cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36778872
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Today, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division won significant remedies in its monopolization case against Google in online search. In United States et al. v. Google, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia prohibited Google from entering or maintaining exclusive contracts relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app; ordered Google to make certain search index and user-interaction data available to rivals and potential rivals; and ordered Google to offer search and search text ads syndication services to enable rivals and potential rivals to compete.
The court’s ruling today recognizes the need for remedies that will pry open the market for general search services, which has been frozen in place for over a decade. The ruling also recognizes the need to prevent Google from using the same anticompetitive tactics for its GenAI products as it used to monopolize the search market, and the remedies will reach GenAI technologies and companies.
We avoided the worst outcome, they were considering killing Firefox to prevent a Google internet monopoly.
What. Idk how that makes sense but I guess I am glad that didn’t happen. Still frustrated with this outcome tho.
They were considering blocking Google from paying Mozilla to be the default search engine, which is almost all of Firefox 's revenue.
It kinda makes sense, chome being the dominant browser gives Google a search advantage, and the other alternatives (like safari and Firefox) both make deals with Google to have it be the default as well.
But removing those deals would be more disastrous for Firefox than for Google.