Same guys...

From this case, I'm concerned, apparently threatened:

(A) I have some expertise in computing, worked in and with computing for decades, written some serious software, taught computer science in college and graduate school of famous universities, and published peer-reviewed original research in artificial intelligence.

(B) Now computing is my main activity and the foundation of my business startup.

(C) From credible quotes in the media and (A) and (B) just above, my opinion is that the lawyers and judges in the Google case (a) are poorly informed on and have no meaningful understanding of computing, (b) are often seriously misinformed on computing, and (c) are on the way to doing serious harm to computing, the economy, and my work.

I see no opportunity for this legal case to do any good and would like the DoJ just to say:

"Sorry, never mind. We made a HUGE mistake and now drop the case."

For example:

(1) Operating System. I use versions of Microsoft's Windows, really want to use only one operating system, considered the choices, and picked Windows.

It seems to me that Microsoft continually makes changes to improve Windows.

Some of the changes are for the user experience and user interface. Mostly I find the changes poorly designed and irritating but not a serious problem.

Other changes are for, e.g., computer security and new hardware, and I like those changes a LOT.

I REALLY LIKE their .NET software and its documentation.

I REALLY like the Windows NTFS file system. And I REALLY like the fact that the basics of Windows has been quite reliable, with lots of utility, for 10+ years.

And I intend to start using Windows Server 2019. Versions of Windows Server may be the most important software in the economy of the world.

(2) I have lots of computer programs installed.

Some of the programs I've written myself in various computer languages.

Of course, for me the most important of these programs is the Web site server program I've written for my startup.

Otherwise my most heavily used program is the text editor KEdit, first written by an IBM employee in France, and for that program I've written dozens of macros.

Next is Rexx written by an IBM employee in England, and for that language I've written dozens of programs.

I have the D. Knuth mathematical word processing software TeX which I use for writing nearly all documents, letters, etc. For TeX I've written dozens of macros.

I have a spell checking program Aspell I use heavily.

I have Adobe's Acrobat installed and use it to read some important PDF files.

To keep up with some changes in email standards, I intend to install a recent version of Microsoft Office.

I am a heavy user of the Internet and, thus, of Web browsers. As I type this, the computer has installed Firefox, Chrome, Brave, and Edge. I use all of them, use Firefox the most, may change to use Brave the most, and may install the current version of Chrome.

So, each of these Web browsers is an installed computer program out of some dozens I have installed.

With these Web browsers, I visit Web sites -- thousands of them.

Some of the Web sites are search engines or other means of finding content. Some of the search engines are Google, Bing, and DDG. But I also do searches at Wikipedia, YouTube, Stackoverflow, etc.

(3) Defaults. The legal case has a lot of emphasis on "defaults" in Web browsers and search engines, and to me this emphasis is, understated and in just one word, bad.

For the only such "default", I have set Firefox as my "default" Web browser, but this setting has almost no effect. E.g., if I am using Adobe's Acrobat to read the PDF (portable document format) file for the paper

"Tensor Programs I: Wide Feedforward or Recurrent Neural Networks of Any Architecture are Gaussian Processes"

and in the Acrobat display click on a URL (uniform resource locator) of a Web page, then Acrobat will use my default Web browser to read and display that Web page. I rarely do any such thing and there are other approaches that are plenty easy.

For a "default search engine", I don't have one.

In recent months I've noticed that I can do some Web searches from an HTML single line text box displayed by Firefox, but so far I've never done this. I don't like this feature by Firefox because I see no reason to use it and it takes up limited space in the Firefox window.

Google is just a Web site, and I get to that site just like I get to any of the thousands of other Web sites I go to. No "defaults" are involved.

DoJ, lawyers, judges, please, Please, PLEASE forget about computing, the Internet, computer operating systems, computer programs, Web browsers, Web sites, and search engines. Just FORGET about them.

PLEASE.

Anything you do will be a threat to the economy, my work, and me.

If DDG or Kagi were the ones complaining here, then that makes sense because indeed their pockets don't run as deep as Google's or M$'s and that's unfair, but M$ complaining just sounds like the one comically evil megacorp taking advantage of the situation to get the other comically evil megacorp in trouble for shit they're doing themselves on a smaller scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system

If by "many" you mean "less than 0.1%". Nearly all sites want traffic, which search engines provide.

And you're moving the goalposts from the commenter I was responding to.

Nobody disputes it takes a large capital investment to create an index in the first place. But this is the business world -- that's what investors are for.

But the idea that websites provide their public content to Google and leave other crawlers with no way to access it is simply untrue. That is not a factor hindering competition.

My local jurisdiction has separate tracks for both vets and addicts. Because handling those cases in the "normal" court is inefficient and unproductive. (eg Most addicts need treatment, not jail time. Vets specific care, not jail time.)

IIRC, there's a separate bankruptcy court. Sounds smart. I don't expect laypersons to understand finance and such.

