That is the question. It is not as simple as it sounds and I understand that. But here we are, the BBC gives us an article. I almost passed it, but then I saw something that didn’t read right, so I dug a little deeper. Their disadvantage was that I had just read up on several cases for material, so I reopened it and it is time to give you the fruits of my labour.
The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9eegg0rdvo) gives us ‘What could Google monopoly ruling mean for you?’. Well that is an open question but let me run you through the elements.
“The US said Google was currently paying firms like Apple huge amounts of money each year to be pre-installed as the default search engine on their devices or platforms”. OK, so this is a business proposition. Apple decided that the benefits of Google in their systems would help them in numerous ways and Google was willing to pay this. It was a price for services.
It comes with the repetitive quote “Apple’s Safari browser for example uses Google by default” what the BBC is not giving us is the offset that Apple would have to endure and they were getting $20,000,000,000 as a bandaid, if I got that kind of money I would say “Google slap me silly”. Now we get the parts that matter, it start with “Something that’s easier to imagine is some kind of choice screen, where people opening a browser for the first time are asked whether they’d like to use Google or an alternative like Microsoft’s Bing” This is hilarious. I have had first experience with Bing. Bing influencers were HIJACKING my search and pushing it through Bing. It took me days to undo that damage. Choosing between a bully and Google is not much of a choice. To put it mildly “Google has a 91% marketshare, Bing has 3.86%, where do you get the most bang for YOUR buck?” In this simple setting Google comes out on top EVERY time. And a secondary setting is that Bing has been around for 15 years. It isn’t just that Google is better, Bing has yet to show any level of pure innovation in searches. Microsoft lacks data, innovation and proper etiquette on search engines.
Now we get to the issue I had, which starts with “Back in 1999, Microsoft found itself in a very similar situation to where Google is now.” You see, Netscape faced new competition from OmniWeb and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 1.0, it continued to dominate the market in 1995 and beyond. In 1997 Netscape had 72% marketshare. That is, until Microsoft switch off the proverbial oxygen to Netscape and whilst the IE was free for all (it was installed with Windows 95), thing went south in several ways for Netscape and the one ‘ruler’ in those days became Microsoft with its Internet Explorer. Google released its browser in 2008. As such (as I see it) Microsoft wasted 10 years and within 2 years nearly everyone was using Google Chrome. They overwhelmed everyone with innovations. They released Chrome v9 in 2011 and Chrome v17 in 2012. What did Microsoft do? Nada, nothing, zip, zilch. In 2012, responding to Chrome’s popularity, Apple discontinued Safari for Windows, making it exclusively available on OS X (source: ubuntu life) . So here is the first setting. Apple made an educated choice. Create your own and reinvent the wheel or select the wheel maker of choice. Even at this point we need to recognise that Microsoft’s star was faltering and falling. That was then. Now there is a different setting. Then it was which American company gets the cake. Now it is different, China is now a much larger participant. They caught up with the US and even now the UAE and Saudi Arabia are massively catching up with America. They decide to waste the time of Google on trivial matters whilst calling it “monopolising” stating that the others should be given a ‘fair’ share. In this day and age it is handing the handling of the commerce horse to China and all the good it will do the American commerce. Small hint, it will not.
There really more issues with Microsoft and particular with Edge and particularly Daniel Aleksandersen, who called this “clearly a user-hostile move that sees Windows compromise its own product usability in order to make it more difficult to use competing products.” There are issues with edge as Douglas J. Leith, a computer science professor from Trinity College, Dublin, Microsoft Edge is among the least private browsers. He explained, “from a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge is much more worrisome than the other browsers studied. These two quotes are on different sides of edge. But in aggregating these quotes it is my distinct believe that if Google Search is broken up, the American Department of Justice will receive roses from nearly every big organised crime syndicate. It is a mere believe I have, but after having suffered the edge bullies hijacking my browser and inserting edge ad a search engine against my wishes is the beginning of much more. The Verge accused edge of “spyware tactics”, a setting we have never seen Google use (speculation by me). In this day and age of commerce, the economy and data security you want to play with Google? I think that is a really bad idea.
Enjoy today, it is now midweek, the run to the weekend starts…….now.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 