Saturday, August 10, 2024
Wednesday, August 07, 2024
Perseid meteor shower 2024 peaks this weekend. Here's how to see summer's best 'shooting stars'
Perseid meteor shower 2024 peaks this weekend. Here's how to see summer's best 'shooting stars'
Every August, just when many people go vacationing in the country where skies are dark, the best-known meteor shower makes its appearance: The Perseids.
“This year, the Perseid meteor shower should reach its peak during the overnight hours of late Sunday night into early Monday morning (Aug. 11-12), when there is almost no moon, making the late-night sky nice and dark for shooting star spectators and counters. The first quarter moon sets around 11:20 p.m. local daylight time, leaving the sky nicely dark thereafter. Some Perseids do appear during the evening, but the shower is always better from about 11 p.m. or midnight until the dawn's early light.
Or, to put it another way, expect greater numbers of meteors to be evident during the pre-dawn hours because this is when your side of Earth turns to face the oncoming meteors more directly.
Perseid Meteor Shower in August 2024! NASA's skywatching guide
The Perseid Meteor Shower peaks on Aug, 11-12, 2024. NASA explains where you should look to spot them. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
If you want more advice on how to photograph meteor showers like the Perseids, check out our how to photograph meteors and meteor showers guide and if you need imaging gear, consider our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.
Where to look
During those after-midnight hours the shower's radiant point (the point from which it appears to originate), located between the Perseus constellation and the 'W' of Cassiopeia, will be getting progressively higher in the northeast — so meteors should flash across all parts of the sky at a rate of about one every minute or two (as seen by a single observer).
That, anyway, is the prediction if your sky is good and dark. But even if you live under moderate light pollution, as unfortunately, most of us do, you can catch at least the brightest of the Perseids. They have often been described in astronomy journals as including "many bright and fragmenting meteors" that leave persistent trains in their wake.
Earth should go through the thickest part of this "old faithful" of meteor showers for many hours centered around 1400 UTC on Aug. 12, which is 10 a.m. on that date Eastern Daylight Time, which is during the daytime across all of North America. So, for meteor watchers here, the night before and perhaps even after could be equally good. Fortunately, the Perseids stay active — about one-quarter their peak strength — for several days before and a day or two after their peak, and an occasional one may be seen almost anytime during the month of August.
Get the Space.com Newsletter
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
A Perseid is one whose path, if traced backward across the sky, intersects a spot between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia. Other "sporadic" meteors traveling in random directions occur once every 5 or 10 minutes. Two much weaker showers are also active at this time of the year, the Delta Aquarids and Kappa Cygnids.
Lay back, relax, and wait
You'll need no experience to watch the Perseids. Just find a spot with a wide-open sky view and no late-night lights nearby. Bundle up warmly (it can sometimes get chilly even on summer nights), lie back on a ground pad or in a sleeping bag or even better, on a reclining lawn chair, and watch the stars. Also cover exposed parts of your body with mosquito repellent so you won't get bit.
Be patient, and give your eyes sufficient time to dark adapt. The direction to watch is not necessarily toward Perseus but wherever your sky is darkest, probably straight up.
The Perseids are the ionization trails made by little bits of debris from comet 109/P Swift-Tuttle, streaking into Earth's upper atmosphere at 37 miles (60 km) per second. The Perseids were especially dramatic in the early-to-mid 1990s surrounding the year of Swift-Tuttle's most recent return (in December 1992). Since then, however, they've reverted to normal. The comet isn't due back until August in the year 2126.
Startling occurrences
But surprises can always happen.
On the morning of Aug. 14, 2021, the Perseids displayed an unexpected outburst of meteors between 06:00 and 09:00 UT (2 to 5 a.m. EDT). The cause of this outburst is currently unknown but is probably the result of an unknown filament of comet debris produced by Swift-Tuttle as it raced through the inner solar system many centuries ago.
