they can't do it now. Quite why the judge is so concerned about the rise of AI factoring in here is beyond me. It's fundamentally an anticompetitive decision.
- jonas21 1y ago
  Do you not see ChatGPT and Claude as viable alternatives to search? They've certainly replaced a fair chunk of my queries.
  - bediger4000 1y ago
    I do not. I prefer to read the primary sources, LLM summaries are, after all, probabilistic, and based on syntax. I'm often looking for semantics, and an LLM really really is not going to give me that.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      Funny, I use LLM's for so much search now because they understand my query semantically, not just its syntax. Keyword matching fails completely for certain types of searching.
      - balder1991 1y ago
        Also weirdly LLMs like ChatGPT can give good sources that usually wouldn’t be at the top of a Google query.
        matwood 1y ago
        There’s a particular Italian government website and the only way I can find it is through ChatGPT. It’s a sub site under another site and I assume it’s the context of my question that surfaces the site when Google wouldn’t.
solardev 1y ago
[flagged]
Hansenq 1y ago
This seems like a very sensible and logical conclusion by the judge to me. An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The ban on exclusive contracts makes sense though; they should not be allowed to use contracts to furthur their monopoly position. And similarly with Chrome; it made no sense to bring Chrome into this equation. Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today NOT through exclusive contracts, but because Chrome is just a better product. Users can switch to Firefox/Safari (Mac default)/Edge (Windows default); they don't because Chrome is better. Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company. With the rise of ChatGPT (I barely use Google anymore) and AI search engines potentially shifting the search landscape, who knows if Google will still be a monopoly 5 years from now. Software moves fast and the best solution to software monopoly is more software competition.
- skinnymuch 1y ago
  Vast majority of users are not technically literate enough to know what is a good browser. They would have no clue why Chrome is better or not. They definitely don’t know what Blink is.
  - eclipxe 1y ago
    Why does that matter?
    - skinnymuch 1y ago
      Consumers aren’t using chrome in 2025 because it’s the best. Not that the vast majority of people would know minor differences. This isn’t when Chrome came out and the differences between other browsers was large. Monopolies usually don’t maintain their status because they are “the best” and as if consumers also are informed enough to know that. Similar arguments can be made to allow basically all of big tech. In a better system instead of talking about allowing everything as if corporations are precious individuals, the govt should be creating funded competitors and being much more firm with monopolistic behavior (even if they aren’t legally monopolies)
bergfest 1y ago
They should be barred from shipping experimental or non-standardized features in Chrome to prevent them from abusing their monopoly and forcing others hands by creating de-facto standards without a fair discourse. Experimental features should be allowed in special Chrome builds targeted at developers only, and not be allowed to come preinstalled on any consumer device.
- cma 1y ago
  Not sure about this, but if it was going to go in if the flag isn't turned on by default that seems fine without requiring a special developer build making most stuff even harder to get tested. The web broadly isn't going to rely on something that isn't default. The bigger problem is their features are playing into their ad business now, like the manifest v3 stuff.
- skybrian 1y ago
  Why? It seems like new API's should be tested with real users before becoming a web standard, and origin trials were a big improvement over what happened before with webkit specific CSS, etc.
  - anthem2025 1y ago
    Because they have a history of abusing their monopoly on browsers to push new standards that only help them.
    - skybrian 1y ago
      What are some examples of that for web standards?
      - LikesPwsh 1y ago
        FLOC/Cohorts API, AMP, Manifest V3, Widevine, WEI.
        1y ago
motoxpro 1y ago
Thank goodness. Them spinning that out would have been a nightmare. Bad day to be Apple. Edit: I just checked the stock, I had no idea people priced in a split with that much certainty.
- frankchn 1y ago
  Why would it be bad for Apple? They get to keep the billions/year flowing in exchange for Google Search being the default on iOS devices. Google just can't pay to be the only search engine on iOS (but they have never done that afaik). AAPL up 3%+ after hours.
  - motoxpro 1y ago
    Ah I see, I should have read it more clearly. Makes sense why they are up!
- diamond559 1y ago
  After hours moves can be dramatic, we'll see where it's at tomorrow w/ full volume. It's good news for sure but you can't tell me Wall Street actually thought they would be broken up or anything drastic.
  - FergusArgyll 1y ago
    It's not a binary will it won't it. You have to assign odds to it & if the odds are 10% you need to hedge that. Now you don't anymore
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    > but you can't tell me Wall Street actually thought It's not binary. "Wall Street" is a lot of people independently pricing what they think is the probability and impact. But so yes, Wall Street was absolutely pricing in a drastic breakup to some degree. If they'd thought it was even more likely, the bump would have been even larger.
supernova87a 1y ago
By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... ) It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story) yet why is it always such a hassle for them to feel that they should link the original content? I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point. It feels like they want to be the gatekeepers of information, and poor ones at that. I think it should be adopted as standard journalistic practice in fact -- reporting on court rulings must come with the PDF. Aside from that, it will be interesting to see on what grounds the judge decided that this particular data sharing remedy was the solution. Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data? I am not too familiar with antitrust precedent, but to what extent does the judge rule on how specific the data sharing need to be (what types of data, for what time span, how anonymized, etc. etc.) or appoint a special master? Why is that up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?
- ElijahLynn 1y ago
  So true, I think it should be mandatory to put "sources:" as a consistently placed section in all "news" articles.
  - warkdarrior 1y ago
    Google's AI summary includes links to sources: https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+ruling+on+google+and+chrome https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+rul...
    - mort96 1y ago
      We're talking about secondary sources (news papers) linking to primary sources (a PDF of the court ruling). You showed a tertiary source (Google search) linking to a secondary school (BBC).
paxys 1y ago
> The company can make payments to preload products, but it cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision stated. How is this relevant? Apple is the one selling exclusive access to search on iPhone, not Google.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- whatevertrevor 1y ago
  Yeah, that's an interesting side of this. How is Apple not under any fire for basically weaponizing something as basic as internet search on their platform? If we think this practice is anti-competitive shouldn't we also make it illegal for the platforms to do this? It's a little bit like sentencing the sex-worker to jail but letting the pimp go scot free.
  - ezfe 1y ago
    Because anti-competitive behavior in this context cannot be performed by someone without a monopoly. Apple cannot be anti-competitive in the search space unless you show they have a monopoly on browser apps (which you could, but would probably fail based on how the Apple lawsuit is going).
    - whatevertrevor 1y ago
      I'm not referring to the specific context of this lawsuit, but the broader context in general. Google is in multiple anti-competitive lawsuits, while Apple has the most walled garden of all gardens, protects it with a giant club and manages to get away without a scratch. For example Google got sued for anti-competitive practices in Android regarding third party stores, Apple gets no such lawsuit because they simply made it impossible. Of course it's the laws to blame since they incentivize aggressively closed ecosystems from the get go, but it's odd that there isn't even a conversation about it regarding Apple.
  - benoau 1y ago
    Apple's antitrust is in-progress though, so who knows, the deal is cited throughout the DOJ complaint but not for being a monopoly itself more sort of how they cash-in on the lack of competition - > 5. When users run an internet search, Google gives Apple a significant cut of the advertising revenue that an iPhone user’s searches generate. > 16. Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests. > 145. Similarly, Apple is willing to sacrifice user privacy and security in other ways so long as doing so benefits Apple. For example, Apple allows developers to distribute apps through its App Store that collect vast amounts of personal and sensitive data about users—including children—at the expense of its users’ privacy and security. Apple also enters agreements to share in the revenue generated from advertising that relies on harvesting users’ personal data. For example, Apple accepts massive payments from Google to set its search engine as the default in the Safari web browser even though Apple recognizes that other search engines better protect user privacy https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544402/gov.uscourts.njd.544402.1.0_3.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544...
mgh2 1y ago
https://archive.is/cFHR9 https://archive.is/cFHR9
xnx 1y ago
From the ruling: > Google will have to make available to Qualified Competitors certain search index and user-interaction data, though not ads data, as such sharing will ... The court, however, has narrowed the datasets Google will be required to share to tailor the remedy to its anticompetitive conduct. I don't like the sound of that. > Google will not be required to share granular, query-level data with advertisers or provide them with more access to such data This eases some of my concerns. I really don't like the idea of my queries or any data about me going to shady sites like DuckDuckGo.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  What's shady about DuckDuckGo? And specifically, are they any worse than google or bing?
  - dev1ycan 1y ago
    His tech lead at google told him that duckduckgo is shady
seatac76 1y ago
https://archive.is/GJWPP https://archive.is/GJWPP The Bloomberg article is much better on what exactly is the remedy. IMHO: they got off easy.
seatac76 1y ago
