4 wk. ago • 99%

DOJ proposes breakup and other big changes to end Google search monopoly

arstechnica.com DOJ proposes breakup and other big changes to end Google search monopoly

Google called the DOJ extending search remedies to AI “radical,” an “overreach.”…

Would it make the internet better? Probably.

News @lemmy.world DOJ proposes breakup and other big changes to end Google search monopoly

53 comments

Google isn’t the only tech giant that needs smashing into pieces, Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, all need to be broken up. The tech industry shouldn’t be dominated by a few companies.

55
- ~~The tech~~ industry shouldn’t be dominated by a few companies.
  
  FTFY
  
  28
- I am somewhat biased, as an employee of a big tech company - but I am okay with them moving into different industries as long as they don't undercut while also providing just the worst employment experience of all time. It sucks to see nice startups from passionate people get steamrolled by a 100 person org full of people fearing for their job while some exec rides the coattails of their boss.
  
  I'd be more supportive of big tech if they were nice places to work, but many of them simply aren't. They have "prestige" (whatever the fuck that means), but some of them are full of some of the most broken, beaten-down people you'll ever meet.
  
  2
  
  Co-opify them, wipe equity and put the workers in democratic control of their own subunits
  
  2
This article made my day a bit better. Google complaining how "radical" the changes proposed are is a sure indicator that they would likely cause some damage to them.

30
Please, DOJ, smash Google with a hammer and redistribute the pieces!

13
- Bury the ashes of the pieces in the deepest hole. We need rid of this whole concept of information being monopolized and harvested for profit.
  
  7
Would YouTube get shittier if Google was broken up? I was under the understanding that YouTube is a loss leader service for Google, but I still think its one of the best social media sites on the web. Even when you consider the number of ads (that doesn't affect a revanced user).

13
- Not neccessarily. A spun off YouTube would still have YouTube premium and ad revenue. They could also sell user data to 3rd parties (I doubt Google currently does it on a large since it's in their interest to have a better ad network than its competitiors). A move similar to Reddit's with their API and exclusive search agreement or agreements to feed certain videos to AI would both fetch a higher price and upset the quality less since the vast majorty of videos watched are found through YouTube itself.
  
  16
  
  That all sounds shittier to me NGL
  
  10
Not sure why they mention AI search, as it's practically non-existent right now.

13
- As far as I know Google and Bing return AI results just above the usual web page results.
  
  In addition AI LLM tools like Copilot (the mobile app) and Perplexity which cite their sources with links to websites really make it easier to weed out the BS from LLM answers, if you use them carefully. In my case, these tools replace search engines in 80% of the searches that I do.
  
  12
  
  The more I run searches on Google and queries through copilot the more my trust evolves.
  
  I use the one latched into Skype more, though.
  
  5
  
  If you're following citations, may as well just search for the citations themselves... aka just a regular search engine.
  
  1
I really would prefer them to go after Amazon and Apple before Google, or at least all of them at once.

11
- They should practice on ISPs and other broken industries first before these level 0 bureaucrats head straight for Dracula castle after not doing their jobs for 50 years and the Bell system re-merged. Kill Verizon & atnt, for instance
  
  19
  
  before these level 0 bureaucrats head straight for Dracula castle
  
  Rather they are buddies with Dracula, so should at least play better than this
  
  4
- They’re actually going after all of them at the same time. They’re just at different stages in each case.
  
  6
- Man, there's such a long line of companies that need breaking up, I can't see the end of it. The entire global economy is currently controlled by monopolies and oligopolies.
  
  4
  
  It’s sorta like multinational corporations can get away with their shenanigans since they don’t have to strictly abide by a nations set of rules.
  
  4
  
  So what could be better than getting started?
  
  3
- Apple is not a monopoly in any sense of the word
  
  -3
  
  I don't think Apple's business model fits the definition of "monopoly", but they are a different kind of anti-competitive, in my opinion. Forcing users to use your own ecosystem by forcing competitors to be shittier or nonexistent through technical means is still anti-competitive.
  
  6
This seems to me to be a weak substitute for good privacy regulation.

8
That's way too late. I have been using duckduckgo for years now and so does so many others i know. And the questions it can not answer goes to perplexity or chatgpt. The timing with this is very off, google's search monopoly is probably going to end anyways.

6
Them all at once.

5
You'd think they'd have more sophisticated remedies than cutting it up. Which won't improve anything, won't change the incentives and will eventually put us right back where we started.

I mean duck manifest v3, but the government abdicated their responsibility for 50 years and now they think they're going to save us with solutions from 1930 ? Do better you ducks !

-1
- You think breaking up a monopoly won't do anything? What?
  
  10
  
  In the long term, no. It’s a temporary measure. It’s like fighting against entropy.
  
  2
  
  lol, yeah it sure worked on Microsoft.
  
  Oh wait, they just spent the next 20 years re-consolidating.
  
  1

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