Methinks we need separate courts for both intellectual property and healthcare. Where the "jury of one's peers" is composed of actual domain expert peers.

You literally can't make a mobile phone today without having support for all Google services. Native support is better than 3rd party. And now all of your user's data is in Google's hands.

Yes, there are some extreme ... fanatics(?), who can live with a phone that doesn't have YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Drive or Play Store in it, but the Joe/Jill Regular will never ever go for that today.

Of all the companies beside Apple, Samsung is the only one I can think of with the muscle to maybe do a device with all of their own services.

But if you're like me and never evolved from the oldschool search engines and still use the same format of listing key words, DDG is better than or equal to Google.

I like the combined approach of Apple Maps.

But the fact that consumers clearly know how to change the default on Edge fatally undercuts that argument. And if the contracts with Apple aren't exclusive, Google can't be liable for them under the antitrust laws.

> At the end of Mr. Nadella’s appearance, a Justice Department lawyer asked why he thought Google paid Apple so much money to be the default search engine on Apple’s web browser Safari.

> “That’s a great question,” Mr. Nadella said. “I would love an opportunity to sort of not have them pay — maybe on behalf of the Google shareholders.”

I read that as: Nadella saying it cost Google's shareholders X in expenses. Reading it a second time, he is probably implying it increased Google's shareholders Y in revenue. But either way, CEO of a trillion dollar company making hypocritical remarks on another trillion dollar company. IMO it's just a poor decision of DOJ to use MS as a witness. I'd prefer they bring to light companies that are actually struggling, and not the company that can sign a $10 billion deal to boot strap new features into their competing product.

A bit off topic, but to me it's interesting that they couldn't extend their desktop OS dominance to the mobile world when they launched Windows Phone with a huge war chest. That must have demonstrated how huge the disjunction is between desktop and mobile use-cases in general, or the strategy should have worked (and could have re-fuelled the anti-trust aspects)

> Because Microsoft is doing worse things than what they are accusing Google of, such as forcing users to use Edge and Bing in Windows.

Given that Google and other parties will have their chance at giving their evidence and testimony, would it not be better for Microsoft to be involved here where their own testimony will available for exploration?

Given that Bing powers DDG and Brave at least, and I assume Kagi consumes Bing also, I see no reason why the only other competitor to Google (in Search) should not be present.

I don’t recall Bing ever being the default search engine in Safari.

The deal was exclusively about Siri (which barely anyone used..)

The US economy is a complete dumpster fire for those of us worth less than seven figures. Big tech monopolization does not strengthen our productive capacity, and breaking up the big tech companies won't weaken it. If anything, it will strengthen the economy by making it more viable to found a tech startup without the explicit goal of being bought out. We aren't "killing" our software industry; we're revitalizing it.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/manufactu...

So why should we take Satya's testimony seriously? Azure is a Microsoft product and if what you're saying is true, Microsoft is part of the problem.

The trial is about if Google used illegal practices to suppress and harm competitors.

So the person testifying, literally, is the victim of the crime.

Hence why the opposing side gets the opportunity to cross-examine the witness, and why it would be a really bad idea to put forward a witness who clearly has a grudge against the accused. In cross you just show they have a grudge and now their testimony is suspect.

> Now, if they had actual evidence it'd be different

It is actual evidence. I don't think you know what evidence is...

"Do you think Google would continue to pay Apple if there was no search competition? Why would they do that?"

Of course not and the reasons should be obvious. Microsoft being a competent competitor costs Google a lot of money. Lose the search dominance and the place basically shuts down, so they're willing to pay a lot to maintain it.

“I would love an opportunity to sort of not have them pay — maybe on behalf of the Google shareholders.”

Shut down Bing then and save Google shareholders a bunch of money, at the expense of Apple shareholders. He clearly doesn't want to spend what Google does for the same privilege. Google must perceives that the deal is worth it to do for their shareholders.

I imagine his ideal outcome would be something like Microsoft was forced to do with browsers, having a screen during the setup process asking the user what browser (or in this case search engine) they want as the default. I honestly don't think it would move the needle at all unless Bing was demonstrably better than Google.

I cannot see how this is true.

Microsoft, with its tens of billions in annual profits, can invest in all the advertising in the world, literally, to let people know how to change the default browser on their iOS or Android device.

It is a trivial setting to change.

What is not trivial, for Microsoft, is creating a competitive search engine and advertising business.

This case exists because it's the opinion of the United States Department of Justice that this law was broken by Google.

Hard/soft evidence are established legal terms.

As guilty as Microsoft might be, it's rich of Microsoft with its monopolies (without which a lot of its subpar products like outlook and Teams and Edge would go poof) to be abdicating Google here.

Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow's Chokepoint Capitalism goes into detail on this.

They didn’t actually rewrite antitrust law though, so it’s still there.