It might be a while before we find out.

A federal judge has ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in the US. “The market reality is that Google is the only real choice” as the default search engine, Judge Amit Mehta said in his decision, and he determined it had gotten that way unfairly. It’s a ruling that could portend big changes for the company, but we yet don’t know how big, and we might not for years.

Mehta declared on Monday that Google was liable for violating antitrust laws, vindicating the Department of Justice and a coalition of states that sued the tech giant in 2020. The next step — deciding on remedies for its illegal conduct — begins next month. Both parties must submit a proposed schedule for remedy proceedings by September 4th and then appear at a status conference on September 6th.

  • UnfortunateShort
    28•1 month ago

    I have used Google, DDG, Bing and Ecosia (which is basically Bing) at this point and ingl, none of them really stands out for its results. If anything, I think DDG and Bing beat Google.

    Google might be the first company to create a monopoly out money and apathy. The apathy of users who don’t care about their search engine enough to even change the default.

    • @[email protected]
      18•1 month ago

      Honeslty all search engines have gone to shit since the internet got polluted with AI-generated nonsense. Its a very hard problem to solve.

      • @[email protected]
        7•1 month ago

        I think we should be precise. The badness began before generative AI. Generative AI makes things worse because now you are less sure when you’re looking at total junk, but the junk ratio itself doesn’t depend on that.

        • @[email protected]
          4•1 month ago

          Well, its worse because its a firehose that can spit out nonsense at a rate nearly infinitely greater than a finite set of content marketing employees

        • @ThunderWhiskers
          3•1 month ago

          You’re not wrong. The mass proliferation of listacles with the same 5 advertised products stamped behind a novella of filler to appease SEO algorithms has been increasingly problematic for at least 10 years now. The issue has only been compounded with the flood of “AI” generated content and deceptive ads. I almost prefer when every website had sidebars full of blatant advertisements. Sure they were ever present, but they weren’t trying to literally trick you into buying something.

    • @[email protected]
      9•1 month ago

      What you talking about as apathy, that’s not what’s happening. Google has 90% or more of the search market because it’s the default, because it pays to be the default, even when it’s worse than alternatives. The only people who are actually apathetic are the ones who know that alternative exist, are relatively easy to switch to, are superior, and still don’t. That’s not the majority of users.