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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]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 215 points 1 year ago (19 children)

I mean he’s not wrong, but you know, pot, kettle, etc.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I mean, he is wrong. Google isn't the default on Windows, but Chrome and Google search dominate Windows.

Google is the default for Android, so we can discuss that (but that isn't what Microsoft is complaining about.)

That just leaves macOS and more importantly iPhone. Google pays to be the default there. Is that unfair? Should Apple be able to bid for/charge a company to be the default?

Additionally in all these cases switching is easy.

I won't deny that being the default is an advantage but it isn't like users can't switch. You can remove Google search from your phone and it will work just fine. You can change the defaults on your Safari browser in a few clicks.

To be clear if this case uncovers shady/illegal behavior from Google, fuck 'em, but I'm not seeing it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

IMHO, no, he’s not wrong. Google is the default because they’re paying to be the default. That’s monopolistic.

It’s also not easy to switch from Google. In Safari, DuckDuckGo is set as my default search engine, but Siri will still use Google when I ask to search something. Same with Google Assistant. Sure, you can disable Google search on your phone, but that also removes other features that aren’t even related to search (like Assistant, which only runs if the Google app is enabled).

To me, that is absolutely anticompetitive behavior.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google is monopolistic now, but they didn't BECOME the biggest search because of it, obviously. They became the biggest because they had the best search engine, then leveraged it to become what they are now.