In an announcement on Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams Circular #5016, the maximum zenithal hourly rate was estimated to be somewhere between 130 and 210, plus or minus 20. Amazing numbers considering that rates are normally 50% lower each preceding night after maximum but these rates are two to three times more than was seen during the expected maximum on the night of Aug. 12-13, 2021.
Four years from now "might" bring a truly amazing Perseid display, as some meteor experts are predicting that Earth will interact with a thick knot or clump of meteoric material shed by comet Swift-Tuttle during the 15th century, that possibly could produce a short-lived display of many hundreds of meteors per hour.
Defying predictions
Sometimes, even in years that are deemed favorable for Perseid viewing, sky watchers report seeing only a half or a third as many meteors that were predicted — and yet others report up to twice as many! It has been suggested that the stream of Perseid particles, strung out along its orbit around the sun, has a complex filamentary structure with gaps and rich spots.
Complicating the situation is the fact that some people's eyes seem better suited for meteor work than others.
Regardless of your local viewing circumstances, each year the appearance of the Perseids give many people a reason to head outside and gaze upward at the night sky. Even if you see only a few "shooting stars," all it takes is catching sight of one outstandingly bright meteor to make the viewing experience worthwhile.
A final incentive is to note that next year the moon will be at a waning gibbous phase only a few days past full and will flood the sky with bright light, squelching all but the brightest Perseid streaks. So, take advantage of the favorable conditions provided to us this year.
To one and all we wish good luck and clear skies!
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.“How Did Kamala Harris Pick Tim Walz? She Trusted Her Gut. - The New York Times
How Kamala Harris Trusted Her Gut and Picked Tim Walz
"The ambitious Josh Shapiro asked about his role as vice president. The battle-tested Mark Kelly was already seen as a third option. And the happy-go-lucky Mr. Walz promised to do anything for the team.
Follow live updates on the 2024 election.
When Vice President Kamala Harris gathered some of her closest advisers in the dining room of the Naval Observatory on Saturday, they had more choices than time.
Her team had just wrapped up the fastest, most intensive vetting of potential running mates in modern history, a blitz of paperwork and virtual interviews that had concluded only on Friday. The advisers were there to present their findings on a list that still technically ran six deep to Ms. Harris, who had less than 72 hours to sift through it to make her final decision.
One by one, the circle of her most trusted confidants ran through the pros and cons of each possible No. 2. The sessions went long enough to be broken up with sandwiches and salads as the team eventually focused on the three men she would meet the next day for what would prove to be pivotal in-person interviews: Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.
Polls had been conducted. Focus groups had been commissioned. Records reviewed. And the upshot, Ms. Harris was told, was this: She could win the White House with any of the three finalists by her side.
It was the rarest of political advice for a political leader at the crossroads of such a consequential decision. And for Ms. Harris, a vice president who had spent much of her tenure trying to quietly establish herself without running afoul of President Biden, the advice was freeing rather than constricting.
She could pick whomever she wanted.
On Tuesday, she did just that, revealing Mr. Walz as her running mate after the two struck up an easy rapport in a Sunday sit-down at her residence, forming a fresh partnership that will define the Democratic Party in 2024 and potentially beyond. The story of how Ms. Harris came to pick Mr. Walz was told through conversations with about a dozen people involved in the selection process, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe deliberations and discussions that were intended to remain private.
For Ms. Harris, it was an instinctive reaction to an instant connection rather than a data-driven exercise that many had expected would elevate Mr. Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, the nation’s most important battleground state. But her team’s polling did not suggest that either Mr. Shapiro or Mr. Kelly would bring a decisive advantage to their crucial home states.
“She wanted someone who understood the role, someone she had a connection with and someone who brought contrast to the ticket,” said Cedric Richmond, a former White House adviser who was part of Ms. Harris’s selection team.
Mr. Shapiro had privately appeared more circumspect about the vice presidency, according to multiple people familiar with the selection process, asking about his role and responsibilities. Mr. Shapiro, 51, is widely seen as harboring his own presidential ambitions, which could have complicated any relationship where his chief job would be to serve as a dutiful No. 2.