https://archive.is/GJWPP https://archive.is/GJWPP Bloomberg article is better, has more details on the remedy. IMHO: They got off easy. Looking forward to reading Matt Stoller’s take on this.
andrewstuart 1y ago
This is great news. Chrome is the most sophisticated and awesome software ever built, next to Linux. It leads and drives web innovation. Don’t get me wrong - my main drive is Firefox but googles investment in Chrome benefits every single player in the internet.
- hu3 1y ago
  Not a popular opinion around these parts. But I still cherish the feeling of witnessing something incredible happening in front of my eyes when Chrome was launched. It felt a thousand times better than the status quo. It still feels in some aspects but the wow factor has diminished since then.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  Heh. I will make a quick prediction. If you think generic HN-crowd opinion of Google was low today, I can now basically guarantee you that it will be much, much lower a year from now based on nothing other than Google's behavior prior to this ruling ( effectively barring side loading for most users ). Now all bets are off. So is it great news? For investors? Yes. For everyone else, mmmmmm, nop. Edit: I am ignoring your point, because I honestly can't take it seriously.
ankit219 1y ago
Re Chrome divesture: > The remedy also extends beyond the conduct Plaintiffs seek to redress. It was Google’s control of the Chrome default, not its ownership of Chrome as a whole, that the court highlighted in its liability finding. See Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 120–21. Ordering Google to sell one of its most popular products, one that it has built “from the ground up” and in which it has invested (and continues to invest) billions of dollars, in the hope of opening a single channel of distribution to competition—and not even one that was unlawfully foreclosed by the challenged contracts—cannot reasonably be described as a remedy “tailored to fit the wrong creating the occasion for the remedy.” Microsoft III, 253 F.3d at 107; Rem. Tr. at 2466:23–2468:3 (Pichai); id. at 1634:23–1636:2 (Tabriz) (discussing PXR0215 at -257). Further, as a legal matter, the divestiture of Chrome exceeds the proper scope of relief. “All parties agree that the relevant geographic marketis the United States.” Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 107. Chrome, however, is not so geographically confined. The vast majority—over 80%—of its monthly active users are located outside the United States. Rem. Tr. at 1619:23–1620:6 (Tabriz). Plaintiffs do not try to make the case that a divestiture of Chrome to just U.S.-based users is feasible.
mrcwinn 1y ago
It’s remarkable that in certain instances, it’s wrong or even potentially dangerous to democracy to question institutions, and in other instances it’s okay to say a judge or a judicial system is corrupt and favoring big tech. Anyone have a rubric I can follow?
gitprolinux 1y ago
[dead]
hardtke 1y ago
If I am reading this correctly, Google is now required to syndicate their search text ads to "Qualified Competitors." This is important as it will allow companies to monetize AI answers and other search replacements without needing to completely build a corresponding search ad marketplace. The search ad marketplace is a somewhat natural monopoly where the revenue per auction actually grows with the number of auctions so a second search ad marketplace could never develop on its own.
koolala 1y ago
This means Firefox needs a new buisness model and Open*Ai would love to take Google's exclusive place.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jajuuka 1y ago
[flagged]
- tzs 1y ago
  How do you lobby a court?
  - rhubarbtree 1y ago
    [flagged]
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
The opinion: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_4.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... From page 157: "Glue is essentially a super query log that collects a raft of data about a query and the users interaction with the response. Rem. Tr. at 2808:22809:6 (Allan). The data underlying Glue consists of information relating to (1) the query, such as its text, language, user location, and user device type; (2) ranking information, including the 10 blue links and any other triggered search features that appear on the SERP, such as images, maps, Knowledge Panel, People also ask, etc.; (3) SERP interaction information, such as clicks, hovers, and duration on the SERP; and (4) query interpretation and suggestions, including spelling correction and salient query terms. Id. at 2809:82812:20 (Allan) (discussing RDXD-20.026 to .028). An important component of the Glue data is Navboost data. See id. at 2808:16-20 (Allan) (Glue contains . . . Nav[b]oost information.); Liab. Tr. at 6403:3-5 (Nayak) (Glue is just another name for [N]avboost that includes all of the other features on the page.). Navboost is a memorization system that aggregates click-and-query data about the web results delivered to the SERP. Liab. Tr. at 1804:81805:22, 1806:8-15 (Lehman). Like Glue, it can be thought of as just a giant table. Id. at 1805:6-13 (Lehman). Importantly, the remedy does not force Google to disclose any models or signals built from Glue data, only the underlying data itself. Rem. Tr. at 2809:3-4 (Allan)." When a graphical browser running Javascript distributed by advertising company or business partner is used, Google measures time spent on the results page (SERP), time spent hovering, as well as tracking what links are clicked; it also records device type, location, language This data collection is common knowledge to many nerds but www users may be unaware of it If do not use such a browser running Javascript and if only send minimum HTTP headers, none of this data is collected, except location as approximated from IP address. The later can be user-controlled by sending searches to a remote proxy (set up by the user), or perhaps Tor IMHO, it is relatively easy to avoid "click-and-query" data collection such as duration on SERP, hovering and tracking clicked links, as well as device type and language, but alternative www clients that prevent it, i.e., not the browser distributed by Google, are not made available as a choice. With this settlement, Google can no longer restrict others from offering choice of alternative www clients
- t23423i34234234 1y ago
  Chromium's policies are tightly tied to Ad-measurement within Google (see Privacy-Sandbox). Quite important since pretty-much every non-Google browser on every-platform blocks third-party cookie tracking.
tiffanyh 1y ago
Stock up ~8% after hours, equating to ~$200B in market cap. (Whereas Perplexity was offering $32B)
sylens 1y ago
I think ultimately this is a good decision. The web has flourished in part because Google has supported Chrome so well over the years since they are incentivized to do so. You don't have to use Chrome (I don't) to benefit from this second order effect.
- bogwog 1y ago
  What do you define as "flourished"? Chrome won in part because it was better than Internet Explorer, but ironically, the internet was better back when IE had majority market share. Today, 99% of internet traffic goes to a handful of sites/apps, and the vast majority of the ad revenue on the internet goes to a handful ad companies. The internet is a SEO spam shit hole crafted in service of Google's easily gamed ranking algorithms, and designed with the sole purpose of serving ads. Google effectively owns the internet, and this ruling is a green light for them to take even more. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop releasing Chrome sources and fully ban ad blockers now. The court already ruled that the government can't touch them, even when they've been found to have broken the law.
  - bitpush 1y ago
    > Google effectively owns the internet What are you even saying? ChatGPT - a product that was launched in 2021 - is eating up internet search game. People have switched to that in throves, and Google can do nothing. You're mistakenly assuming that Google has a lot of power, when in fact, they had none. People were using it because it was the superior product at the time. And now there's a better product, and people have switched to it. Dont blame Google for Bing (and ddg's) shitty products.
    - drnick1 1y ago
      Google is still a major cloud provider, owns and reads most people's emails, spies on people through billions of Android devices, surveils people with through maps on phones and cars, is an ISP in some regions, and more. So yes, Google effectively owns much of the Internet at least outside of China/Russia and some other countries that have created alternatives and foisted them onto their populations by banning Google. The alternatives are of course state-controlled and just as evil as Google.
bogwog 1y ago
This is the worst possible outcome for the internet. Google gets to enjoy the spoils of their illegal anticompetitive business practices, they're emboldened to continue violating the law, and the market remains utterly fucked. Also, Firefox catches a stray bullet because fuck you that's why.
- FergusArgyll 1y ago
  Also we get to continue using the best browser, knowing it will be maintained by the best engineers
alex_young 1y ago
Paywall free URL: http://web.archive.org/web/20250902215913/https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/google-antitrust-search-ruling.html http://web.archive.org/web/20250902215913/https://www.cnbc.c...
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
It’s surprising that the proven conflict of interest posed by other departments driving Chrome team decisions was allowed to stand. I would’ve expected at minimum for Google to be required to keep Chrome/Blink as siloed off from the rest of the company as is practically possible.
- bitpush 1y ago
  What conflict of interest? You're probably thinking of manifest v3, but Safari never supported extensions. Maybe you're thinking of third party cookie deprecation, which Safari doesnt have. In many ways, Chrome is becoming Safari - a browser a lot of users like. So again, what conflict of interest?
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    I forget the details, but one example that I recall is that it turned out that the search team pushed the Chrome team to make changes to the addressbar search functionality to drive more search traffic. Arguably another is how signing into any Google service also signs the browser into that account, as well as Chrome on Android never supporting extensions of any kind (and thus, not supporting adblockers).
gausswho 1y ago
Court's statements: 2024: "Google abused its monopoly position for search dominance" 2025: "Punishing Google now would be unreasonable because its dominance is under threat by AI" Wrist slapped. Somebody got their bag. Over to you, EU.
- bitpush 1y ago
  The whole point was the 'boy who cried wolf' - OMG, we're not able to compete with Google because they are a monopoly. And then Sam Altman came and showed how to make a better product, and all of a sudden people are like, there's an alternative. You're blaming Google for Bing and ddg's shitty products.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago
