458

Google faces a £7 billion lawsuit for blocking search engine competition at the expense of consumers (consumervoice.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by JVT038@feddit.nl to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The lawsuit argues that Google has effectively ‘bought’ the UK mobile phone search engine market. Google forced mobile phone handset manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search and Google Chrome browser apps on devices that use Google’s Android operating system in order to obtain a licence to use Google Play.

Google also unlawfully paid billions to Apple to ensure that it was the default search engine on iPhones and other devices that used Apple’s iOS operating system. In 2019, Google paid £1.2 billion to Apple in the UK to be the default search engine on the Safari browser.

It is claimed that Google has used its market dominance to effectively charge advertisers over the odds. Costs were then passed on to such an extent that all consumers ended up paying higher prices for goods and services sold by brands that have advertised on the platform.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Let's say google is fined 7B. Is there any real competition for the search engine space. Maybe Bing the next big mainstream service. Brave? DDG? They all have some flaw though and isn't as seamless as Google.

[-] Spudwart@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

True, but imo ddg has gotten pretty close in terms of capability.

But Google has become the Walmart of the internet. The only thing their missing is a literal storefront.

Need email? Gmail. Need a browser? Google Chrome Want entertainment? YouTube Search engine? Google Phone OS? Android (most) Chromebooks, Google Office Suite, AdSense.

Google has way too much power over the internet.

[-] LouisGarbuor@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I think Google Shopping counts as a storefront

[-] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I haven't tried DDG ever since the whole Microsoft fiasco but I'll give it another try. I do agree with everything else you said though. Thank goodness I have degoogled my devices.

[-] GaveUp@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Yandex works pretty well

this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023

458 points (99.1% liked)

Privacy

31601 readers

345 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS