3 ms·

This ruling might feel good viscerally, but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. At its inception, Google probably viewed this lawsuit a

by beloch 3mo ago

This ruling might feel good viscerally, but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. At its inception, Google probably viewed this lawsuit as win-win. Either they successfully sue a competitor into oblivion or establish a precedent that will protect themselves in the future. Google lost, but they still won.

echelon 3mo ago
Google has no moat anymore. - Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore. - Coding models make doing extreme depth of work possible. - Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products. - Just the other day, someone cloned Google Gsuite and it looked awesome - Drive and Search will also be fungible products - I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same. - Chrome can probably be replaced (Firefox gained a whole percentage point last month) I don't think Google is safe anymore. Two caveats that I'll give them: - YouTube still has network effects and probably can't be dislodged - Google cloud isn't going anywhere
- BeetleB 3mo ago
  > Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore. What do they use? Of all my tech friends, colleagues, I'm the only one who uses Kagi. Another person uses searx. Everyone else uses Google. Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google.
  - worik 3mo ago
    > Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google. Me, almost, too. I have some friends using duckduckgo - not many and only until Google is the default again...
    - SoftTalker 3mo ago
      I've been using DDG for at least 3 years. Very rarely use Google anymore, and when I do it is when DDG doesn't find much and in those cases Google usually isn't any better.
  - aqfamnzc 3mo ago
    Let me tell you about this new little-known technology that's been gaining traction in the last few years...
    - BeetleB 3mo ago
      Really bad idea for a lot of search use cases.
    - janalsncm 3mo ago
      Sure, go ahead and ask the LLM who won the 2026 World Cup. Or nearby BBQ places open now. Even assuming no hallucinations, an LLM can replace some use cases for search but not all.
      - ffsm8 3mo ago
        Fwiw, I've done those kinds of requests before and it did so successfully. It did use Google to provide me with the answers though, sooo...
      - edoceo 3mo ago
        The LLMs I've tried don't do well with very new stuff. Like Zig for example, they tell me answers that were good for Zig 0.12 but we on 0.16 now. So I've got to feed them the latest docs, then do the AI dance.
      - Waterluvian 3mo ago
        I tried both and it’s not even close which interface is better when it comes to answering a question. Google gives you stuff to sift through and interpret. AI just gives the answer. Imagine you’re in the car or hands free or disabled and you just want the question answered. https://ibb.co/whYmZWxs https://ibb.co/whYmZWxs https://ibb.co/JFkQbmJf https://ibb.co/JFkQbmJf
        devin 3mo ago
        "just gives you the answer" is a problem when it is offered without context, sourcing, etc. Such is the case for people trying to poison--ahem "influence" LLM results for "what is the best restaurant in $my_locale". You're playing a dangerous game.
- hommelix 3mo ago
  > - I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same. Maybe look into contributing to existing alternatives like PostmarketOS. https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/
  - ffsm8 3mo ago
    Please don't send vibecoders to established open source projects . Your literally sabotaging them if you succeed.
  - echelon 3mo ago
    PostmarketOS is cool. Let me revise that super abbreviated prognostication to hint at what I was really trying to say. I think a lot of people are going to start to look at replacing Android and iOS, and some of these will be decently funded teams. Some perhaps not even based in the US. Attacking the phone market used to be unthinkable. Not even Facebook could pull it off. But now? I think it's open season again. Even if the problems to solve are truly deeper than they appear, LLMs are going to give people so much energy to look past the difficulty.
- rebasedoctopus 3mo ago
  are your peers me, myself, and I? that is a wild claim. I'll start asking around but I don't think I could find one person that says they don't use google search anymore
- bstsb 3mo ago
  > Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore. bear in mind we're on Hacker News. Google's market share is still above 90% - in almost any other market this would be a ridiculous monopoly.
- layer8 3mo ago
  Google’s moat is that websites aren’t blocking their crawler.
  - echelon 3mo ago
    The once unthinkable is now changing. https://nypost.com/2026/07/22/business/reddit-news-outlets-weigh-cutting-google-off-as-ai-summaries-kill-traffic-report/ https://nypost.com/2026/07/22/business/reddit-news-outlets-w... https://www.wsj.com/business/media/google-search-publishers-ai-content-0fb06e41 https://www.wsj.com/business/media/google-search-publishers-...
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Cloudflare has just announced that it's about to start blocking Googlebot by default, because it's an AI crawler. To which, I cannot say with enough emphasis: OUCH. This kills Google Search. All hail Cloudflare Search, the new center of the internet!
- watwut 3mo ago
  > Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products. No way this is threat to google. For the same reason why the same hordes of engineers did not managed to compete with large companies up to now. And for the same reason they were not producing all that many novel small apps last 10 years. This is winner takes all economy. Tokens or no tokes, this is not the econony of small competing companies. This is the world of big ones.
  - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
    If only there were laws about antitrust. Oh well.
- WarmWash 3mo ago
  Google's most is that people use ad-block and back-door subscriptions. Every competitor dies in the womb because "subscriptions are bs and ads are cancer" is totally normalized. If you want Google to fall, start giving ad-loads or money to companies trying to compete.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Or offer good value for money. I subscribe to Kagi and a few online newspapers. If you let me pay $10 every month for access to every online newspaper I'd take that offer. But you can't be shit and also charge a subscription. There has to be good stuff behind the subscription.
like_any_other 3mo ago
> but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. I don't like Google very much, but making it illegal to scrape public data enables way too much abuse, so this is for the best.

