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Justice Department considering push for historic break up of Google after landmark antitrust ruling: report (nypost.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Can you elaborate on the business model of a search engine that has no ads?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Let's not make them a business. Search Engines are fundamental core services for the modern globalized and connected world. It's just like your post-office service. Make it an internationally owned and funded non-profit organization with open-source and the goal of enabling the unrestricted sharing of knowledge over the internet.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What does the creation of a multi-national state owned search engine have to do with Google? I presume nations have the resources to do that all on their own.

    What would you suggest the Google search engine be allowed to do to profit as a business?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    There's no suggestion. There is currently no way a search engine can be a viable modern business model and a good tool at the same time. It could potentially be a good business model and a decent tool even with ads, but only in a world where we accept that things can't grow forever.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The only business model that really works is charging people to use it, like Kagi is doing.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    like Kagi is doing

    I haven't seen much to suggest Kagi's results are better than Google's. But that's as much a function of time and horsepower as anything.

    I would argue that the private model is what's fundamentally wrong with modern search. Nationalize Google and make it a public utility, like any public library or publicly financed research institution. Open up the front end source code and let people apply their own filters and modifications, rather than locking everything down to force feed you sponsored content.

    That's the only real way to fix search.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Nationalize Google and make it a public utility, like any public library or publicly financed research institution.

    This would be great. Running a search engine is very expensive though.

    The Internet Archive is probably the closest thing we've got to something like this. It's a non-profit but AFAIK they don't get any government funding. They've got the scrapers and could probably work on a search engine project, but I doubt they could afford it in their current state. They're spending a lot of money at the moment due to companies filing lawsuits about Internet Archive archiving their content (and a bunch of content is gone from the archive forever as a result

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Running a search engine is very expensive though.

    The federal government spends about $1.3B a year on advertising and another $37.5B on data collection, with Google being a major recipient of both budgets. Nationalization would save a small fortune.

    And for the economic tailwinds that efficient Internet research provides, I'm willing to bet we'd see significant economic benefits that eclipse the base cost, not unlike with Amtrak or the USPS.

    The Internet Archive is probably the closest thing we’ve got to something like this.

    Them and Wikipedia, definitely. Both make for excellent models of non-profit free-at-point-of-use information services.

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