In contrast, Ms. Harris would later describe Mr. Walz — who explicitly told her not to pick him if he could not help her win — as “joyful” and willing to do anything for the team.
“He’s just so open,” Ms. Harris marveled privately after her meeting with Mr. Walz, according to one person with knowledge of her comments. “I really like him.”
Appearing on Tuesday in Philadelphia at his first rally, Mr. Walz said at several points that Ms. Harris had infused joy into her campaign, reinforcing the idea that both of them want this race to feel invigorating and not like a white-knuckled slog to November.
“Thank you, Madam Vice President,” Mr. Walz said in his opening remarks. “Thank you for bringing back the joy.”
The shadowy Democratic mini-primary
Ms. Harris, who had been a presidential candidate for only two weeks and two days when she made her choice, sought input from a range of party leaders, including Mr. Biden, former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Clintons saw Ms. Harris at a funeral in Texas last week and have stayed in regular touch, according to two people familiar with their conversations. Mr. Obama has also been an informal adviser.
From the start, Ms. Harris had been looking to balance the ticket just as she had four years ago. She is a history-making Black and South Asian woman from coastal California. The final shortlist was composed entirely of white men, most of them from the nation’s interior.
Ms. Harris had bypassed a Democratic primary race, securing the nomination almost seamlessly and instantly after Mr. Biden stepped aside. But in some ways the vice-presidential sweepstakes had played out as a primary in miniature: progressives lining up with the folksy Mr. Walz and his liberal accomplishments in Minnesota, while pragmatists drooled over Mr. Shapiro’s soaring approval ratings and Mr. Kelly’s sterling astronaut-turned-senator résumé.
Mr. Shapiro was a favorite of many insiders, with a rhetorical flourish reminiscent — some say too reminiscent — of Mr. Obama. Mr. Kelly was battle-tested in a Sun Belt swing state, campaigning comfortably in a fighter-pilot jacket affixed with the Navy and NASA seals.
By comparison, Mr. Walz had just burst onto the scene by coining the party’s latest catchphrase, calling Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, “weird.”
Bakari Sellers, a Democratic strategist who is close to the Harris operation, said there was an advantage in avoiding political risk.
“There is something to be said for ‘do no harm,’” Mr. Sellers said of the Walz selection. Jamal Simmons, Ms. Harris’s former communications director as vice president, called Mr. Walz “cuddly” on CNN.
Republicans were gleeful that Ms. Harris had bypassed Mr. Shapiro, and they quickly sought to tag Mr. Walz as a left-winger from Minnesota, circulating images of unrest in the state after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. “Tim Walz will unleash hell on Earth!” the Trump campaign wrote in a fund-raising email.
But Ms. Harris and her advisers saw strengths in Mr. Walz’s low-profile biography, according to people close to the process. They believed he had potential appeal to the blue-wall states that are at the center of her presidential bid. He is a veteran who served in the Army National Guard, a former football coach, a hunter and a gun owner and someone who once won a House seat in a district carried by Mr. Trump.
As a high school teacher in the 1990s, Mr. Walz sponsored a gay-straight alliance and has said it was important at that time for the sponsor to be “the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married.” When he won his House seat in 2006 in a conservative district, he ran on support for same-sex marriage.
To Ms. Harris and her advisers, his biography all but amounted to an appealing checklist: “Governor. Veteran. Coach. Teacher,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, wrote on X. “Winner.”
Weighing and whittling the field
Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz do not have an extensive history together. But Mr. Walz did join her on her trip to an abortion clinic in Minnesota in March — the first such visit by a sitting vice president — where she praised him as a “great friend and adviser.”
“We have to be a nation that trusts women,” Ms. Harris said that day.
Ms. Harris is expected to make abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign against Mr. Trump, and Mr. Walz has his own reproductive story, describing how he and his wife, Gwen, went through in vitro fertilization before having their daughter.
