Yeah, Google, Meta, Amazon, and probably others really need to get broken up and get proper antitrust treatment. I say this even as someone who holds stock (like a total of 5 shares, so not much) in a couple of those. I used to dream of working at Google as well, but that dream died quite some time ago based on their actions and culture.
That's never going to happen. I'm not sure on what stipulates a monopoly in this scenario, but the fact that there's bing, duck duck go, kagi, and a handful of others means it's not really a monopoly which tells me there is some specific ruling here that they've determined is monopolistic behavior.
Edit: yeah after reading the article, wtf Google....
Because of network effects the understanding of a monopoly has to grow with changing technology.
The fundamental problem is that it wouldn't even be desireable to split up many of the new social media and internet technologies because that would reduce the quality for everyone, increase costs to support as a business and increase environmental damage from duplicating server storage and power consumption.
What we need is to turn them into public utilities that have significant democratic input by their own workforce (the experts and enthusiasts) and the users (the billions of people who actually create the value for the thing).
I mean, it's very convenient, when your only competition depends on your funding.
Say, if you cut a bit of that funding, it won't immediately cease to exist. And you can double it in exchange for the right people taking the helm. There'll be kickbacks almost impossible to prove.
This should be in the law. If your competition is funded by you, it's not that.
To frame this question differently, why is Apple able to sell default access on their devices?
Quick math shows Apple makes ~100 Billion per year. The article states Google pays ~20 Billion to Apple per year. That's a significant value to Apple.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the decision, but curious how Google paying Apple is a monopoly, but Apple offering search to the highest bidder isn't also a problem (or maybe it is).
As another example, how well did the EU browser choice ruling have on consumers choosing a browser.
I wonder if Apple does a cost analysis on search every year and frequently go "NOPE" at the current state of search.
Apple Maps took years to shed it's reputation. A Apple version of search would being a lot of negative press. And they can't exactly handshake with Microsoft and Bing, as Bing has its own negative reputation.
All the smaller search engines, so they fit into the Apple mindset?
At the end of the day, they'll take Google's money. While finding a way to make their own.