And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking.
That browser is competing with someone like Opera (used to be a paid for product) and Mozilla in an unfair way, because Google is killing others by making it free and taking the loss.
Make no mistake, all that original plan was about was about applying pain to everybody else in the advertising world, while their replacement for cookies would have been satisfactory only at Google's scale. The whole thing was Google astroturfing, taking advantage of everyone's ignorance of how the Internet works to further entrench their advertising monopoly.
I don't know why they aborted the plan, but I suspect regulators had caught on that it wasn't altruism but Anti-competitiveness that motivated it.
And yet browser development costs money. If browsers cost money, you could make a better product and compete by selling it, but when an incumbent is giving theirs away for free?
Safari has largely caught up now for web standards and mostly only lags behind in experimental features that are largely driven by Google anyway. But Safari has better battery use and privacy.
Chrome is good because Google see it as their play at a web OS. That’s why they shove everything and the kitchen sink into it.
So it’s just different priorities and the resulting differentiators. I don’t think any major browser is actually significantly better anymore today.
Removing manifest v2 might be the kick to try Firefox again but I’d still like to fix safari
Honestly if there was a set of plugins that would sync my bookmarks toolbar links I'd have less issue switching browsers and trying others more.
How do I explain groups that attempt to compete and don't overthrow an incumbent? How much explanation does that need? That's literally the default, most attempts to overthrow the king fail.
More often than not, when a product is replaced, the growth of the replacer is a steady way upwards from 0. Not a meandering stable placement that suddenly shuffles around. I dunno what's the reasoning for that phenomena, I just chalk it up to people refuse change without perceived innovation. But point is, experience states that none of the browsers should be doing too much more than what they already do - the only likely path to victory is waiting for others to fuck, and not even Twitter, a shithole, could do that to themselves.
Google justified a huge investment in Blink by making effectively making it the application platform of their netbooks. They also justified such an investment because they are afraid of other companies owning the method they get their ads in front of people - Such as dramatically changing and increasing their investment in Android when they saw the first versions of iPhoneOS.
The ChromeBook is why Google has so many non-standardized API in Chrome (that people often refer to under the umbrella of "PWA".) No other browsers saw an urgent need to be able to e.g. scan for and talk to bluetooth devices from a webpage, and in fact the other browsers were somewhat appalled by the security implications.
Edge: Gave up, and now repackages Chromium. They spent over a decade as an incumbent with supposedly only a half dozen developers on the IE team, and that was because they were doing their own monopoly game (protecting the Windows platform from cross-platform applications). They couldn't overcome their lack of momentum, and quite frankly had an inability to attract experienced talent.
Safari: Does fine, but Apple never directly cares about market share - they want profit share. There's no profit maximization for free browsers; WebKit and Safari investment is about owning the best default browser on Apple platforms, and it has better system performance. It is certainly arguable that Safari is better than Chrome on Mac. And let's not forget part of how Chrome got such a quick start is that they are a fork of WebKit.
Safari would be a better example.
The antitrust legislation protects consumers, not businesses. If Linux provides for free what a proprietary software offered for money, it's a net win, even if that company goes out of business.
The problem with Chrome is not that it's free. The problem is that it develops more and more anti-customer traits, like making it hard to block ads, and uses its market share and compatibility issues to force these on customers.
The problem with google search is that Google integrates it with Chrome and Android, and buys the default search engine slots in other browsers, so that many customers are not even aware of other options. Sadly, Bing and DDG are not clearly superior, and, say, Kagi is paid. (Kagi is a good example of a paid product that's significantly better than the common free alternative.) Ironically the default search engine deals is how Firefox acquires most of its funding.
I don't see an easy way to find Google guilty of hurting customers through monopoly power in search or browsers: free products, a few alternatives, trivial cost of switching, no price gouging possible. Same with dumping: products start and remain free, most of Chrome is open-source and competitors reuse that same code, and customers are free to use these derivates, or adequate independent browsers and search engines.
