Technology

59217 readers

2726 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

347

Microsoft CEO says unfair practices by Google led to its dominance as a search engine (finance.yahoo.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

97 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Microsoft CEO says unfair practices by Google led to its dominance as a search engine::Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday that unfair tactics used by Google led to its dominance as a search engine, tactics that in turn have thwarted his company's rival program, Bing. Nadella testified in a packed Washington, D.C., courtroom as part of the government's landmark antitrust trial against Google's parent company, Alphabet. The Justice Department alleges Google has abused the dominance of its ubiquitous search engine to throttle competition and innovation at the expense of consumers, allegations that echo a similar case brought against Microsoft in the late 1990s.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

In the US if you want to watch the Olympics what company do you turn to? Well the only option is NBC who paid 7 billion for exclusive (US) rights, so you're turning to NBC. Other companies could and likely did bid, but NBC paid the most. Even worse there are no (legal) alternatives.

How about your local sports arena, school campus or restaurant? Do they serve Pepsi or Coke? It's not always cash but they might have bought (or discounted) that soda machine with the big PEPSI logo on the side, or the scoreboard that says COCA-COLA.

If I search for "shoes" on Bing the top result is Temu, are they monopolizing Bing Search?

Just because you pay doesn't mean it's a monopoly. Google pays Apple $20 billion per year to be the default. Microsoft can afford $20 billion, heck they can afford $40 billion, why aren't they paying?

In terms of switching, you said you switched Safari but that didn't update Siri. That sounds like an Apple bug to me. If Google is forcing/threatening Apple to make a worse product, that's a case of them being a monopoly.

In terms of Assistant, that is part of Google Search. On my Android phone I can choose a different default "Digital Assistant", in my case I can pick Firefox, but it looks like others exist in the wider ecosystem.

If you're saying Google Search should be separate from Google Assistant, I think that's a reasonable request, but not doing so doesn't make them monopolistic. Looking online, since I don't have these assistants/devices, Siri can be charged by changing Safari (which I know you mentioned was an issue for you earlier), but Alexa will only use Bing (unless you use some third party stuff) and I'm unclear about Cortana but Microsoft gave up on that so we can ignore it.

I do agree I would love to see more open and accessible APIs for all these different services. I should be able to have Apple iMessage on my Chromebook and Chromecast on my Apple TV. I think there is a lot that can be done to improve things, but what I'm not convinced of, yet, is that Google has been monopolistic. Obviously the case is ongoing, so I look forward to more information.

As for the Microsoft CEO, it's clear to me he wants to be the default without paying for it. I won't fault him for that, that's $20 billion in savings.