Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

This is an astonishing victory for Google, they must be very happy about it.

They get basically everything they want (keeping it all in the tent), plus a negotiating position on search deals where they can refuse something because they can't do it now.

Quite why the judge is so concerned about the rise of AI factoring in here is beyond me. It's fundamentally an anticompetitive decision.

Feels like judge was looking for any excuse not to apply harsh penalty and since Google brought up AI as competitor, the judge accepted it as acceptable excuse for very minor penalty.

AI is a competitor. You know how StackOverflow is dead because AI provided an alternative? That's happening in search too.

You might think "but ChatGPT isn't a search engine", and that's true. It can't handle all queries you might use a search engine for, e.g. if you want to find a particular website. But there are many many queries that it can handle. Here's just a few from my recent history:

* How do I load a shared library and call a function from it with VCS? [Kind of surprising it got the answer to this given how locked down the documentation is.]

* In a PAM config what do they keywords auth, account, password, session, and also required/sufficient mean?

* What do you call the thing that car roof bars attach to? The thing that goes front to back?

* How do I right-pad a string with spaces using printf?

These are all things I would have gone to Google for before, but ChatGPT gives a better overall experience now.

Yes, overall, because while it bullshits sometimes, it also cuts to the chase a lot more. And no ads for now! (Btw, someone gave me the hint to set its personality mode to "Robot", and that really helps make it less annoying!)

StackOverflow is dead because its rules are nonsensical and many of its users are dicks.

It's going to be a real problem going forward, because if AI hadn't killed them something else would have, and now it's questionable whether that "something else" will ever emerge. The need for something like SO is never going to go away as long as new technologies, algorithms, languages and libraries continue to be created.

Besides the issue of repetitive beginner questions, which today could be answered with an LLM, was a significant driver of low-quality content, requiring substantial intervention from StackOverflow.

However, your point stands: as new technologies develop, StackOverflow will be the main platform where relevant questions gain visibility through upvotes.

If it were just a matter of upvotes and downvotes, that would be one thing, but voting to close a question for being a "duplicate," forcibly terminating an emerging discussion because somebody asked something vaguely similar 10 years ago for a completely different platform or language, is just nuts.

Or closing a general question because in the opinion of Someone Important, it runs afoul of some poorly-defined rule regarding product recommendations.

A StackOverflow that wasn't run like a stereotypical HOA would be very useful. The goal should be to complement AI rather than compete with it.