Google admits anti-competitive conduct involving Google Search in Australia

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scale and nature of Google’s power

  • Many see Google as one of the most anti‑competitive companies ever, spanning search, browser, ads, mobile, YouTube, AI, and more – “bigger than most countries.”
  • Core complaint: Google “taxes the internet” by controlling most points of access (Chrome, Android defaults, search, ads) and extracting rents from brands who must buy ads on their own names.

Defaults, Chrome, and platform self‑preferencing

  • Strong emphasis on the power of defaults: most “normies” never change them, so paid default status is viewed as monopoly maintenance.
  • Some argue this is just standard platform monetization, similar to social and app platforms; others counter that no other company combines browser, OS, search, ads, and video at Google’s scale.
  • Example grievances: having to pay to rank on your own brand keyword; YouTube allegedly degrading experience on non‑Google browsers; Chrome changes like Web Environment Integrity and Manifest V3 seen by some as power grabs, by others as security/performance improvements.

Adequacy and structure of fines

  • $55m is widely characterized as “pocket change” or a “rounding error” for Google, turning penalties into a cost of doing business.
  • Long subthread debates how fines should work:
    • Many advocate fines as a percentage of global revenue (as in GDPR) plus multipliers and escalation for repeat offenses.
    • Others argue penalties must exceed illegal profits to remove incentive.
    • Counterpoint: if fines are too massive, firms might withdraw from markets; critics respond big tech makes too much in places like the EU to realistically walk away.

Impact on users and the search market

  • Skepticism that this decision will change much: people are deeply locked into Google’s ecosystem.
  • A minority report long‑term use of alternatives (DuckDuckGo, Kagi, Startpage, Brave Search, SearxNG) and claim they’re “good enough” or better, especially on privacy; others find them still weaker than Google.
  • Some see LLMs (ChatGPT, etc.) as a replacement for traditional search, especially given perceived decline in web and search quality.

Telcos’ role and comparison to past cases

  • The conduct at issue: revenue‑sharing deals with Telstra, Optus, TPG to make Google the only pre‑installed/default search on Android devices.
  • Some argue telcos should also be fined as willing beneficiaries; others note the anti‑competitive harm is specifically Google leveraging search dominance.
  • Parallels drawn to Microsoft’s Windows/IE bundling: paying OEMs, then excluding competitors, now echoed in Android and search deals.

System‑level debate

  • Long tangent on whether capitalism can self‑regulate, with arguments for stronger democratic regulation, antitrust, or even socialist restructuring.
  • Broad underlying sentiment: current penalties and governance structures are too weak to meaningfully discipline global tech monopolies.