Google spends $10 billion a year to ensure it's your go-to online search engine, DOJ says

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 342 points – Google spends $10 billion a year to ensure it's your go-to online search engine, DOJ says
businessinsider.com

Google spends $10 billion a year to ensure it's your go-to online search engine, DOJ says::Google shells out billions to be the default search engine on Apple's smartphones and on web browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox, the DOJ said.

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I find myself using duckduckgo and kagi more and more. All search engines suck, honestly, but the not-Google choices maybe suck a little less. Google results have gotten horrible, it's so obvious it's just serving up sponsored ad links, not actual information. I mean, that's been the case for a long time but they've really dialed up the suck.

I miss the days when it was rare to need to goto the second page. Now you have to in order to get passed the all the shite. Even ignoring the sponsored shit Google wants to sell me the thing I'm trying to get a review of on the firs and second page

In my case it's trying to sell me the fucking thing i explicitly excluded from results with a boolean

I can imagine some mid-level idiot with an MBA coming up with that one in a staff meeting. "I know how we increase revenue, guys: the old reverse psychology!"

Bastard probably got a bonus for it.

Not even that smart. It's just shitty, shitty SEO

'Stick ads for x on anything that mentions x, xa, xy and related terms. Don't pay attention to exclusions'

I defaulted to DDG now. It has been working just fine. Every now and then I can't find something and I will append a "!g" at the end of the search in DDG to get Google results.

I will use Yandex when searching for more copyright infringing content which works very well too.

That has me 100% covered. If I were to lose Google I would still be 98% covered.

Agreed completely. I’m noticing that I need to use !g less and less. It used to be a daily or twice daily thing, but these days it is more of a weekly or monthly usage.

Google has plenty of cash to live for a long time and an ad machine that prints money, but their days of dominance are numbered, in my opinion.

Duck duck go has kept getting better and google has kept getting worse.

I find the results are pretty even now and often lean in DDG's favour (but not always, obviously).

Because of this, I've set my default everywhere to DDG and give Google a whirl sometimes if that doesn't work out for a specific search.

It’s that extra crap that kills it for me.

I have all the add-ins, extensions, etc so my experience is fine (and I also just use DuckDuckGo). But I tried searching for something on my parent’s computer with Google… it was like the early 00s with all the crap before the actual results.

I immediately switched their default, but I could not believe it. Like why would you do that to your own site?

What extensions will make my experience Better? I still Google but I don't wanna use it anymore

honestly.... duckduckgo.com

you will still get most of the top results, but without all the nonsense.

Their browser is a bit shady and how it shares info with Microsoft / Bing but their search engine is solid.

Stupid name, good search results.

Tried ddg years ago, but I found Searx(NG) and I stick to it since. So awesome. The only downside is that some instances can be unstable for a bit (for example, certain search engine can stop working), but you can export and import settings really easily so I just use another instance I trust until my main one is back to normal.

How do you justify Kagis pricing? I search so much everyday that that I would need the "Ultimate" plan which is just too expensive when other alternatives are just free.

I haven't paid for it yet, just been dabbling with it. If I do end up paying for it, I guess it's like anything else, is it worth it to me, personally? I don't have an answer yet, but the ads funded model got us to the shitshow we have today.

My partner and I are on the duo plan with 1500 searches and haven't hit our limit. I've honestly been surprised how little we search?

You may be too, Kagi is very good. I haven't regretted paying for it at all.

Isn’t DDG just Bing? I know when sites are banned on Bing, they don’t appear there either. Felt it was the same search…

Perhaps Bing with privacy?

I don't know if anyone told them already, but the trick is, make your search engine usable. Not spend billions.

As for me, I stick with DuckDuckGo, it's actually usable.

Exactly. I swapped 6y ago and now I cannot even see the Google cause their search engine is just pathetic. There is not enough money in the world so they could spend to persuade me to go back. I'd rather go to library..

These idiots are spending 10 billion for something thats free

And yet their insistence of enshittification is pushing everyone away from all of their services.

That is exactly why they need to spend 10 billion a year. If they didn't constantly shittify their product, google would have had no realistic candidates as competitors, and thus no need to spend money in order to get people to use their product.

But all the search engine alternatives are looking better and better each year, simply from google making their own product shittier.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Google is paying $10 billion a year to Apple and other smartphone makers to keep its position as the world's biggest online search engine, the Department of Justice has said.

On the first day of the biggest tech antitrust trial in 20 years, lawyers for the DOJ said that Google had used agreements with the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla Firefox to make Google search the default on their smartphones and web browsers.

These lawyers said Google viewed these as"powerful strategic weapons," designed to make it impossible for competitors to break their stranglehold over search – The New York Times reported.

"This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition," Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department's lawyer, told the court in comments reported by the AP.

The case poses a major threat to Google's business, and will likely influence the way big tech companies are regulated for the next decade or more.

Another Justice Department lawsuit filed in January 2023 focused on Google's ad tech business, saying that the company utilized its market dominance to squash competition.

The original article contains 291 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 36%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Should spend more of that money on actually returning search results instead of cramming youtube videos and sponsored ads down my throat.
E: funny that the only thing people question is the military spending.

Pretty sure I first read this headline in 2012. I'm glad the DOJ finally woke up

Today, I was not allowed to log into Google via a school website due to using a non-Google approved browser (DuckDuckGo).

I like to google stuff I’m not remotely interested in, just so the data they sell on me is worthless.

They should spend it on helping reduce wealth inequality. I'm still hitting up duckduckgo instead :)

They should probably invest in making their results useful. Their search results have largely been garbage over the past 5 years. I switched to DuckDuckGo which has slightly better results but without being filled to the brim with ads and trackers.

Crazy. The 300 Million for Mozilla search deal are nothing in comparison.

They shell out billions but rest assured, they don't spend a bunch of dollars to advertise on lemmy