The United State’s Department of Justice on Tuesday filed antitrust charges against Alphabet’s Google that focus on the company’s internet search engine and search-related advertising.
Reinhardt Krause for Investor’s Business Daily:
Eleven Republican state attorneys general joined the Justice Department lawsuit, which said Google’s actions harmed consumers and competition.
The Justice Department’s complaint alleges that Google has “unlawfully maintained monopolies in search and search advertising by entering into exclusivity agreements that forbid pre-installation of any competing search service.” Google sought to make its search engine “undeletable, regardless of consumer preference,” the complaint alleges.
The Justice Department accused Google of “entering into long-term agreements with Apple that require Google to be the default — and de facto exclusive — general search engine on Apple’s popular Safari browser and other Apple search tools.”
The federal antitrust lawsuit could take years to resolve. The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit focuses on the internet search business. But it reportedly still is probing Google’s digital ad business, reports say. In addition, state attorneys general could file separate lawsuits versus Google.
MacDailyNews Take: Although most users never do, hence the Apple-Google multi-billion-dollar search deal citation by the DOJ in their antitrust charges against Google, you can change your default search engine on Apple devices:
iOS / iPadOS:
• Settings app > Search Engine > Choose from Google, Yahoo, Bing, or DuckDuckGo
macOS:
• Safari > Preferences > Search > Search engine: Choose from Google, Yahoo, Bing, or DuckDuckGo
Note: Yahoo is just a rebadged version of the Microsoft’s Bing search engine, so users really have only three choices: Google, Bing/Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo.
DuckDuckGo is the google database without the political filtering to get accurate information on what is actually the top links without skewing.
No, it isn’t. “DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of ‘over 400’ sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot) and others.”
StartPage is Google with all of the tracking stuff stripped out.
Personally I’m partial to Searx, another aggregator search engine for which you can choose the sources it uses. It offers much better results than DuckDuckGo, and there are a lot of instances of Searx to choose from.
If democrats win, this will go away. Something needs to change. Innovation and competition with data has been stymied by the big players. It hurts everybody. I use duckduckgo, stupid name but so is google and bing, anyway it sucks but I use it because I avoid google as much as possible.
Well, I guess it’s true that “Ignorance is bliss.” but I am fine using DuckDuckGo. It serves my needs and whatever crapola is embedded in a Google search is something I no longer have to tolerate.
That deal needs to end along any other sweet heart deal for a default position within iOS. All those free Apps from Google also need to go, web address access only. The same applies to Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe and Facebook.
“The Justice Department accused Google of “entering into long-term agreements with Apple that require Google to be the default — and de facto exclusive — general search engine on Apple’s popular Safari browser and other Apple search tools.”
Maybe it’s just me but doesn’t this look like a ‘chink’ in Apple’s armor for ‘allowing’ the deal and is guilt by association? A point that may be used later to charge Apple with? The difference between Apple choosing Google to default with based on popularity with and sans payment is pretty important here.
10-13 billion dollars per year to Apple is what chooses Google.
Exactly!
Payoffs do not have a conscience and beancounter Cook sleeps just fine…
All while participating in behavior they advertise against!