by beloch 3mo ago

echelon 3mo ago

Google has no moat anymore. - Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore. - Coding models make doing extreme depth of work possible. - Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products. - Just the other day, someone cloned Google Gsuite and it looked awesome - Drive and Search will also be fungible products - I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same. - Chrome can probably be replaced (Firefox gained a whole percentage point last month) I don't think Google is safe anymore. Two caveats that I'll give them: - YouTube still has network effects and probably can't be dislodged - Google cloud isn't going anywhere

BeetleB 3mo ago
> Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore. What do they use? Of all my tech friends, colleagues, I'm the only one who uses Kagi. Another person uses searx. Everyone else uses Google. Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google.
- worik 3mo ago
  > Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google. Me, almost, too. I have some friends using duckduckgo - not many and only until Google is the default again...
  - SoftTalker 3mo ago
    I've been using DDG for at least 3 years. Very rarely use Google anymore, and when I do it is when DDG doesn't find much and in those cases Google usually isn't any better.
- aqfamnzc 3mo ago
  Let me tell you about this new little-known technology that's been gaining traction in the last few years...
  - BeetleB 3mo ago
    Really bad idea for a lot of search use cases.
  - janalsncm 3mo ago
    Sure, go ahead and ask the LLM who won the 2026 World Cup. Or nearby BBQ places open now. Even assuming no hallucinations, an LLM can replace some use cases for search but not all.
    - ffsm8 3mo ago
      Fwiw, I've done those kinds of requests before and it did so successfully. It did use Google to provide me with the answers though, sooo...
    - edoceo 3mo ago
      The LLMs I've tried don't do well with very new stuff. Like Zig for example, they tell me answers that were good for Zig 0.12 but we on 0.16 now. So I've got to feed them the latest docs, then do the AI dance.
    - Waterluvian 3mo ago
      I tried both and it’s not even close which interface is better when it comes to answering a question. Google gives you stuff to sift through and interpret. AI just gives the answer. Imagine you’re in the car or hands free or disabled and you just want the question answered. https://ibb.co/whYmZWxs https://ibb.co/whYmZWxs https://ibb.co/JFkQbmJf https://ibb.co/JFkQbmJf
      - devin 3mo ago
        "just gives you the answer" is a problem when it is offered without context, sourcing, etc. Such is the case for people trying to poison--ahem "influence" LLM results for "what is the best restaurant in $my_locale". You're playing a dangerous game.
hommelix 3mo ago
> - I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same. Maybe look into contributing to existing alternatives like PostmarketOS. https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/
- ffsm8 3mo ago
  Please don't send vibecoders to established open source projects . Your literally sabotaging them if you succeed.
- echelon 3mo ago
  PostmarketOS is cool. Let me revise that super abbreviated prognostication to hint at what I was really trying to say. I think a lot of people are going to start to look at replacing Android and iOS, and some of these will be decently funded teams. Some perhaps not even based in the US. Attacking the phone market used to be unthinkable. Not even Facebook could pull it off. But now? I think it's open season again. Even if the problems to solve are truly deeper than they appear, LLMs are going to give people so much energy to look past the difficulty.
rebasedoctopus 3mo ago
are your peers me, myself, and I? that is a wild claim. I'll start asking around but I don't think I could find one person that says they don't use google search anymore
bstsb 3mo ago
> Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore. bear in mind we're on Hacker News. Google's market share is still above 90% - in almost any other market this would be a ridiculous monopoly.
layer8 3mo ago
Google’s moat is that websites aren’t blocking their crawler.
- echelon 3mo ago
  The once unthinkable is now changing. https://nypost.com/2026/07/22/business/reddit-news-outlets-weigh-cutting-google-off-as-ai-summaries-kill-traffic-report/ https://nypost.com/2026/07/22/business/reddit-news-outlets-w... https://www.wsj.com/business/media/google-search-publishers-ai-content-0fb06e41 https://www.wsj.com/business/media/google-search-publishers-...
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Cloudflare has just announced that it's about to start blocking Googlebot by default, because it's an AI crawler. To which, I cannot say with enough emphasis: OUCH. This kills Google Search. All hail Cloudflare Search, the new center of the internet!
watwut 3mo ago
> Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products. No way this is threat to google. For the same reason why the same hordes of engineers did not managed to compete with large companies up to now. And for the same reason they were not producing all that many novel small apps last 10 years. This is winner takes all economy. Tokens or no tokes, this is not the econony of small competing companies. This is the world of big ones.
- amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
  If only there were laws about antitrust. Oh well.
WarmWash 3mo ago
Google's most is that people use ad-block and back-door subscriptions. Every competitor dies in the womb because "subscriptions are bs and ads are cancer" is totally normalized. If you want Google to fall, start giving ad-loads or money to companies trying to compete.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Or offer good value for money. I subscribe to Kagi and a few online newspapers. If you let me pay $10 every month for access to every online newspaper I'd take that offer. But you can't be shit and also charge a subscription. There has to be good stuff behind the subscription.

like_any_other 3mo ago

> but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. I don't like Google very much, but making it illegal to scrape public data enables way too much abuse, so this is for the best.