Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Google illegally maintains monopoly over internet search, judge rules (apnews.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

104 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation in a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world’s best-known companies..."

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[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'm with you on this.

In this thread are people who screams monopoly, thinking they know what it means. One comment said Google is a monopoly, followed by "along with "

They're giants because they're successful and good at what they do. They're successful because people are benefiting and find values from the products they use. The moment these giants stops "exploiting" people will be when they stop bringing values to society.

They've confused economic reality with their own ideal reality.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

There's much more to company's popularity than just the product quality.

Google, along with some others, pays money for browser developers to be the default engine - so that people never bother to try something else and actually see how good or bad Google is compared to everything else.

Facebook (Meta) is known for predatory business practices like forcing startups to sell out or have their concept forcefully stolen and them destroyed.

Amazon dominates by plunging the prices of their in-house products below payback to drive the competition into bankruptcy, then acts as a monopoly, driving prices up.

There's plenty more such examples, but let me stop here for now. Giant corporations have powerful levers that are only available to them as they approach market dominance. And when they get 'em, fair play is over.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They’ve confused economic reality with their own ideal reality.

... and the irony in this statement is overwhelming, after the fairy tale you've just outlined about those providing the most value to society gathering the most power & influence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ideal reality: Google doesn't buy advantage from browsers to make their search engine the default. This way, other search engines can compete at the same level, right?

Reality: browser developers will have their income cut down because now their main source of income is dead (see recent news on Mozilla).

Usually these kinds of policies that may or may not come up out of goodwill results in unintended consequences that negatively affect others.

The winner here are the politicians.