Now that Google is a monopolist, what’s next?
www.theverge.com
It might be a while before we find out.

A federal judge has ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in the US. “The market reality is that Google is the only real choice” as the default search engine, Judge Amit Mehta said in his decision, and he determined it had gotten that way unfairly. It’s a ruling that could portend big changes for the company, but we yet don’t know how big, and we might not for years.

Mehta declared on Monday that Google was liable for violating antitrust laws, vindicating the Department of Justice and a coalition of states that sued the tech giant in 2020. The next step — deciding on remedies for its illegal conduct — begins next month. Both parties must submit a proposed schedule for remedy proceedings by September 4th and then appear at a status conference on September 6th.

    • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
      25·
      3 months ago

      There’s a decent selection at the moment:

      If you need javascript+css: qtwebkit, gtkwebkit, qtwebengine ( blink based :( ), Ladybird (I really don’t care if the dev sucks; goolag/mozilla’s browser monopoly is too important for me to care about some stupid idpol takes)

      If you don’t need javascript but want css: netsurf (there is technically javascript support, but it’s worked absolutely nowhere in my experience)

      If you’re an epic hackor that doesn’t need either: w3m, links2, links, lynx

      I mostly use w3m, and qutebrowser (qtwebkit and qtwebengine) when I need js. I’ll probably replace qutebrowser with Ladybird once there’s a port for OpenBSD (trying to write my own at the moment).

      If you just want to abandon www all together, check out gemini and gopher clients.

      • myself@lemmy.ml
        41·
        3 months ago

        Least quixotic lemmy user

        Also

        Mozilla are bad actors anyway

        Ladybird (I really don’t care if the dev sucks)

        ???

        • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
          2·
          3 months ago

          Least quixotic lemmy user

          Thank you for teaching me a new word. I would hardly call using webkit instead of gecko idealistic, but normies gonna normie, I guess.

          ???

          If you don’t know how to differentiate between a dev having stupid idpol takes and an ad-company feigning to be a privacy organization mass-distributing spyware and adware inside privacy conscious communities then I can’t help you.

        • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
          3·
          3 months ago

          I’m going to conclude you’re lying and haven’t actually used a webkit browser, because in terms of feature parity with blink and gecko, webkit is pretty good. Maybe some stuff breaks with RTC WASM and other questionable browser capabilities, but for 99% of the web they’re fine. All of the browsers I’ve recommended are regularly updated (except links, superceded by links2), all of them are “modern”. If I wanted to recommend old dead browsers, I would recommend retawq, dillo, elinks or xombrero. Even textmode only browsers are very usable for documentation and reading news and blogs.

          • jimrob4
            2·
            3 months ago

            For what I want to do on the Internet, Lynx works just fine. If I need something fancy I’ll just us Safari on my phone.