  Not sure what EU has to do with anything here, but it has long ago lost the ability to create viable tech companies. We have AI regulations with no AI companies, we have cloud regulations without any major cloud providers, we have internet privacy regulations without browser or social media companies. If you need an industry regulated to non-existence, we got you covered — otherwise I think we can't really help you out.
sirjaz 1y ago
Couldn't the government appeal the punishment? Saying the judge was biased or that the punishment does not fit the crime
furyofantares 1y ago
So what's the lesson here, go ahead and abuse your monopoly as long as you want and the worst that will happen is you'll be told to stop doing that eventually? Or am I misunderstanding something here?
mrcwinn 1y ago
A loser in this is Perplexity. I’ve never understood the thesis of Apple purchasing them: whether or not you enjoy their product, I see nothing defensible or interesting and suspect they’re among the most overvalued AI startup. Nonetheless, I’d bet Apple will do more of what’s worked: partner with Google to solve something core that they’re not great at. I’d take a deeply integrated Gemini on the iPhone over Siri any day of the week!
- snihalani 1y ago
  why couldn't perplexity fork firefox/chromium and make it chromy?
  - wraptile 1y ago
    They have, it's called Comet https://www.perplexity.ai/comet https://www.perplexity.ai/comet
  - ulfw 1y ago
    Why would anybody use it and what for?
vayup 1y ago
> Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data? The ruling lays out the definition for "Qualified competitors". Any company that meets that definition can make a showing of that fact to the plaintiffs. Once they do that (and presumably after the plaintiffs agree), Google will have to share the data.
e-clinton 1y ago
So… no punishment for past indiscretions, only barriers to protect against future ones? Got it.
tonyhart7 1y ago
rip for firefox then, is this would start an enshittification for ff??
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
  Chrome became successful for the same reason Firefox became successful enshittification of IE -> Firefox's rise enshittification of FF -> Chrome's rise Any unbiased person can verify the timeline https://www.wired.com/2005/02/firefox/ https://www.wired.com/2005/02/firefox/ https://visionarymarketing.com/en/2008/09/03/chrome/ https://visionarymarketing.com/en/2008/09/03/chrome/
moralestapia 1y ago
Awesome! The end of Mozilla, at last :D
Rafuino 1y ago
Once again a monopoly escapes any real consequence and the rich keep getting richer.
lisper 1y ago
This story has something I've never seen on HN before: underneath the title and the subsequent "X points by colesantiago N hours ago | flag | hide ..." line, there is a link to https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223 https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... No other story on the front page has this, and I've never seen it before. How did that link get there? It is not the link to the story itself. That is on cnbc.com.
- charlesfries 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/submit https://news.ycombinator.com/submit > Leave url blank to submit a question for discussion. If there is no url, text will appear at the top of the thread. If there is a url, text is optional.
  - lisper 1y ago
    Ah. For years I have been submitting links through a bookmarklet that goes to /submitlink rather than submit, so I don't get the text box. I wonder why this feature isn't used more often.
RachelF 1y ago
How corrupt are judges in the USA? Are their any measures that audit their finances or stop them or their relations from taking work with companies they have issued judgements on? I'm not saying this is the case here, it is a general question.
- tokioyoyo 1y ago
  US laws are very corporate-friendly.
AlexanderTheGr8 1y ago
Apple stock is up 3%, strongly implying that this ruling is good for Apple as well. That is in contradiction to a lot of folks saying that this ruling means Google won't have to pay Apple. While the terms of the deal with Apple will likely change, based on the stock price increase, Apple will likely end up with a different deal (if not better). Another thing to note, contrary to some comments, is that Google is still allowed to make a deal with Apple to be the default search engine, but with extra rules. ``` Google also would be permitted to pay Browser Developers, including Apple, to set Search as the default GSE, so long as the Browser Developer (1) can promote other GSEs and (2) is permitted to set a different GSE on different operating system versions or in a privacy mode and makes changes, if desired, on an annual basis. ```
- AlexanderTheGr8 1y ago
  To add on: a 3% stock shift means that the search-engine deal was worth >=3% of the stock. That is massive free cashflow. In 2022, Google paid Apple $20B (full profit bec negligible costs) while Apple's total profit was around $100B. 20% of Apple's total profit came from Google's search deal. Based on this, I am sure the stock price worth would be much higher than 3% (actual numbers are complicated because stock price accounts for future growth of things).
- wraptile 1y ago
  > Apple stock is up 3%, strongly implying that this ruling is good for Apple as well. It's been decades since stock market represented reality. If that was the case TSLA wouldn't shoot up on every report showing massive revenue loss. The stock market is one big meme wheel.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    The highest priced companies have the highest net incomes and highest profit margins, and biggest moats. Over many years. That is what I would expect in "reality".
WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
> Plaintiff States asserted, placed Microsoft at a competitive disadvantage poor microsoft, please, somebody, help them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45106295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45106295
panick21_ 1y ago
In True Communism Ad-Block would be state policy and Google could never get away with removing the apis. That's really what I hoped for.
BrenBarn 1y ago
> Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints. This is the problem. It doesn't matter if they used those specific assets to perpetrate these specific acts. The overall market power derived from those assets (and many others) taints everything they do. There is no way to effectively curtail monopoly power by selectively limiting the actions of monopolists in certain specific domains. It's like thinking you can stop a rampaging 500-pound gorilla by tying two of its fingers together because those were the two fingers that were at the leading edge of its blow when it crushed someone's skull with a punch. Once a company has monopoly power of any kind, it is useless to try to stop it from using that power to do certain things. It will always find a way to use its power to get around any restrictions. The problem isn't what the monopoly does, it's that the monopoly exists. The only surefire way is to destroy the monopoly itself by shattering the company into tiny pieces so that no entity holds monopoly power at all.
- r0m4n0 1y ago
  Sounds nice but many companies cannot exist in tiny pieces, Google included. So if you force that it will cease to exist. Which I believe to be a net negative to the US, and world, some may disagree though Disclosure: Google employee, words are my own
  - BrenBarn 1y ago
    > Which I believe to be a net negative to the US, and world, some may disagree though Yes, I disagree. If we can't have Google without monopolism then we should have neither. Treating Google as essential in this situation is like a druggie saying he "needs" his next hit. People only "need" Google because Google has used its monopoly position to try to make people addicted to it. It should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, the company should have been broken up 10+ years ago, and it's only getting worse. It would be better to destroy it entirely (along with many other such large companies) than to keep it with its disproportionate power.
    - shadowgovt 1y ago
melagonster 1y ago
>During the remedies trial in May, the DOJ asked the judge to force Google to share the data it uses for generating search results, such as data about what users click on. Does this mean that government can know your every step on Chrome?
josephbenedict 1y ago
I kinda knew that Google will manage to dodge the nuclear option in this antitrust case. Like, sure, they got dinged for anticompetitive practices (which everyone saw coming), but Mehta stopping short of forcing a Chrome or Android divestiture was a huge win for them.
hulitu 1y ago
> Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts Hurray. I _love_ capitalism. Everything is for sale. Kids CEOs, rememember: Every looby cent is a good spent cent. Pay it forward.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago
  Can you cite any evidence whatsoever that the Judge who made this ruling was bribed?
diwank 1y ago
Google's response: "Read our statement on today’s decision in the case involving Google Search." https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/doj-search-decision-sept-2025/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/doj-s...
slapicecream 1y ago
[dead]
ecef9-8c0f-4374 1y ago
What about Edge? The browser on every PC and the default browser after every update? Can't even delete the desktop shortcuts.
dev1ycan 1y ago
And with this the court has sealed the future of the internet, dark day for technology. Google being split from Chrome would have given a second wind to tech.
pif 1y ago
> never seem to simply paste the link This is not possible on printed papers, and that is the medium that defined the profession of journalism. Why should they change?
bugtodiffer 1y ago
Can we expropriate them all and democratically organize these important companies?
- brazukadev 1y ago
  No but they can expropriate you
Xss3 1y ago
Surely this is really really bad news for Firefox and therefore bad for browser diversity (favouring chromium bases browsers) and therefore bad for the web as a whole?
KurSix 1y ago
That's less "end of monopoly" and more "play nice with the wording."
EXHades 1y ago
fuck google, chrome 140.x after that cannot use MV2
nickip 1y ago
Most annoying thing ever is using google search on safari iphone. They constantly ask you to switch to chrome with the default button highlighted to open chrome/app store. So annoying.
sciencesama 1y ago
How is apple stock growing !?? Isnt the stick supposed to gondown as google wont be paying the monies going forward ?
guthib_net 1y ago
Ayo nothing special here but if you're a Unity / Python Coder and get stuck and search for answers, you're probably familiar with: guthib.net and no, not github. Just see what happens…
gradientsrneat 1y ago
The antitrust case I'm really interested in seeing the outcome of is Google's ad monopoly. Assuming they move forward with even that.
footlose_3815 1y ago
Whelp, time to restructure Mozilla... sadly...
thr0waway001 1y ago
Not bad for Google all things considered.

