Someone, please explain this to me like I'm 5. In the early 2000s, we had a whole big anti-trust kerfuffle over the fact that Microsoft was making its OS and its browser inseparable. Google was a plaintiff in the lawsuits, claiming Microsoft, as the dominant OS in the market, was monopolizing.

Now I see this ho-hum headline showing that Google, arguably the dominant provider (some might say a monopoly) of search and browser software, is basically admitting it did the same exact thing. Except, instead of being forced by the authoritarian state to change its business practices, it's merely doing the separation to make updates easier.

Now, I'm no fan of Microsoft (I used to be, but not anymore). And I have a love-hate relationship with Google. But, just tell me that governments don't play favorites with corporate interests and that money and quid pro quo favors are not involved here.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/...

Big tech and governments are colluding to create an authoritarian state. If the government doesn't want something in a search engine or social media platform then they pay the tech companies to de-list or censor. This in my opinion is way worse than monopoly control.

Remember when you could search forever in Google and other search engines? Google would show 25 million results? Now if you search you will only get a total of 200 links. They have de-listed so many websites there is few if any alternate websites listed for any topic. Major search engines are becoming an echo chamber of the state.

I have read about people who do medical research. They said that some time in 2016 they lost access to 95% of the sites they were researching overnight. They were just de-listed. So something happened in 2016.

I have some alternate search engines like Mojeek I can use to find things that Google and Bing refuse to list.

It's clear what won the lawsuits.