I find myself using duckduckgo and kagi more and more. All search engines suck, honestly, but the not-Google choices maybe suck a little less. Google results have gotten horrible, it's so obvious it's just serving up sponsored ad links, not actual information. I mean, that's been the case for a long time but they've really dialed up the suck.

I don't know if anyone told them already, but the trick is, make your search engine usable. Not spend billions.

As for me, I stick with DuckDuckGo, it's actually usable.

These idiots are spending 10 billion for something thats free

I wish they'd spend that money on making it a really good search engine, but I guess that's too much to ask for.

And yet their insistence of enshittification is pushing everyone away from all of their services.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Google is paying $10 billion a year to Apple and other smartphone makers to keep its position as the world's biggest online search engine, the Department of Justice has said.

On the first day of the biggest tech antitrust trial in 20 years, lawyers for the DOJ said that Google had used agreements with the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla Firefox to make Google search the default on their smartphones and web browsers.

These lawyers said Google viewed these as"powerful strategic weapons," designed to make it impossible for competitors to break their stranglehold over search – The New York Times reported.

"This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition," Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department's lawyer, told the court in comments reported by the AP.

The case poses a major threat to Google's business, and will likely influence the way big tech companies are regulated for the next decade or more.

Another Justice Department lawsuit filed in January 2023 focused on Google's ad tech business, saying that the company utilized its market dominance to squash competition.

The original article contains 291 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 36%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Pretty sure I first read this headline in 2012. I'm glad the DOJ finally woke up

Should spend more of that money on actually returning search results instead of cramming youtube videos and sponsored ads down my throat.
E: funny that the only thing people question is the military spending.

In other news: sky is blue sometimes

Today, I was not allowed to log into Google via a school website due to using a non-Google approved browser (DuckDuckGo).

They should spend it on helping reduce wealth inequality. I'm still hitting up duckduckgo instead :)

I like to google stuff I’m not remotely interested in, just so the data they sell on me is worthless.

Crazy. The 300 Million for Mozilla search deal are nothing in comparison.

They should probably invest in making their results useful. Their search results have largely been garbage over the past 5 years. I switched to DuckDuckGo which has slightly better results but without being filled to the brim with ads and trackers.

Velcro mother fuckers

They shell out billions but rest assured, they don't spend a bunch of dollars to advertise on lemmy