ilmagico@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It is alleged Google protects its franchise by shelling out billions of dollars annually to be the default search engine on the iPhone and on web browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.
This has bever been a secret, for years (decades) browsers like firefox, back when it was the dominant browser, would have its default search engine choice given to the highest bidder. At times, it was yahoo, or bing, before google outbid them in the following release of the browser. Obviously the same happens for safari, to noone’s surprise.
So, the real question is: why does this come up only now as potentially illegal?
diffusive@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Because Google is like 90% of the market. It’s not the bidding part the issue, the issue is that the bidding (and possibly other effective strategies) are so successful that Google is almost a monopoly. The illegal part is that google is a bit too successful 🙂
dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.world 9 months ago
To be fair Google practically modernized the search engine. I sometimes miss the before before times instead of by SEO ranks
hardaysknight@lemmy.world 9 months ago
sometimes?? God I miss it all the time
ilmagico@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sure, but why now? If it was a problem, why didn’t they do something about it 15 years ago or so?
jantin@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Because for the last 15 years or so the agencies responsible for figuring it out and enforcement were toothless, corrupt, incompetent or all three together.
dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Well tjen, I think question remains, why now?
seang96@spgrn.com 9 months ago
Firefox gets the majority of it’s funding from this though, depending on how the rule on this they could make Firefox lag behind without funding and make chromium even more of a monopoly.
ilmagico@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Absolutely this. I rely on Firefox and this, in a weird twist of fate, could actually hurt Firefox and consolidate Google’s (Chrome) monopoly