[geeostation]

well, it shouldn't be "legal" for one or cartel corporation to mediate between content/data and its users. its downright dystopian.

[dehrmann]

The "one" part is out fault for not using Bing, but isn't "mediating content" between users and websites essentially the premise of a search engine?

[asdfman123]

Lots of companies reached monopoly status because they were simply better than the competition.

The point of breaking up monopolies is not to make a moral statement about the company, but because we've found that monopolies are generally bad for society.

[parkovski]

Is it really though? Bing has been consistently worse than Google over the years. Maybe our definition of vendor lock-in needs to change.

Honestly at this point it doesn't even matter how good Bing is - we've been unconsciously trained to work with Google's algorithm in particular and they just have a de facto monopoly on the mental process a person goes through to formulate a search. Everyone's workflow everywhere will be worse and take more time if they voluntarily stop using Google, that's not what I consider a fair competitive landscape.

[mod]

So we think Google is doing a good job, but we also want to dictate to them how they do it?

Seems like a recipe to have a worse product.

The argument that they're so good at what they do, they've created a monopoly, I think is very fragile.

[lucasverra]

I agree. Google perf is indeed better ...and still use Bing (via Ecosia) for 90% of request

https://www.ecosia.org/

[KineticLensman]

The complaint is not that content is being mediated, but that it is one company or cartel that is doing the mediating.