Love this headline: Welcome to Google’s nightmare: US reveals plan to destroy search monopoly - Ars Technica
In other words...
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This was published today on HeackRead:
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Anyone see the election results, and remember what happened to the Microsoft case? I wouldn’t be celebrating Google is probably going to get a slap on the wrist just like Microsoft did.
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The competition regulatory authorities have been asleep at the wheel. Google is a substantial player in so many aspects of the tech space. Sale of Chrome (if it is eventually ordered and if appeals fail and if it actually happens) … great. But what about all the other aspects?
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Any progress is better than none, and is an opportunity to build momentum and stack pressure.
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With Trump in charge, I doubt there will be any antitrust action at the DoJ. With Trump and Musk screaming about getting rid of government regulations on business, Trump’s DoJ is unlikely to break up Google. Only if Trump has a personal beef with the company is Trump likely to allow any antitrust enforcement, and Google can effectively bribe Trump to leave the company alone. According to Business Insider, the Chinese state-owned telecom ZTE bribed Trump in 2018 to avoid its products being banned in the US. Google has endless recources to make Trump happy, so I expect this DoJ case against Google to quietly die.
It is widely reported that Lina Khan is expected to be dismissed from the FTC under Trump. The Hill reported:
In an industry note last week, Wedbush Securities analysts suggested Khan’s likely exit and a “dramatically reduced regulatory framework” in a Trump administration could open the door to more mergers in the industry.
“This Khan nightmare period for the tech world has put a lid on tech deal flow and we believe this all changes starting today with Trump in the White House and a much more business friendly regulatory environment,” they wrote the day after the election.
Cantor similarly said he expects a “slew of deals” over the next four years, pointing to falling interest rates and the assumption that a Trump administration will more lenient than the Biden administion.
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I agree. It at least could serve as a shot across the bow for other abusers.
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I use mojeek on gnome web (epiphany) when I turn on my L5!
Unfortunately are still missing massive improvements (Crimson?) so it’s mostly turned off in my nightstand drawer! 
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For those interested in understanding better the problem of monopolies and how they stifle innovation, follow Matt Stoller on X/Twitter.
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Or simply read Purism’s blog articles, especially @Randys’ most recent one:
No authwall, analytics or trackers included.
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Another thing to keep in mind is that Chrome/Chromium separated from Google Search will have the same economic problems as Mozilla. The only company that I can imagine paying $15-20 billion to acquire Chrome is Microsoft, in order to grow Bing’s market share. I’d guess that Google spends about $1 billion per year to maintain the 33.7 million lines of code in Chromium, which is almost as many lines as the Linux kernel with 35.9M LoC.
In my opinion Chromium should be developed like Linux under a non-profit foundation, which would lower the costs, but that would give no compensation to Google if it is divested that way, so I don’t think the DoJ will order that.
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If you look at the example of Ma Bell, and then at our communications systems as they exist today in the US, you really need a couple of things to happen if monopolized markets are to be disrupted. First, you want a total redesign of the systems in question, and the result must incentivize competition. Then, you also need specific policies aimed at protecting customers from market centralization in the future as technology evolves, otherwise the same players, or others, can collude or centralize control all over again when ramping up the next technological adoption curve. Also, you definitely want strict and swift consequences for companies that work around any of this. I’m just saying market centralization is a complex problem, especially now, and I’m not sure incrementalism will work in reverse. Add to this the fact that if your government is persistently waging war, then whether or not it’s evident to you, your government almost certainly exercises control over not just communications but also industry and currency. So I would suspect DOJ is more engaged in political maneuvers or appearances than any truly beneficial action here.
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Well they should really make big fines like 50 percent of yearly income and plus how many years ongoing abuse then you add each year, then lets see how big tech will be more respectful towards their users and the law
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DuckDuckGo used to be able to act as an intermediary. Specifically, at one time when you searched with a leading “!g” it would pass the request to google and feed the results back to you without giving Google your IP. Not surprisingly, Google didn’t like that!!! Now if you have a leading “!g” on a ddg search it passes of the request to google (but does not act as an intermediary anymore). e.g. “!g example search” simply redirects to the URL “example search - Google Search”
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I did some research about the history of DuckDuckGo bangs as far back as 2015, but could not find a citation matching that claim. Do you remember exactly when DuckDuckGo featured bang proxies?
I don’t recall. I think it was early (2011 or 2012) and disappeared as soon as ddg started getting traffic — I didn’t notice when it stopped being a proxy because google output was still very “plain”.
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Those were the days…
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I remember those bangs too. But I don’t recall when this was stopped, because I didn’t use the feature that much…
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The bangs still work, but they are no longer a proxy. The bang, for example !g, now just invokes a google search as you … which means google sees you.
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