by mgreg on 9/15/23, 8:03 PM with 186 comments
by AlbertCory on 9/15/23, 11:37 PM
"out of context" is the standard BS answer to anything. "What context, exactly, is missing?" should be the followup question.
Odd that they don't mention that Sridhar Ramaswamy is not merely the "founder of Neeva" but he was head of Google AdWords for almost 10 years! I guess you can't expect these reporters to read their own site.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/20/23731397/neeva-search-eng...
by AnthonyMouse on 9/16/23, 1:47 AM
The real issue is the tying. They build this conglomerated system that all comes together as one blob, and get third parties to depend on various parts of it to prevent them from being swapped out individually. Then to replace one of them you have to be able to replace the others, which makes it very hard for any but the largest corporations to compete.
Capturing the search default on Android is a tiny piece of what they do with it, and the part that would barely make any difference to the search market when the alternative would be that they just pay for it. Or let people choose them, since that's the market where they have the strongest brand and it's all the ancillary markets that they might not have dominated where the consequences are greater.
And then they wouldn't have to deal with this:
> The question that matters most, though, is whether Judge Mehta can be convinced that consumer harm applies to free products like search engines.
Because they could get them for the 30% cut on Google Play.
Advertising isn't a dissimilar tack when you cast the advertiser as the customer, but then you're stuck trying to prove that Google wouldn't have had a dominant search engine without doing this, when they had one before doing this.
by ralph84 on 9/15/23, 11:49 PM
Just have extremely progressive taxation on companies as they get larger and stop approving megamergers if you believe large companies are harmful.
by candiddevmike on 9/15/23, 11:49 PM
How much power and influence can Google buy (absolute best attorneys, call in favors...) vs the power of the US government? If the US government can't do anything, what does that mean?
by daft_pink on 9/16/23, 1:24 AM
Especially recently as with their anti-privacy policies, I would really prefer to use a different service, but they really are the best.
by mkoubaa on 9/15/23, 11:56 PM
by exodust on 9/16/23, 9:05 AM
Defaults are defaults. What matters to users is choice. The choice is there to use a different search engine. Google widgets can be removed from phones.
Much worse is when Big Tech removes choice. Recent example: Microsoft mandating their Authenticator App as MFA, removing other options like SMS. If my workplace doesn't pay for my phone, and I don't want to install Microsoft crap on my phone, I'm in a bizarre predicament where I could be locked out of work because I refuse to install Microsoft apps on my personal device. This is wrong, much worse than "Google paid someone to be the default".
by seeknotfind on 9/15/23, 11:21 PM
by user3939382 on 9/16/23, 3:20 AM
by rvz on 9/16/23, 1:15 AM
We need to admit that not even a new so-called AI tool called ChatGPT could compete and make a dent on Google's 90% market share [0] as a 'search engine' [1]. The new Bing made no significant change to challenge Google [2][3] and Neeva (by former Google employees) believed they could challenge them and failed. [4]
No contest on competition since there is little to no competition against Google in search.
[0] https://www.similarweb.com/engines/
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-traffic-slips-aga...
[2] https://searchengineland.com/new-bing-google-market-share-si...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft-bing-search-artificial...
[4] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/20/23731397/neeva-search-eng...
by willywanker on 9/18/23, 1:12 AM
by adolph on 9/16/23, 1:48 AM
by iamacyborg on 9/16/23, 7:56 AM
by haizhung on 9/16/23, 10:44 AM
by nathias on 9/16/23, 6:56 AM
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 9/16/23, 3:56 AM
by lakomen on 9/16/23, 2:09 AM
But don't end at Alphabet, continue with Microsoft and Apple, Meta.
All evil players.
by sylware on 9/16/23, 9:28 AM
One of the worst: default mass pre-installation on PC of windows.
by ceva on 9/16/23, 8:29 AM