It's a bit like coca-cola: alternatives abound, downsides are known, but people just seem to weirdly prefer it.
Note that this also makes Chrome look like it dominates the market less which is presumably why they keep spending this money on FF.
The other UNIX vendors that went out of business thanks to Linux's free beer, or Microsoft and Apple's issues trying to sell licenses for their OSes on the server room, both now supporting Linux VMs as "The Year of Desktop Linux", are good examples that when it is free, everyone takes it no matter how it goes.
It's not hard to see that the browser market has suffered from the actions of Google, while the operating system market has not suffered from the actions of Linux.
If anything antitrust action against Google might give Microsoft another kick at the mobile can and they can take on the Linux-based android OS that Google distributes.
Oh they didn't abandon the plans, they chose something worse. They are going to make it a user decision.
Advertising companies can still gain some value for people who have third party cookies enabled, applications which aren't well-maintained enough to remove a reliance on third-party cookies will fail (sometimes), and users will be pushed by things like work SaaS apps to re-enable third party cookies (as a global setting) to be able to use required services.
If this were true, Google could make the immediate and easy decision to increase their annual profits by $26 billion, by simply stopping to pay browser vendors to make Google the default search engine. https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C...
The statement is true as written.
You probably can't stop Google from being the most popular search (or don't want to) but you should be able to stop Google from using the popularity of their product to crush alternative ad tech. Or crush some new tech we don't realize will be important.
Another alternative could be that the government breaks up entities like Google and regulates the market in a way that segments it so that it is more beneficial to society by providing more safety and stability over the vital infrastructure that is the Internet as well as by creating healthier markets that provide consumers with access to cheaper, better goods from a variety of vendors aren't squeezed by the likes Google, Apple, and Amazon.
We have two generations now who have born thinking online services and software are supposed to be outrageously cheap or free, just because of companies who have used such services as loss leaders while operating off of their main business or bootstrapping off of VC funding.
We have small businesses who have chosen their revenue model based on what lets them work best within the simplistic financial model of mobile app stores. This is even more apparent now with the EU DMA, where Apple is pushing for a core technology fee that creates a huge financial risk for the freemium product tiering that customers now expect.
Google has the most popular search engine because creating such a thing defends their contextual advertising business. Being the most popular destination allows for higher rates than any incumbent could typically charge. Thus money doesn't exist to fund a competitive commercial search engine from scratch - it needs to being funded by another company as a loss leader (see: Bing) or as part of some other VC-backed product.
Incorrect.
Google spent ungodly amounts of money to make sure that their search engine was the default in as many places as possible. People didn't "choose" to use it, they use the defaults.
And in some cases, like my Android phone, google is the only option for integrated searches. I cannot use another search engine without opening a browser then opening up the search engine of choice.
Monopoly may not be the right term, but anticompetitive is. They outspent every other search provider to make sure their product was used. They paid off apple to not develop a search engine and instead use theirs as a default. These are things in the court documents which caused the ruling to go against them.
I tired Kagi, it's good too, but I didn't feel like the cost was justified when Google is free. Also I think I will try again.
That should have been clear from my comment and if you look at other comments in this thread you'll see others interpreted the parent comment similarly.
I suggest you read others comments more charitably.
but not really. the situation is similar to auto-voting the incumbent in every goverment election each november.
that is not ok.
But then you're not the customer, you're the product, as they say. What is the cost to the actual customer to transition to an alternative?
The actual customer is the one buying ads. It's comically difficult to avoid Google if you're the one who wants to show ads.
That's the discussion start. Sounding clever about "the actual customer" isn't clever, it's irrelevant. Advertisers just go where the eyeballs are, they are constantly using several different channels. There is a word for it because it's so common - omnichannel. There are companies like TradeDesk which exist to help customers manage because there are so many channels.
The relevant switching cost is the search user. It's 0.
"0. The transition to bing from google costs 0."
