Comment on Justice Department considering push for historic break up of Google after landmark antitrust ruling: report

tabular@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Gsus4@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you swapped most people from google into DDG, most would hardly notice, I venture. Mapping is different.

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  • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Just apple maps and bing under the hood though.

    What we really need is some non-super monopoly competition like osm

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    • Gsus4@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yea! OSM is the Wikipedia of maps.

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  • tabular@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Perhaps, though I am dubious (when it comes to things like searching for business open hours or street view).

    However it’s not like choosing which restaurant to go to. They just type their search in the Google browser textbox and use the same search engine they’ve always used, the default. They’d need to encounter a failed search and think to try another, only to find that probably doesn’t work either.

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• ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If they forced them to split Waze off and make it independent again it probably could, it’s probably the only non default app I see people use regularly

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  • TheRedSpade@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh, did they actually keep Waze? I assumed they bought it to kill it.

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    • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Still using it, so still going right now.

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    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Shockingly they kept Waze around. It sounds like they believe the Waze brand is too strong to be worth killing off in favor of maps, but they have been implementing new features into each and cross pollinating between the two

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    • ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I think they might be using it as a beta testing ground for their back end features, the brand is also pretty valuable in and of itself. The traffic avoidance is much more aggressive than Google maps

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• Ashtear@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Just spinning off Android would shake up map software. It’s how they get traffic and other data.

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  • tabular@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Many apps for Android rely on Google Play Services which I don’t know exactly what it’s doing but collecting data is a good bet.

    Do we end up with worse maps then?

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    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      By my understanding google play services is basically just shared libraries and APIs for doing stuff and not as tied into Google specifically as its name might suggest

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      • tabular@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Wikipedia suggests it gives access to certain information which all look like data Google would want to track. I don’t think I’m crazy to assume Google is doing something fucky while it gets values when requested on by an app, or whenever the heck they want.

        Disable it and it will bitch notifications every often, every day, and that can’t be disabled. It claims it need to be on for your phone to work but not so in my case when I only use apps from F-Droid (like a dialer, text message, calculator, Lemmy client).

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    • Ashtear@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      In the short term? Possibly.

      In the long term, it opens up space for competition, which is better for end users and advertisers.

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• Deceptichum@quokk.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think Apple could catch up.

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