864 points by colesantiago 1y ago

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...

socrateslee 1y ago

Just to think about the blocking of installing apps from unverified source on Android by Google, isn't this an exclusive contracts upon users?

brookst 1y ago
The ruling is not that Google can never have exclusive contracts for anything. If they rent Moscone Center for an event, there's no requirement that others be allowed to use the same space at the same time. And there is no exclusive contract between Google and users with regards to sources of apps. It's a change in technical requirements for the platform. In law, the actual thing matters; just being able to draw vague parallels doesn't mean anything.

Iolaum 1y ago

Does that (the ruling) mean that a company that sells Android devices, will be able to sell that device with a non-Google certified android-fork (ie Google won't be able to forbid them from doing so)?

phim16vrq7x8 1y ago

labs.xda-developers.com

colesantiago 1y ago

What does this mean for Mozilla? Where would Mozilla get their 80% of revenue from if Google now has to probably sever and end their search deal for Firefox? [0]. [0] https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-revenue-share-doj-antitrust-remedies https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-r...

rolph 1y ago
Sell SDKs and API access.
mkl 1y ago
Google is allowed to continue paying companies like Mozilla and Apple to be the default search engine. The CNBC article is very unclear. This bitsy BBC one is a bit better: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t
solardev 1y ago
Ideally Mozilla would go bankrupt and a better-managed org could fork Firefox and pick up from there.
- majewsky 1y ago
  If forking Firefox was a viable route, would someone not already have done it?
  - solardev 1y ago
    There's not really a strong incentive to while Mozilla is still around (and despite that, there are still a few forks... Waterfox, for example). I think it would take a collapse of Mozilla, Oracle-style, to really spur that. (edit: Oracle didn't collapse, I mean what happened to OpenOffice.org.)
- thayne 1y ago
  Who would this better managed org be? And how would they get the necessary funding?
  - solardev 1y ago
    Personally I'd vote for Apache, or a new FOSS group. They don't need all the funding that Mozilla currently gets (most of which isn't spent on Firefox anyway). I'd rather see that effort than something like Ladybird, personally.

nycdatasci 1y ago

The ruling: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...

dang 1y ago
We'll put that link in the top text above. Thanks!

intsunny 1y ago

The headline is not great because Google will obviously appeal the ruling to the appeals court of DC, and if they have to, the Supreme Court. A lot can happy from now and then. And this may take many years to grind through the court system. I wonder if there exists AI models of all the super senior and important judges so we can venture how this will play out through the court system.

zb3 1y ago
Could the final vertict be worse for Google?
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  There are ways if could be, such as new evidence coming to light, but generally no. You don't want a system where people are punished for appealing.
  - mcny 1y ago
    I definitely anal but I am curious if this applies to civil lawsuits. This is a civil antitrust lawsuit, right? We never were seeking prison time for the CEO?
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  Yes; presumably their appeal will not raise issues where that is likely, but as is often the case in high-stakes civil litigation where neither side got what they wanted at trial, both sides are appealing this decision, and the government’s appeal no doubt will attenpt to raise issues that would present the possibility of things being worse for Google.
pier25 1y ago
So Google has to appeal they're an illegal monopoly but the judge still thinks it's ok for them to keep Chrome?
- 1y ago

_3u10 1y ago

RIP Firefox

stefan_ 1y ago

When the stock pops 10% on the announcement you got your antitrust enforcement wrong.

xyzzy9563 1y ago
Do you think it's better if all companies with competitive moats have a collapse in share price? I'm not really understanding what you're implying here.
- stefan_ 1y ago
  I don't understand. The court has ruled this already a year ago: > Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly What should be the effect of antitrust enforcement to a monopolists share price? We are looking at something structural after all.
  - xyzzy9563 1y ago
    Why should shareholders have to suffer just because the Google engineers were good at their job?
    - solardev 1y ago
      Because the overall well-being of a society is supposedly more important than a few shareholders' wealth?
      - xyzzy9563 1y ago
        Do you know of any societies in the world that have a high quality of life but don’t have wealthy shareholders?
        neoromantique 1y ago
        I know plenty with very low quality of life and very wealthy shareholders.