It was in reply to the question that asked the switching costs to the customer. One would have to be completely out-to-lunch to think that the cost is 0.
> The relevant switching cost is the search user. It's 0.
The search user has no relevance. Did you miss the context of monopolies? Monopoly literally requires economic trade, by very definition. The search user is not engaging in economic trade. They are is what is being traded. You even said that yourself, so why play dumb now?
Read the case. One of the biggest complaints is the fees Google pay Apple. Made up definitions aren't relevant. Here is the ruling: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzmaxjxvw/...
All the more reason for you to stick the topic that is already there. No need to double down on whatever out-to-lunch behaviour that came beforehand.
If you really want to talk about something else, why not start a new thread?
> One of the biggest complaints is the fees Google pay Apple.
Right, because that solidifies their position in the market. That spend provides a more compelling product (more eyeballs, as has been said), which is in no way realistically matched by would-be competition. Clearly monopolistic behaviour. But isn't about search users. Hell, the ruling you link to is literally about the impact on advertisers.
Actually read the case. Maybe start with the conclusion. Surely at some point you get tired of just making stuff up.
And as discussion continued, it was asked what the transition costs are for advertisers. He who answered that question clearly claimed it was also zero. This "someone said something about search users earlier", while technically true, is unrelated to anything being talked about here.
In danielmarkbruce speak: Actually read the comments. Whatever it is that you missed is leaving you horribly confused.
Read the comments. Read the case. Stop making things up.
You'd have known that if you read the comments.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that literally nobody means that when they say 'monopoly' but I doubt it is common enough for that claim to be made in good faith.
Then there's all these other giga-sized "side projects" which seem small proportional to those mega-businesses - google home type stuff, google nest, waze, consumer electronics etc. Arguably the google nest and assistant is duopolistic with amazon alexa.
Which is the state of tech, there's like 5 big companies that share some portion of pies of 20 major duopolies and 100 minor duopolies. And they're all like "SEE! SEE! We're NOT a monopoly". And there's two of them saying that, pointing each at the other one as evidence of their non-monopoly status. To me that's monopoly by another name, and that other name is duopoly, and as such it has many of the same problems as the monopoly. And duopolies all every damn place, not just tech - NYSE and NASDAQ stock markets. Sony and xbox (sorry nintendo). Boeing and Airbus. Visa and Mastercard. Pepsi and Coke. Intel and AMD, AMD and NVIDIA. Windows and Mac. How many "gentleman's agreements" must exist in those duopolies, too many methinks
And so if you ask me it would be quite natural to shatter all these companies according to their duopolistic silos, with the hope being that the duopolies exist in part from the synergy and deep pockets of the whole organization, and so by breaking apart the duopolistic strings to the rest of the org, perhaps there can be a third and fourth phone operating system, home consumer electronic, web browser, youtube, and so on. Because the point of capitalism is an efficient market to serve the public, not to serve the megacorp coffers
Monopoly is when they use that market share to compete in _an entire different market_ without actually earning the "best" spot. Or using their dominance to prevent competition entirely from succeeding. For example: Blocking all ad-tracking on its own browser, except ads purchased through its own ad network. Remember, _you_ are not the customer of Google. You are the product. The ad companies are the customer. The market is not search: the market is ad sales.
From a consumer perspective it's not about being able to switch search engine. Google is potentially putting a drag on entire economies, both money wise, and innovation wise. If every service you use has to spend extra because Google has an advertising monopoly then every service is passing a cost to you. If every service needs to do it the one way then there's no advancement, no new models, just "give Google money" forever.
LLMs are not going to meaningfully upset the balance any time soon. They are a service / product in search of a problem for most people. And if they do something useful for you, that’s great but HN users are not most people so the statement stands.
The judgment makes a lot of hay over google paying to be the default search engine and how google has all this data on how valuable default is and how much people don't tend to switch from them. That's all true but I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Make it illegal to pay to be the default?
