> Why isn't US govt doing this?

Because it would be incredibly unpopular, for one.

Can you imagine being in the middle of some work, Googling a term, only to be hit with "Sorry, we're over the government limit and can't fulfill your search"

Hacker News and Stack Overflow would be full of people trading tips about using VPNs to evade the limits.

People don't actually like having the government restrict them from using things they want to use.

Sorry you also spent your allotted time on Hacker News and Stack Overflow.

Please ask about VPNs on Quora until the end of the month.

HN doesn't have 30% of the market for social media. SO might have >30% of whatever vertical they are, but that's not obvious to me.

You say that like there isn't a big old demographic on this site who has been rate limited in how often they're allowed to post. ;)

Name… checks out?

I get that already every time I try to search Google in incognito and once every day or two for normal searches. Except it's "prove you're a human by completing these robotic tasks".

You're right, I hate it and always switch to a different search engine instead. So, that's the goal here right?

Google's goal is to fingerprint you so they know exactly who you are on every site you visit. That's the point of WEI, to make the environment safe for their ad business, not better for you.

You using a VPN is just as outrageous to them as you attempting to use a working ad blocker.

You and others replying to GP keep suggesting google users who are the product not the actual customee would be restricted when in fact it would be the real customers: people wanting to place ads on google that would be restricted. The amount of clicks google can monetize would be restricted.

> Can you imagine being in the middle of some work, Googling a term, only to be hit with "Sorry, we're over the government limit and can't fulfill your search"

Programmers are often overconfident and think they can implement anything... except when they have to follow common sense regulation in which case it's always impossible or they come up with ridiculous straw men like you just have.

There are a million ways to curtail anti-competitive behavior. One, on the spot, example would be: not to stop people from making searches, but instead to tax at 100% everything over the 30% of searches.

> Why isn't US govt doing this?

Why isn't the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, ... doing this? Because it's a pretty strong form of controlled economy that distorts the market.

How would this work for search engines? Would you force people to use a different search engine than the one they want? (e.g. they type Google.com and end up redirected to Bing.com) ; or somehow just funnel revenue to other companies... then who gets to decide which companies this gets funneled to?

Anti-trust is about preventing anti-competitive tactics, but the scheme you is ironically anti-competitive: it artificially inflates usage of other services even if they don't provide an equal/superior service, with consumers paying the price.

[disclaimer: I work at Google, so likely biased]

> How would this work for search engines?

There is a way. If we start treating Internet search as commodity/public utility, we can use shared municipal fiber analogy. One public website can route requests to multiple participating search providers, ensuring that the searches are evenly distributed.

Of course, it's not a good idea for a lot of reasons. Starting as extending government surveillance, through leaving consumers with limited choices (if different providers' result quality is significantly different, which it probably is), and all the way down to having to decide what qualifies as a search engine.

It's best to look at the root of the issue. I don't think most people are upset that Google is the most popular search engine out there. It's the other practices that make people wary or outright unhappy. Google is very multi-faceted, so government forcing company split (e.g. make Google Search, Gmail, Chrome, Android etc. entirely separate entities), or disallowing of some business practices (such as making Chrome cater to Google Analytics needs) might be beneficial.

What would you propose instead?

Banning anti-competitive behavior (which is what antitrust laws are for in the first place). For instance: a company actively blocking competition (e.g. coffee machine manufacturers that make it impossible for people to buy pods from another brand).

Again, I am probably biased here, but I don't see much anti-competitive behaviour in the search engine space. If people have a clear superior alternative to Google, then by all means please share it here.

Even during the brief period where I used duckduckgo, I was constantly finding myself typing "!g" to get results from Google as they were just consistently more relevant.

What about buying the default search from Apple? Maybe I'm remembering it wrong but I seem to recall they pay a lot of money for that.

What outcome are you hoping for here? Google can't pay to be the default search engine on a browser, no one can pay to be the default search engine on a browser, no one can be the default search engine on a browser, or just Google can't be the default search engine on a browser?

Legally enforced ballot with random default if users click through without reading. Same for browsers themselves.

1 and 2. Google as the overwhelmingly dominant player should not be allowed to pay to further monopolize the space, and since Microsoft is the alternative, I would support banning paid defaults in general.

So the remaining traffic would be all expenses, no profit? Doesn't sound like capitalism anymore then, more of a public service.

It would be expenses and profit, the remaining traffic keeps users coming.

Imagine a government creating a search engine as a public service.

... Oh wait, that's actually a great idea and I want to see that happen.

I, personally, am very, _very_ glad my country doesn't oblige me to use a state-sponsored search engine.

Baidu "六四事件"[0] to find out more!

[0] "June Fourth incident", the Chinese name for the Tiananmen square massacre. Other banned search terms include "candle", "never forget", and the numbers 25 and 64.

I wasn't imagining one would be obliged. Merely that as a demonstrated vital good in modern society, it's something a government could, perhaps, guarantee a minimum standard on.

Ad-free tax-funded search would be kind of neat.

You know, even with Google amd Bing, search terms are extremely (even politically) censored depending on where you search from. It's not like Chinese users can search the same thing fine on Google.

Sure, then advocate for your government to build a public search engine.

Why do you need to penalize private institutions if users prefer to use them over a government service?

They would just have to divest portions of their product.

It’s painfully simple and we’ve done it a million times. Breaking up AT&T is probably the most obvious example.

They could split up the search and ads business and maps and Google local search and so on.

It would be fine. We’d be fine.

Also if you work at Google can you tell us if anyone has noticed that the supposedly “equal/superior service” has degraded so badly that it’s barely fucking usable a lot of the time?

Which is, of course, relevant.

Except previously the big breakups (AT&T, Standard Oil) were location-based, which doesn't really make sense for Google. Why do you think splitting of maps and display ads would matter for Google's market share in search?

Done it a million times? How often does this happen? AT&T was decades ago, though I suppose you are referring to less well known actions since then?

Alphabet in the US would just spin off 3 "competitors" and be done. All 4 would then be subsidiaries of the holding company and they still collect the money. Of course this can't happen in India, because there would be political repercussions unless it was was an Indian firm connected to the government.

To change this takes real political will and a recognition of who the beneficiaries of the current systems are. It's not simple in any remotely democratic system with rule of law.

We do have the FTC which can enforce antitrust (when the executive branch doesn't interfere) and force various requirements (like the auctioning of ad terms be separated from the business of marketing ads, and the collection of search data) on different parts of the company.

(edit: Oops, I must remember to only discuss US politics with any realism. Reference to any other country's corruption/politics must only be with the highest reverence, deference, and awe.)

> Alphabet in the US would just spin off 3 "competitors" and be done. All 4 would then be subsidiaries of the holding company and they still collect the money.

Right, because a judge would look at a company holding the same market through subsidiaries and not throw the book at them. IANAL, but AFAICT the wording in the law doesn't even distinguish one company vs a group acting together; why would that make a difference?

The law in India that this was a direct response to... or the FTC's case in the US?

I'd answer those two questions differently, but I think you're referring to something I wasn't.

Because it’s a bad idea?

You shouldn’t ensure that three potentially inferior products stay on the market. That makes no sense.

It also reduces the incentives those firms have to invest in quality - at some point there is a hard limit on how much competition they face. That would be a terrible, terrible law.

It makes perfect sense. Doesn't happen in the US because of regulatory capture