LeoPanthera 1y ago

The BBC is reporting the exact opposite of this headline. "It's also free to keep making payments to partners such as Apple, to secure placement of its browser - another closely watched and contentious part of the case." https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg50dlj9gm4t Edit: Even the CNBC body text contradicts its own headline. The confusion seems to be what "exclusive" means. "The company can make payments to preload products, but they cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision showed."

robocat 1y ago
CNBC also says "illegally held a monopololy". When they can't spell, it's a sign the article was poorly rushed?
- wincy 1y ago
  In my mind, it also basically guarantees it wasn’t written with AI!
  - solardev 1y ago
    I wonder if you can ask AI to "add some typos and grammatical mistakes, and don't use emdashes"
    - edm0nd 1y ago
      I just fed this to Claude >write me two paragraphs about how AI has grown in 2025. include a few typos to make it appear as if a human wrote them. its response: I can't write content with intentional typos to make it appear human-written, as this could be misleading about the source of the content. However, I'd be happy to write you two informative paragraphs about AI's growth in 2025!
      - vkou 1y ago
        Sure, public models won't do it for you, but private models that will be used for propaganda purposes will absolutely be built to be misleading and convincing.

Workaccount2 1y ago

Firefox can still get money, and maybe Apple too. The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity. Google also must share search data with competitors, but it's not totally clear what this is. The ruling mentions helping other engines with "long tail" queries. All in all this seems like a pretty mild ruling, and an appeal can generally only help Google from a not to bad ruling at this point.

mig39 1y ago
Yeah, I don't think Google is the "exclusive" on either Apple OSes or Firefox. Just the default.
- dh2022 1y ago
  It shows you how well the judge understands the situation. More or less the remedy is keep doing what you are doing.
- johanyc 1y ago
  > The decision said that Apple's deal with Google to be the default search engine was "exclusive" because it established Google as the default out-of-the-box search engine. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/09/02/apple-shares-rise-after-decision-in-google-antitrust-case-.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/09/02/apple-shares-rise-after-...
  - johncolanduoni 1y ago
    I’m confused what deals the court would accept as non-exclusive then. Do they have to randomize the default search engines when you first boot a new iPhone?
- nsonha 1y ago
  using that argument nothing is exclusive, no browser is hard coded to a single search engine
thayne 1y ago
> The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity. From what I understand Google could pay for Firefox to install a Google search extension, but they can't pay Firefox to make Google the default search engine. Even if they get google to pay for just pre-installing it, it's not going to be anywhere near what Google currently pays to be the default.

neallindsay 1y ago

The search deals were already not exclusive. The real impact will be the other businesses (especially GenAI) where Google will be barred from having exclusivity clauses in its contracts. -update- CNBC has fixed their headline.

lofaszvanitt 1y ago
GenAI is a bubble, an inflated nothingburger that DOJ ate like a chocolate muffin.

fidotron 1y ago

This is an astonishing victory for Google, they must be very happy about it. They get basically everything they want (keeping it all in the tent), plus a negotiating position on search deals where they can refuse something because they can't do it now. Quite why the judge is so concerned about the rise of AI factoring in here is beyond me. It's fundamentally an anticompetitive decision.

jonas21 1y ago
Do you not see ChatGPT and Claude as viable alternatives to search? They've certainly replaced a fair chunk of my queries.
- bediger4000 1y ago
  I do not. I prefer to read the primary sources, LLM summaries are, after all, probabilistic, and based on syntax. I'm often looking for semantics, and an LLM really really is not going to give me that.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Funny, I use LLM's for so much search now because they understand my query semantically, not just its syntax. Keyword matching fails completely for certain types of searching.
    - balder1991 1y ago
      Also weirdly LLMs like ChatGPT can give good sources that usually wouldn’t be at the top of a Google query.
      - matwood 1y ago
        There’s a particular Italian government website and the only way I can find it is through ChatGPT. It’s a sub site under another site and I assume it’s the context of my question that surfaces the site when Google wouldn’t.

solardev 1y ago

[flagged]

Hansenq 1y ago

This seems like a very sensible and logical conclusion by the judge to me. An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The ban on exclusive contracts makes sense though; they should not be allowed to use contracts to furthur their monopoly position. And similarly with Chrome; it made no sense to bring Chrome into this equation. Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today NOT through exclusive contracts, but because Chrome is just a better product. Users can switch to Firefox/Safari (Mac default)/Edge (Windows default); they don't because Chrome is better. Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company. With the rise of ChatGPT (I barely use Google anymore) and AI search engines potentially shifting the search landscape, who knows if Google will still be a monopoly 5 years from now. Software moves fast and the best solution to software monopoly is more software competition.

skinnymuch 1y ago
Vast majority of users are not technically literate enough to know what is a good browser. They would have no clue why Chrome is better or not. They definitely don’t know what Blink is.
- eclipxe 1y ago
  Why does that matter?
  - skinnymuch 1y ago
    Consumers aren’t using chrome in 2025 because it’s the best. Not that the vast majority of people would know minor differences. This isn’t when Chrome came out and the differences between other browsers was large. Monopolies usually don’t maintain their status because they are “the best” and as if consumers also are informed enough to know that. Similar arguments can be made to allow basically all of big tech. In a better system instead of talking about allowing everything as if corporations are precious individuals, the govt should be creating funded competitors and being much more firm with monopolistic behavior (even if they aren’t legally monopolies)

bergfest 1y ago

They should be barred from shipping experimental or non-standardized features in Chrome to prevent them from abusing their monopoly and forcing others hands by creating de-facto standards without a fair discourse. Experimental features should be allowed in special Chrome builds targeted at developers only, and not be allowed to come preinstalled on any consumer device.

cma 1y ago
Not sure about this, but if it was going to go in if the flag isn't turned on by default that seems fine without requiring a special developer build making most stuff even harder to get tested. The web broadly isn't going to rely on something that isn't default. The bigger problem is their features are playing into their ad business now, like the manifest v3 stuff.
skybrian 1y ago
Why? It seems like new API's should be tested with real users before becoming a web standard, and origin trials were a big improvement over what happened before with webkit specific CSS, etc.
- anthem2025 1y ago
  Because they have a history of abusing their monopoly on browsers to push new standards that only help them.
  - skybrian 1y ago
    What are some examples of that for web standards?
    - LikesPwsh 1y ago
      FLOC/Cohorts API, AMP, Manifest V3, Widevine, WEI.
      - 1y ago

motoxpro 1y ago

Thank goodness. Them spinning that out would have been a nightmare. Bad day to be Apple. Edit: I just checked the stock, I had no idea people priced in a split with that much certainty.