There has to be a default and I think the outcome there is that Google is still the default because people prefer it. Google only pays to be the default because, if they don't, someone else will. Google would love to not have to pay Apple to be the default.
I also notice the lack of acknowledgement that people actively do switch away from default browsers regularly, from their OS defaults, to Chrome, which defaults to Google Search. Bing's market share is basically entirely because Edge is the default browser in windows with Bing as the default search engine. "Solving" this default problem will probably crater Bing if it involves forcing a user to make a choice on install (or something similar).
The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company, not a browser company, not a mobile phone company, not a search company, not an email company, etc. All of those other products exist to serve the ad company, they are loss leaders. Splitting up google is bad for consumers who use gmail, chrome, android and search.
The only real split that I think is possible is Google Ads from Google Cloud.
As far as the idea of Google's position being a drag on the economy, I'd like to see a competitor with a better model that Google used their market advantage to intentionally kill.
Just barely, 95% of their ads are scams.
This is a little unimaginative. Google's ad business could be split horizontally or vertically to make space for competition. It's simplistic to say they are an ad business, they are performing several functions in the online ad business space.
> I'd like to see a competitor
Me too!
are you sure? what if they had other options?
> Make it illegal to pay to be the default
Yes
> I'd like to see a competitor with a better model that Google used their market advantage to intentionally kill.
I hope the government will show this is exactly what happened. The competitor doesn't even have to have a "better model"
So, the solution is relatively simple: break off their ad marketplace business. Break off their ad display business. Let the funnels fend for themselves.
I think you're right. It hides a lot. We do need a better understanding of the problems. But be careful what you wish for. Google being a monopoly is not a cause, but a symptom. Do a little 5Y analysis. Even rolling it back one step;
Q. Why is Google/Microsoft etc a monopoly?
A. Because they bought up all the competitors.
So, a deeper problem is the very ability to buy and sell companies. Is it "the market"? Yet it is possible to create articles of a company as non LLC/Ltd so that it it can never be bought or sold. People don't do this because they don't intend to "build a great product/company", they intend to cash-out and sell a great company. These subtle incentive structures really matter.
Dig deeper and ask things like "why do people only build companies to sell?" There's more upsetting answers behind that one too.
In the end, if you want to say BigTech is not to blame and could not do anything else but agglomerate into problematically large blocs then we have to concede the environment and incentives of modern business are harmful to the public/national good. The place to intervene is then at the level of those values.
I think the problem is that people don't know what the word means. We don't need to redefine it, people will either respect the importance of definitions of we'll just lose the next term for a monopoly as well.
For anyone following along, Google is a monopoly because they are the market leader in multiple overlapping industries and product lines. They choose to leverage those products together to fain a competitive advantage that no one competing with a single product can reasonably compete with.
- Hardware (Google Pixel, Chromecast, Chromebook)
- OS (Android, ChromeOS)
- Distribution (Google Play Store)
- Browser (Chrome)
- Search (Google)
- Products (YouTube, Drive, Gmail, ...)
- Business (GCP, Workspace)
The only other companies that are similar are Microsoft and Apple... both arguably less extensive.
The issue with this also isn't entirely clear until it's "exploited": Google (and the others) can force certain products on their customers due to controlling the "underlying" product. Ad targeting also becomes incredibly precise and valuable... everyone else has to go through the scraps while Google can "just" read your emails (Gmail), get your location (Hardware/OS), go through your files and photos (Drive) and use your search history (Google).
Google is a big ass company and enjoys outsized market share because people choose to use it. Everyone who buys a MacBook or Surface computer or smartphone does one thing immediately and that's to download Chrome. It's literally the first thing people voluntarily choose to do after powering on the device for the first time.
I'm not sure why we need government interference here which in all likelihood would change no customer behaviour but probably just add a few extra clicks in front of the Chrome downloading process.
When Alphabet begins doing something like banning Google Fiber customers from accessing bing.com, that will be interesting. But there honestly very minimal anti-competitive behaviour like that happening at the moment.