“We named her Hope,” Mr. Walz said in Philadelphia.
As Ms. Harris was deliberating, she saw something else, too: an affable potential governing partner with deep relationships on Capitol Hill and in statehouses nationwide. Mr. Walz currently serves as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.
“It says to the heartland of America, ‘You’re not a flyover zone for us — we’re all together in this,’” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, said in a brief interview on Tuesday. She said she had not spoken with Ms. Harris during the process, though she hailed the outcome: “House members are thrilled.”
Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Walz and others campaigned hard for the post, in public and private.
Both Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Walz called Democratic members of Congress and other influential stakeholders, including Randi Weingarten, the influential head of the American Federation of Teachers. Ms. Weingarten relayed to the Harris team that her labor union, which has at times had disagreements with Mr. Shapiro, would support whomever she would pick.
While Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Walz were cordial about each other, their allies were less polite.
Progressive Democrats who wanted Mr. Walz to be the pick debated the appropriateness of labeling Mr. Shapiro “Genocide Josh,” an epithet some in the discussion viewed as antisemitic given that he has had nothing to do with American foreign policy toward Israel, and circulated his decades-old and since-disavowed college writings about the Middle East. Mr. Shapiro’s supporters dismissed Mr. Walz as someone who would not deliver any state to bring Ms. Harris closer to the White House.
Going into the weekend, Ms. Harris’s choice was anything but a foregone conclusion.
On Friday, a small group of her allies conducted pre-interviews with a group of six finalists. The questioners included Marty Walsh, who had served as Mr. Biden’s labor secretary; Mr. Richmond, a campaign co-chair; Tony West, Ms. Harris’s brother-in-law; Dana Remus, a former White House counsel; and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada.
The finalists included Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and two other Democratic governors: Andy Beshear of Kentucky and JB Pritzker of Illinois. During those interviews, vetting materials, which included questions on everything from past political decisions to details on their personal lives, were reviewed with the candidates. At one point in his interview, Mr. Walz volunteered that he had never previously used a teleprompter, according to one person involved in the process.
The content of those interviews became the grist for presentations that a wider group of advisers delivered to Ms. Harris on Saturday.
In high-stakes situations like these, people who know Ms. Harris said, the vice president has long tended to pepper her advisers with questions. It is not uncommon for her to spend time deliberating before returning to her advisers with a fresh set of queries.
Nathan Barankin, who served as Ms. Harris’s top aide in the Senate and as her chief deputy attorney general in California, said the truncated timeline had worked to her benefit.
“Having unbounded time can lead to analysis paralysis,” Mr. Barankin said. “There is nothing about this campaign that can tolerate that.”
Critical moments came on Sunday, when Ms. Harris met Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Walz in separate interviews at the vice president’s residence.
‘Let’s do this together’
Three people close to the selection process said that it had clearly come down to Mr. Walz and Mr. Shapiro after the Sunday interviews. Later that day, Ms. Harris had a debriefing with the same advisers whom she had met with on Saturday about her impressions.
Mr. Shapiro was described as asking more questions about his role and what his powers and authority would be as vice president. And compared with the others, he seemed less certain about taking the position.
Later on Sunday, Mr. Shapiro made a follow-up call, according to two people familiar with the conversation, to ask further questions of a Harris adviser.
The finalists got little word on Monday from the vice president and had to pass the time as the Harris team raced to prepare for a multistate tour beginning on Tuesday with a yet-to-be-revealed running mate.
Mr. Shapiro shot hoops in his driveway as cable news cameras rolled. Mr. Kelly and his wife, Gabby Giffords, who stayed in the nation’s capital even as the Senate was out of session, decided to head to the National Air and Space Museum near Dulles International Airport, according to a person briefed on their schedule. Mr. Walz went to a fund-raiser in Minneapolis.
“He knew that the conversations had gone well,” said Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, who spoke to the governor at that event. “But, you know, you don’t know until you know.”