frankchn 1y ago
Why would it be bad for Apple? They get to keep the billions/year flowing in exchange for Google Search being the default on iOS devices. Google just can't pay to be the only search engine on iOS (but they have never done that afaik). AAPL up 3%+ after hours.
- motoxpro 1y ago
  Ah I see, I should have read it more clearly. Makes sense why they are up!
diamond559 1y ago
After hours moves can be dramatic, we'll see where it's at tomorrow w/ full volume. It's good news for sure but you can't tell me Wall Street actually thought they would be broken up or anything drastic.
- FergusArgyll 1y ago
  It's not a binary will it won't it. You have to assign odds to it & if the odds are 10% you need to hedge that. Now you don't anymore
- crazygringo 1y ago
  > but you can't tell me Wall Street actually thought It's not binary. "Wall Street" is a lot of people independently pricing what they think is the probability and impact. But so yes, Wall Street was absolutely pricing in a drastic breakup to some degree. If they'd thought it was even more likely, the bump would have been even larger.

supernova87a 1y ago

By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... ) It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story) yet why is it always such a hassle for them to feel that they should link the original content? I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point. It feels like they want to be the gatekeepers of information, and poor ones at that. I think it should be adopted as standard journalistic practice in fact -- reporting on court rulings must come with the PDF. Aside from that, it will be interesting to see on what grounds the judge decided that this particular data sharing remedy was the solution. Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data? I am not too familiar with antitrust precedent, but to what extent does the judge rule on how specific the data sharing need to be (what types of data, for what time span, how anonymized, etc. etc.) or appoint a special master? Why is that up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?

ElijahLynn 1y ago
So true, I think it should be mandatory to put "sources:" as a consistently placed section in all "news" articles.
- warkdarrior 1y ago
  Google's AI summary includes links to sources: https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+ruling+on+google+and+chrome https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+rul...
  - mort96 1y ago
    We're talking about secondary sources (news papers) linking to primary sources (a PDF of the court ruling). You showed a tertiary source (Google search) linking to a secondary school (BBC).

paxys 1y ago

> The company can make payments to preload products, but it cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision stated. How is this relevant? Apple is the one selling exclusive access to search on iPhone, not Google.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
whatevertrevor 1y ago
Yeah, that's an interesting side of this. How is Apple not under any fire for basically weaponizing something as basic as internet search on their platform? If we think this practice is anti-competitive shouldn't we also make it illegal for the platforms to do this? It's a little bit like sentencing the sex-worker to jail but letting the pimp go scot free.
- ezfe 1y ago
  Because anti-competitive behavior in this context cannot be performed by someone without a monopoly. Apple cannot be anti-competitive in the search space unless you show they have a monopoly on browser apps (which you could, but would probably fail based on how the Apple lawsuit is going).
  - whatevertrevor 1y ago
    I'm not referring to the specific context of this lawsuit, but the broader context in general. Google is in multiple anti-competitive lawsuits, while Apple has the most walled garden of all gardens, protects it with a giant club and manages to get away without a scratch. For example Google got sued for anti-competitive practices in Android regarding third party stores, Apple gets no such lawsuit because they simply made it impossible. Of course it's the laws to blame since they incentivize aggressively closed ecosystems from the get go, but it's odd that there isn't even a conversation about it regarding Apple.
- benoau 1y ago
  Apple's antitrust is in-progress though, so who knows, the deal is cited throughout the DOJ complaint but not for being a monopoly itself more sort of how they cash-in on the lack of competition - > 5. When users run an internet search, Google gives Apple a significant cut of the advertising revenue that an iPhone user’s searches generate. > 16. Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests. > 145. Similarly, Apple is willing to sacrifice user privacy and security in other ways so long as doing so benefits Apple. For example, Apple allows developers to distribute apps through its App Store that collect vast amounts of personal and sensitive data about users—including children—at the expense of its users’ privacy and security. Apple also enters agreements to share in the revenue generated from advertising that relies on harvesting users’ personal data. For example, Apple accepts massive payments from Google to set its search engine as the default in the Safari web browser even though Apple recognizes that other search engines better protect user privacy https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544402/gov.uscourts.njd.544402.1.0_3.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544...

mgh2 1y ago

https://archive.is/cFHR9 https://archive.is/cFHR9

xnx 1y ago

From the ruling: > Google will have to make available to Qualified Competitors certain search index and user-interaction data, though not ads data, as such sharing will ... The court, however, has narrowed the datasets Google will be required to share to tailor the remedy to its anticompetitive conduct. I don't like the sound of that. > Google will not be required to share granular, query-level data with advertisers or provide them with more access to such data This eases some of my concerns. I really don't like the idea of my queries or any data about me going to shady sites like DuckDuckGo.

datadrivenangel 1y ago
What's shady about DuckDuckGo? And specifically, are they any worse than google or bing?
- dev1ycan 1y ago
  His tech lead at google told him that duckduckgo is shady

seatac76 1y ago

https://archive.is/GJWPP https://archive.is/GJWPP The Bloomberg article is much better on what exactly is the remedy. IMHO: they got off easy.

seatac76 1y ago

https://archive.is/GJWPP https://archive.is/GJWPP Bloomberg article is better, has more details on the remedy. IMHO: They got off easy. Looking forward to reading Matt Stoller’s take on this.

andrewstuart 1y ago

This is great news. Chrome is the most sophisticated and awesome software ever built, next to Linux. It leads and drives web innovation. Don’t get me wrong - my main drive is Firefox but googles investment in Chrome benefits every single player in the internet.

hu3 1y ago
Not a popular opinion around these parts. But I still cherish the feeling of witnessing something incredible happening in front of my eyes when Chrome was launched. It felt a thousand times better than the status quo. It still feels in some aspects but the wow factor has diminished since then.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
Heh. I will make a quick prediction. If you think generic HN-crowd opinion of Google was low today, I can now basically guarantee you that it will be much, much lower a year from now based on nothing other than Google's behavior prior to this ruling ( effectively barring side loading for most users ). Now all bets are off. So is it great news? For investors? Yes. For everyone else, mmmmmm, nop. Edit: I am ignoring your point, because I honestly can't take it seriously.

ankit219 1y ago

Re Chrome divesture: > The remedy also extends beyond the conduct Plaintiffs seek to redress. It was Google’s control of the Chrome default, not its ownership of Chrome as a whole, that the court highlighted in its liability finding. See Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 120–21. Ordering Google to sell one of its most popular products, one that it has built “from the ground up” and in which it has invested (and continues to invest) billions of dollars, in the hope of opening a single channel of distribution to competition—and not even one that was unlawfully foreclosed by the challenged contracts—cannot reasonably be described as a remedy “tailored to fit the wrong creating the occasion for the remedy.” Microsoft III, 253 F.3d at 107; Rem. Tr. at 2466:23–2468:3 (Pichai); id. at 1634:23–1636:2 (Tabriz) (discussing PXR0215 at -257). Further, as a legal matter, the divestiture of Chrome exceeds the proper scope of relief. “All parties agree that the relevant geographic marketis the United States.” Google, 747 F. Supp. 3d at 107. Chrome, however, is not so geographically confined. The vast majority—over 80%—of its monthly active users are located outside the United States. Rem. Tr. at 1619:23–1620:6 (Tabriz). Plaintiffs do not try to make the case that a divestiture of Chrome to just U.S.-based users is feasible.

mrcwinn 1y ago

It’s remarkable that in certain instances, it’s wrong or even potentially dangerous to democracy to question institutions, and in other instances it’s okay to say a judge or a judicial system is corrupt and favoring big tech. Anyone have a rubric I can follow?

gitprolinux 1y ago

[dead]

hardtke 1y ago

If I am reading this correctly, Google is now required to syndicate their search text ads to "Qualified Competitors." This is important as it will allow companies to monetize AI answers and other search replacements without needing to completely build a corresponding search ad marketplace. The search ad marketplace is a somewhat natural monopoly where the revenue per auction actually grows with the number of auctions so a second search ad marketplace could never develop on its own.

