What do you define as "flourished"? Chrome won in part because it was better than Internet Explorer, but ironically, the internet was better back when IE had majority market share.

Today, 99% of internet traffic goes to a handful of sites/apps, and the vast majority of the ad revenue on the internet goes to a handful ad companies. The internet is a SEO spam shit hole crafted in service of Google's easily gamed ranking algorithms, and designed with the sole purpose of serving ads.

Google effectively owns the internet, and this ruling is a green light for them to take even more. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop releasing Chrome sources and fully ban ad blockers now. The court already ruled that the government can't touch them, even when they've been found to have broken the law.

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lunarboy 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Internet was better via what metric? Your rose tinted nostalgia bar? And what's stopping anyone from making a better non-gameable search index that's driven by purely charitable intentions?

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wraptile 2 days ago | parent [-]

> And what's stopping anyone from making a better non-gameable search index

The party that was found _guilty_ in this lawsuit?

	▲	shadowgovt 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think so. Remove Google from the story and search is still a problem involving massive amounts of storage, massive amounts of fast compute, and a clever way to index results. The only part of that story Google impacts is that their clever way to index results is by mining traffic on their site and the larger web to decide based on user behavior whether their search query was satisfied. Since users can't spend active time on two sites at once, Google consumes a finite resource there. But do we believe Google's behavior tracking really is the final, best form that indexing can possibly take?

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bitpush 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Google effectively owns the internet

What are you even saying? ChatGPT - a product that was launched in 2021 - is eating up internet search game. People have switched to that in throves, and Google can do nothing.

You're mistakenly assuming that Google has a lot of power, when in fact, they had none. People were using it because it was the superior product at the time. And now there's a better product, and people have switched to it.

Dont blame Google for Bing (and ddg's) shitty products.

	▲	drnick1 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Google is still a major cloud provider, owns and reads most people's emails, spies on people through billions of Android devices, surveils people with through maps on phones and cars, is an ISP in some regions, and more. So yes, Google effectively owns much of the Internet at least outside of China/Russia and some other countries that have created alternatives and foisted them onto their populations by banning Google. The alternatives are of course state-controlled and just as evil as Google.
	▲	bogwog 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> What are you even saying? ChatGPT - a product that was launched in 2021 - is eating up internet search game. People have switched to that in throves, and Google can do nothing. If ChatGPT really is stealing significant market share from Google, that's EVEN MORE of a reason to break up Google's monopoly. It's further proof that they are a monopoly, because one of the smoking guns of a monopoly is inability to innovate. Why should the market be held back by allowing Google to stay in the game when they're clearly not competitive? Their anti competitive behavior is preventing other, more innovative companies from being created. > You're mistakenly assuming that Google has a lot of power, when in fact, they had none. People were using it because it was the superior product at the time. I can't tell if this is a troll or not. I'm going to reply anyways, even though it probably is. Google had, and currently has, all the power. The only 'lever' they don't have is control over internet access (although they do offer ISP services in some regions). I don't know what you mean by saying otherwise? By owning Search, Chrome, Android, and their ad network they have closed loop. Building a good search engine requires data, Search/Chrome/Android provide that data, and Chrome/Android + their illegal search deals funnel users into Search, which provides more data. That's why even this shitty half-assed remedy is requiring them to share some search data with rivals.