Around 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Mr. Walz, dressed in khakis and wearing a camouflage baseball hat, took a call from Ms. Harris — he had missed her initial call because it came from a blocked number, one person familiar with the call said — and she asked if he would be her running mate. “Let’s do this together,” she said. Mr. Walz accepted.
Seven hours later, and with only three months to go until the election, the new pair strode onstage together, waving to a crowd of thousands in Philadelphia.
“We’ve got 91 days,” Mr. Walz said. “My God, that’s easy. We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”
Lisa Lerer and Kate Kelly contributed reporting.
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent. For much of the past decade, she has focused on features about the presidency, the first family, and life in Washington, in addition to covering a range of domestic and foreign policy issues. She is the author of a book on first ladies. More about Katie Rogers
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More about Reid J. Epstein"
Tuesday, August 06, 2024
Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case - The Verge
Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23951561/VRG_Illo_STK179_L_Normand_SundarPichai_Neutral.jpg)
Image: Laura Normand / The Vergenormal
"A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” according to the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
Judge Amit Mehta’s decision represents a major victory for the Department of Justice, which accused Google of illegally monopolizing the online search market. Still, Mehta did not agree with all of the government’s arguments. For example, he rejected the claim that Google has monopoly power in one specific part of the ads market. He agreed with the government, however, that Google has a monopoly in “general search services” and “general search text advertising.”
It’s not yet clear what this ruling will mean for the future of Google’s business, as this initial finding is only about the company’s liability, not about remedies. Google’s fate will be determined in the next phase of proceedings, which could result in anything from a mandate to stop certain business practices to a breakup of Google’s search business.
Google plans to appeal the ruling, president of global affairs Kent Walker said in a statement. “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” he said. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”
“This landmark decision holds Google accountable,” DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter said in a statement. “It paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”
DuckDuckGo, whose CEO testified against Google in the trial, applauded the decision, but recognized the fight isn’t over. In a statement, SVP for public affairs Kamyl Bazbaz said, “The journey ahead will be long. As we are seeing in the EU and other places, Google will do anything it can to avoid changing its conduct. However, we know there is a pent up demand for alternatives in search and this ruling will support access to more options.”
Mehta rejected Google’s arguments that its contracts with phone and browser makers like Apple were not exclusionary and therefore shouldn’t qualify it for liability under the Sherman Act. “The prospect of losing tens of billions in guaranteed revenue from Google — which presently come at little to no cost to Apple — disincentivizes Apple from launching its own search engine when it otherwise has built the capacity to do so,” he wrote.
“The prospect of losing tens of billions in guaranteed revenue... disincentivizes Apple from launching its own search engine”
He said the framework from the last landmark tech monopoly case, US v. Microsoft, was in fact relevant to the current case against Google. While Google argued that, unlike Microsoft, it maintained pretty consistent actions before and after it became dominant in the market, Mehta said that’s irrelevant since the same conduct can be exclusionary when done by a dominant player, even if it’s not when it’s done by a smaller one.
He described “Google’s monopoly in general search” as “remarkably durable,” writing that it increased from about 80 percent in 2009 to 90 percent by 2020. Bing, by comparison, has less than 6 percent market share, Mehta added. “If there is genuine competition in the market for general search, it has not manifested in familiar ways, such as fluid market shares, lost business, or new entrants,” he wrote.
“The market reality is that Google is the only real choice as the default GSE,” Mehta wrote, referring to an acronym for general search engine. He cited a quote from Apple SVP Eddy Cue, who said during the trial that there’s “‘no price that Microsoft could ever offer [Apple] to’ preload Bing.”
Mehta underscored the idea that even the largest businesses in the US have no real alternative to Google. “Time and again, Google’s partners have concluded that it is financially infeasible to switch default GSEs or seek greater flexibility in search offerings because it would mean sacrificing the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars that Google pays them as revenue share,” he wrote. “These are Fortune 500 companies, and they have nowhere else to turn other than Google.”