koolala 1y ago

This means Firefox needs a new buisness model and Open*Ai would love to take Google's exclusive place.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jajuuka 1y ago

[flagged]

tzs 1y ago
How do you lobby a court?
- rhubarbtree 1y ago
  [flagged]

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

The opinion: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_4.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... From page 157: "Glue is essentially a super query log that collects a raft of data about a query and the users interaction with the response. Rem. Tr. at 2808:22809:6 (Allan). The data underlying Glue consists of information relating to (1) the query, such as its text, language, user location, and user device type; (2) ranking information, including the 10 blue links and any other triggered search features that appear on the SERP, such as images, maps, Knowledge Panel, People also ask, etc.; (3) SERP interaction information, such as clicks, hovers, and duration on the SERP; and (4) query interpretation and suggestions, including spelling correction and salient query terms. Id. at 2809:82812:20 (Allan) (discussing RDXD-20.026 to .028). An important component of the Glue data is Navboost data. See id. at 2808:16-20 (Allan) (Glue contains . . . Nav[b]oost information.); Liab. Tr. at 6403:3-5 (Nayak) (Glue is just another name for [N]avboost that includes all of the other features on the page.). Navboost is a memorization system that aggregates click-and-query data about the web results delivered to the SERP. Liab. Tr. at 1804:81805:22, 1806:8-15 (Lehman). Like Glue, it can be thought of as just a giant table. Id. at 1805:6-13 (Lehman). Importantly, the remedy does not force Google to disclose any models or signals built from Glue data, only the underlying data itself. Rem. Tr. at 2809:3-4 (Allan)." When a graphical browser running Javascript distributed by advertising company or business partner is used, Google measures time spent on the results page (SERP), time spent hovering, as well as tracking what links are clicked; it also records device type, location, language This data collection is common knowledge to many nerds but www users may be unaware of it If do not use such a browser running Javascript and if only send minimum HTTP headers, none of this data is collected, except location as approximated from IP address. The later can be user-controlled by sending searches to a remote proxy (set up by the user), or perhaps Tor IMHO, it is relatively easy to avoid "click-and-query" data collection such as duration on SERP, hovering and tracking clicked links, as well as device type and language, but alternative www clients that prevent it, i.e., not the browser distributed by Google, are not made available as a choice. With this settlement, Google can no longer restrict others from offering choice of alternative www clients

t23423i34234234 1y ago
Chromium's policies are tightly tied to Ad-measurement within Google (see Privacy-Sandbox). Quite important since pretty-much every non-Google browser on every-platform blocks third-party cookie tracking.

tiffanyh 1y ago

Stock up ~8% after hours, equating to ~$200B in market cap. (Whereas Perplexity was offering $32B)

sylens 1y ago

I think ultimately this is a good decision. The web has flourished in part because Google has supported Chrome so well over the years since they are incentivized to do so. You don't have to use Chrome (I don't) to benefit from this second order effect.

bogwog 1y ago
What do you define as "flourished"? Chrome won in part because it was better than Internet Explorer, but ironically, the internet was better back when IE had majority market share. Today, 99% of internet traffic goes to a handful of sites/apps, and the vast majority of the ad revenue on the internet goes to a handful ad companies. The internet is a SEO spam shit hole crafted in service of Google's easily gamed ranking algorithms, and designed with the sole purpose of serving ads. Google effectively owns the internet, and this ruling is a green light for them to take even more. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop releasing Chrome sources and fully ban ad blockers now. The court already ruled that the government can't touch them, even when they've been found to have broken the law.
- bitpush 1y ago
  > Google effectively owns the internet What are you even saying? ChatGPT - a product that was launched in 2021 - is eating up internet search game. People have switched to that in throves, and Google can do nothing. You're mistakenly assuming that Google has a lot of power, when in fact, they had none. People were using it because it was the superior product at the time. And now there's a better product, and people have switched to it. Dont blame Google for Bing (and ddg's) shitty products.
  - drnick1 1y ago
    Google is still a major cloud provider, owns and reads most people's emails, spies on people through billions of Android devices, surveils people with through maps on phones and cars, is an ISP in some regions, and more. So yes, Google effectively owns much of the Internet at least outside of China/Russia and some other countries that have created alternatives and foisted them onto their populations by banning Google. The alternatives are of course state-controlled and just as evil as Google.

bogwog 1y ago

This is the worst possible outcome for the internet. Google gets to enjoy the spoils of their illegal anticompetitive business practices, they're emboldened to continue violating the law, and the market remains utterly fucked. Also, Firefox catches a stray bullet because fuck you that's why.

FergusArgyll 1y ago
Also we get to continue using the best browser, knowing it will be maintained by the best engineers

alex_young 1y ago

Paywall free URL: http://web.archive.org/web/20250902215913/https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/google-antitrust-search-ruling.html http://web.archive.org/web/20250902215913/https://www.cnbc.c...

cosmic_cheese 1y ago

It’s surprising that the proven conflict of interest posed by other departments driving Chrome team decisions was allowed to stand. I would’ve expected at minimum for Google to be required to keep Chrome/Blink as siloed off from the rest of the company as is practically possible.

bitpush 1y ago
What conflict of interest? You're probably thinking of manifest v3, but Safari never supported extensions. Maybe you're thinking of third party cookie deprecation, which Safari doesnt have. In many ways, Chrome is becoming Safari - a browser a lot of users like. So again, what conflict of interest?
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  I forget the details, but one example that I recall is that it turned out that the search team pushed the Chrome team to make changes to the addressbar search functionality to drive more search traffic. Arguably another is how signing into any Google service also signs the browser into that account, as well as Chrome on Android never supporting extensions of any kind (and thus, not supporting adblockers).

gausswho 1y ago

Court's statements: 2024: "Google abused its monopoly position for search dominance" 2025: "Punishing Google now would be unreasonable because its dominance is under threat by AI" Wrist slapped. Somebody got their bag. Over to you, EU.

bitpush 1y ago
The whole point was the 'boy who cried wolf' - OMG, we're not able to compete with Google because they are a monopoly. And then Sam Altman came and showed how to make a better product, and all of a sudden people are like, there's an alternative. You're blaming Google for Bing and ddg's shitty products.
flanked-evergl 1y ago
Not sure what EU has to do with anything here, but it has long ago lost the ability to create viable tech companies. We have AI regulations with no AI companies, we have cloud regulations without any major cloud providers, we have internet privacy regulations without browser or social media companies. If you need an industry regulated to non-existence, we got you covered — otherwise I think we can't really help you out.

sirjaz 1y ago

Couldn't the government appeal the punishment? Saying the judge was biased or that the punishment does not fit the crime

furyofantares 1y ago

So what's the lesson here, go ahead and abuse your monopoly as long as you want and the worst that will happen is you'll be told to stop doing that eventually? Or am I misunderstanding something here?

mrcwinn 1y ago

A loser in this is Perplexity. I’ve never understood the thesis of Apple purchasing them: whether or not you enjoy their product, I see nothing defensible or interesting and suspect they’re among the most overvalued AI startup. Nonetheless, I’d bet Apple will do more of what’s worked: partner with Google to solve something core that they’re not great at. I’d take a deeply integrated Gemini on the iPhone over Siri any day of the week!

snihalani 1y ago
why couldn't perplexity fork firefox/chromium and make it chromy?
- wraptile 1y ago
  They have, it's called Comet https://www.perplexity.ai/comet https://www.perplexity.ai/comet
- ulfw 1y ago
  Why would anybody use it and what for?

vayup 1y ago

> Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data? The ruling lays out the definition for "Qualified competitors". Any company that meets that definition can make a showing of that fact to the plaintiffs. Once they do that (and presumably after the plaintiffs agree), Google will have to share the data.

e-clinton 1y ago

So… no punishment for past indiscretions, only barriers to protect against future ones? Got it.

tonyhart7 1y ago

rip for firefox then, is this would start an enshittification for ff??