On search text advertising, Mehta wrote that Google’s exclusive agreements enabled it to raise prices on that product “without any meaningful competitive constraint.” While Google argued that the price for its search text ads, when adjusted for quality, has decreased, Mehta wrote that evidence “is weak.” That’s because even Google has recognized how difficult it is to determine “the value of an ad to its buyer,” he wrote. “This evidence does not reflect a principled practice of quality-adjusted pricing, but rather shows Google creating higher-priced auctions with the primary purpose of driving long-term revenues.”
Beyond the monopoly questions, Mehta declined to impose sanctions on Google for failing to preserve chat messages relevant to the case — something the Justice Department characterized as destroying evidence. The requested sanctions “do not move the needle on the court’s assessment of Google’s liability.” But Mehta said the decision “should not be understood as condoning Google’s failure to preserve chat evidence ... Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky in the next one.”
The decision is the first in a wave of tech monopoly cases brought by the US government in recent years. While two decades passed between the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and its next tech anti-monopoly case against Google, filed in 2020, several more such cases quickly followed.
Amazon, Apple, and Meta all now face their own monopolization lawsuits from the US government, and Google will go to trial against the DOJ a second time this fall over a separate challenge of its advertising technology business. That makes Mehta’s decision in this case even more consequential for how other judges may consider how to apply century-old antitrust laws to modern digital markets.
Mehta oversaw a 10-week trial in the Google search case last fall, which culminated in two days of closing arguments in early May. The trial, which took place in DC District Court, convened many big players in Silicon Valley, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple executive Eddy Cue.
The DOJ argued that Google illegally monopolized the general search advertising market by effectively cutting off key distribution channels for rivals through exclusionary contracts. For example, Google has deals with browser makers like Mozilla and phone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to make its search engine the default on their products. Google also makes default status for some of its apps a condition of access to the Play Store for phone makers using its Android operating system.
Google argued throughout the trial that it has not acted anticompetitively and that its large market share is a result of creating a superior product that consumers enjoy. It contended that the Google search business should be compared to a much larger range of peers than the government proposed in its market definition, suggesting it competes directly with other platforms where search is a big part of the business, even if they don’t index the web (such as Amazon).
One of the most significant revelations from the case was the size of Google’s payments to Apple to secure the default search engine spot on iPhone browsers. An expert witness for Google let slip that the company shares 36 percent of search ad revenue from Safari with Apple. In 2022, Google paid Apple $20 billion for the default position.
During closing arguments, Mehta homed in on those payments, wondering how other players in the market could possibly displace Google from that position. “If that’s what it takes for somebody to dislodge Google as the default search engine, wouldn’t the folks that wrote the Sherman Act be concerned about it?”
The next antitrust trial between the DOJ and Google is set to begin on September 9th in Virginia. That case will focus on whether Google has illegally monopolized digital advertising technology."
6 ways the Google antitrust ruling could change the internet - The Washington Post
6 ways the Google antitrust ruling could change the internet
(The author seemed unaware of the DuckDuckGo search engine which I replaced Google with on all of my devices years agp, wow, poor research.)
"Maybe you could choose a Google-quality search engine tailored to children or news. Or would Android, Google search and Chrome be split up?
A federal judge said Monday that Google broke the law to kneecap competition in web search in ways that entrenched the company’s power.
It was the second time in the past year that a judge or jury had declared Google an illegal monopoly. The previous time was over how Google runs its Android app store.
The next steps, which involve proposing legal fixes to undo Google’s behavior, are essentially about imagining an alternative future in which Google isn’t Google as we know it.
What new ideas could flourish, which new companies might get off the ground or what products might be cheaper if Google were handcuffed from flexing its monopoly power over search?
We have the internet we have, and it’s hard to imagine something different or if you’d like it more. I’ve sketched out six changes that could result from the two monopoly rulings on Google.
This is educated speculation. It’s also possible that not much will really change. That’s what happened after Google was found to have broken the European Union’s anti-monopoly laws.
The U.S. government must now propose to Judge Amit Mehta ways to restrain Google’s actions to fix its monopoly. It could take years to resolve. In the app store case, a judge will soon decide how Google must change its illegal status quo.
Google said it plans to appeal Monday’s ruling and is “focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.” A spokesman for Google declined to discuss speculation about what happens next.
1. Imagine a Google-quality search engine but without ads — or one tailored to children, news junkies or Lego fans.
It’s possible that Google could be forced to let other companies access its search technology or its essential data to create search engines with the technical chops of Google — but without Google.
You might imagine that a company takes Google’s secret sauce and tweaks it to make a kid-friendly search engine, suggested Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project and a frequent critic of Big Tech power. Another company could prioritize websites that look out for your privacy. Another might show searches in a visual-first way.
“We’re going to see the innovation of mankind come out,” Stoller said.
Letting a thousand Google-type search engines bloom is probably the idea that Google critics have embraced the most. But even if the government asks for it and Mehta agrees, it might not work.
There have been, and are, other search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing, the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo and Neeva, started by a former senior Google executive. DuckDuckGo and Bing are nowhere near as popular or as lucrative as Google. Neeva was little used and shut down this year.
The question that we could see tested is: If Google is forced to share the search prowess that the judge said it gained illegally, could rivals make more appealing search engines?
2. Would Apple create a search engine?
Google pays Apple many billions of dollars a year— $20 billion in 2022 — to make Google the standard way to search the web on Apple’s Safari browser.
That arrangement gives Google access to valuable searches from Apple device owners, and it guarantees Apple gobs of money.
Megan Gray, an antitrust law specialist with GrayMatters Law & Policy and a critic of Google’s power, said the judge could significantly change or end Google’s deals with Apple and companies that put Google search front-and-center on Android phones and web browsers.
The likeliest scenario is you’d need to pick whether to use Google on your iPhone or something else. But technologists and stock analysts have also speculated for years that Apple could make its own search engine. It would be like when Apple started Apple Maps as an alternative to Google Maps.
Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
3. Could prices go down for the products that advertise next to your searches (which is most products)?
Mehta said Google has the power to charge artificially high prices for the text ads you might see when you search for terms like “auto insurance quotes Minneapolis.”
In theory, if alternative search engines get popular, there would be more competition and lower prices for the insurance providers and other companies trying to grab your attention when you search.
And again, in theory, if they pay less for advertising, car insurance and other products you buy could be cheaper.
4. The company could break up into Baby Googles.
This one seems unlikely, but the government could ask the judge to split Google into parts to fix its illegal monopoly power. In this scenario, the Chrome browser might be its own company and so might Google search and Android, for example.
Stoller said that when corporations such as Standard Oil and AT&T have been forced to split up in past illegal-monopoly rulings, the component companies were liberated to come up with clever ideas that didn’t have a chance inside the giant corporation.
5. What if Google weren’t allowed to know so much about you?
Jason Kint, chief executive of online news lobbying group Digital Content Next, said Google’s multiple products should no longer be allowed to commingle information about what you do. It would essentially be a divorce of Google’s products without breaking the company up.
That could mean, for example, that whatever you did on your Android phone or the websites you visit using Chrome would not feed into one giant Google repository about your activities and interests.
If Google had less information, it could be better for your privacy, and it might help other companies, including news organizations that don’t have Google’s wealth of data.
6. You might be able to download almost anything from Google’s Android app store.
The judge in the other Google monopoly case has seemed receptive to loosening the company’s absolute power over apps.
That might mean that you would be able to buy an Amazon Kindle e-book from its Android app, which you can’t do now. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Games such as “Fortnite” that have been absent from Android phones might be available, too.
In a recent court hearing, the judge also seemed open to cutting the fees that Google collects when you buy digital subscriptions to things like Disney Plus, Match.com or X from Android apps. That could translate into lower prices for things you buy in apps."