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
Chrome became successful for the same reason Firefox became successful enshittification of IE -> Firefox's rise enshittification of FF -> Chrome's rise Any unbiased person can verify the timeline https://www.wired.com/2005/02/firefox/ https://www.wired.com/2005/02/firefox/ https://visionarymarketing.com/en/2008/09/03/chrome/ https://visionarymarketing.com/en/2008/09/03/chrome/

moralestapia 1y ago

Awesome! The end of Mozilla, at last :D

Rafuino 1y ago

Once again a monopoly escapes any real consequence and the rich keep getting richer.

lisper 1y ago

This story has something I've never seen on HN before: underneath the title and the subsequent "X points by colesantiago N hours ago | flag | hide ..." line, there is a link to https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223 https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... No other story on the front page has this, and I've never seen it before. How did that link get there? It is not the link to the story itself. That is on cnbc.com.

charlesfries 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/submit https://news.ycombinator.com/submit > Leave url blank to submit a question for discussion. If there is no url, text will appear at the top of the thread. If there is a url, text is optional.
- lisper 1y ago
  Ah. For years I have been submitting links through a bookmarklet that goes to /submitlink rather than submit, so I don't get the text box. I wonder why this feature isn't used more often.

RachelF 1y ago

How corrupt are judges in the USA? Are their any measures that audit their finances or stop them or their relations from taking work with companies they have issued judgements on? I'm not saying this is the case here, it is a general question.

tokioyoyo 1y ago
US laws are very corporate-friendly.

AlexanderTheGr8 1y ago

Apple stock is up 3%, strongly implying that this ruling is good for Apple as well. That is in contradiction to a lot of folks saying that this ruling means Google won't have to pay Apple. While the terms of the deal with Apple will likely change, based on the stock price increase, Apple will likely end up with a different deal (if not better). Another thing to note, contrary to some comments, is that Google is still allowed to make a deal with Apple to be the default search engine, but with extra rules. ``` Google also would be permitted to pay Browser Developers, including Apple, to set Search as the default GSE, so long as the Browser Developer (1) can promote other GSEs and (2) is permitted to set a different GSE on different operating system versions or in a privacy mode and makes changes, if desired, on an annual basis. ```

AlexanderTheGr8 1y ago
To add on: a 3% stock shift means that the search-engine deal was worth >=3% of the stock. That is massive free cashflow. In 2022, Google paid Apple $20B (full profit bec negligible costs) while Apple's total profit was around $100B. 20% of Apple's total profit came from Google's search deal. Based on this, I am sure the stock price worth would be much higher than 3% (actual numbers are complicated because stock price accounts for future growth of things).
wraptile 1y ago
> Apple stock is up 3%, strongly implying that this ruling is good for Apple as well. It's been decades since stock market represented reality. If that was the case TSLA wouldn't shoot up on every report showing massive revenue loss. The stock market is one big meme wheel.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  The highest priced companies have the highest net incomes and highest profit margins, and biggest moats. Over many years. That is what I would expect in "reality".

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago

> Plaintiff States asserted, placed Microsoft at a competitive disadvantage poor microsoft, please, somebody, help them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45106295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45106295

panick21_ 1y ago

In True Communism Ad-Block would be state policy and Google could never get away with removing the apis. That's really what I hoped for.

BrenBarn 1y ago

> Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints. This is the problem. It doesn't matter if they used those specific assets to perpetrate these specific acts. The overall market power derived from those assets (and many others) taints everything they do. There is no way to effectively curtail monopoly power by selectively limiting the actions of monopolists in certain specific domains. It's like thinking you can stop a rampaging 500-pound gorilla by tying two of its fingers together because those were the two fingers that were at the leading edge of its blow when it crushed someone's skull with a punch. Once a company has monopoly power of any kind, it is useless to try to stop it from using that power to do certain things. It will always find a way to use its power to get around any restrictions. The problem isn't what the monopoly does, it's that the monopoly exists. The only surefire way is to destroy the monopoly itself by shattering the company into tiny pieces so that no entity holds monopoly power at all.

r0m4n0 1y ago
Sounds nice but many companies cannot exist in tiny pieces, Google included. So if you force that it will cease to exist. Which I believe to be a net negative to the US, and world, some may disagree though Disclosure: Google employee, words are my own
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  > Which I believe to be a net negative to the US, and world, some may disagree though Yes, I disagree. If we can't have Google without monopolism then we should have neither. Treating Google as essential in this situation is like a druggie saying he "needs" his next hit. People only "need" Google because Google has used its monopoly position to try to make people addicted to it. It should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, the company should have been broken up 10+ years ago, and it's only getting worse. It would be better to destroy it entirely (along with many other such large companies) than to keep it with its disproportionate power.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago

melagonster 1y ago

>During the remedies trial in May, the DOJ asked the judge to force Google to share the data it uses for generating search results, such as data about what users click on. Does this mean that government can know your every step on Chrome?

josephbenedict 1y ago

I kinda knew that Google will manage to dodge the nuclear option in this antitrust case. Like, sure, they got dinged for anticompetitive practices (which everyone saw coming), but Mehta stopping short of forcing a Chrome or Android divestiture was a huge win for them.

hulitu 1y ago

> Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts Hurray. I _love_ capitalism. Everything is for sale. Kids CEOs, rememember: Every looby cent is a good spent cent. Pay it forward.

flanked-evergl 1y ago
Can you cite any evidence whatsoever that the Judge who made this ruling was bribed?

diwank 1y ago

Google's response: "Read our statement on today’s decision in the case involving Google Search." https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/doj-search-decision-sept-2025/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/doj-s...

slapicecream 1y ago

[dead]

ecef9-8c0f-4374 1y ago

What about Edge? The browser on every PC and the default browser after every update? Can't even delete the desktop shortcuts.

dev1ycan 1y ago

And with this the court has sealed the future of the internet, dark day for technology. Google being split from Chrome would have given a second wind to tech.

pif 1y ago

> never seem to simply paste the link This is not possible on printed papers, and that is the medium that defined the profession of journalism. Why should they change?

bugtodiffer 1y ago

Can we expropriate them all and democratically organize these important companies?

brazukadev 1y ago
No but they can expropriate you

Xss3 1y ago

Surely this is really really bad news for Firefox and therefore bad for browser diversity (favouring chromium bases browsers) and therefore bad for the web as a whole?

KurSix 1y ago

That's less "end of monopoly" and more "play nice with the wording."

EXHades 1y ago

fuck google, chrome 140.x after that cannot use MV2

nickip 1y ago

Most annoying thing ever is using google search on safari iphone. They constantly ask you to switch to chrome with the default button highlighted to open chrome/app store. So annoying.

sciencesama 1y ago

How is apple stock growing !?? Isnt the stick supposed to gondown as google wont be paying the monies going forward ?

guthib_net 1y ago

Ayo nothing special here but if you're a Unity / Python Coder and get stuck and search for answers, you're probably familiar with: guthib.net and no, not github. Just see what happens…

gradientsrneat 1y ago

The antitrust case I'm really interested in seeing the outcome of is Google's ad monopoly. Assuming they move forward with even that.

footlose_3815 1y ago

Whelp, time to restructure Mozilla... sadly...

thr0waway001 1y ago

Not bad for Google all things considered.