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Apple Deal Responsible for Google's Dominance in Search, Says Microsoft CEO

txscott said:
A quick search (link below) shows that in January 2007 (pre iPhone) Google had nearly an 80% share of the search engine market. The only other competitor was Yahoo! who serioucly screwed the pooch in search. This was at a at a time when 66% of all searches were on PC's using IE and 25% were on PC's using Mozilla. Microsoft failed at search engines (MSN Search and subsequent) since entering the search market in 1998 despite have a monopoly position with IE.

Think about that. A company with control of the entire stack from OS to browser couldn't get people to use their search engine. Now that's piss poor performance.

Stats Show Google Dominates the International Search Landscape - Search Engine Watch

What is the most popular search engine in the UK? In Europe? In the world?
www.searchenginewatch.com www.searchenginewatch.com
Click to expand...
The same could be said about Apple mouse

A company that controls the entire stack from hardware to OS can't design a decent mouse despite its laptops having some of the best trackpads ever... and they did the butterfly keyboard thing too

I mean look at it charging! and they design chargers!
 
Fuzzball84 said:
That doesnt make sense.... Microsoft don't dictate what manufacturers can put on their laptops and desktops... indeed some come with Linux.

With a PC you're free to change to whatever OS you want..
Click to expand...
Yes, you are free to install Linux, even though the Dell has a Windows inside sticker, and the Windows OEM license attached on the case.
 
djlythium said:
So, a food company pays a grocery store to put the company’s food at the head of the isle, but consumers can look past it, and choose other foods in the same category, without undue strain.

Google paid Apple to be the default search engine, Apple chose them, and once there were other options, Apple made it easy for consumers to switch.

This case is a nothing-burger.
Click to expand...

A similar argument could've been made regarding IE as it related to the DOJ case against Microsoft in the 1990s. Microsoft made IE the "default" browser on Windows and while they may have discouraged computer OEMs from offering alternative browsers, end users could at least still easily "look past" IE and download Navigator or another browser. Microsoft was still charged with anticompetitive behavior.
 
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Company with a dominant share of marketplace with its OS, complains about another company having a dominance in a market share it wants to control...oh the irony.
 
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Fuzzball84 said:
Actually, it makes sense he acknowledges it... Apple devices, especially iOS devices have a huge impact on the way we access and search the web. It makes complete sense that the company that gets to be the default search provider on those devices gets a huge market advantage.
Click to expand...

Whatever the case, it was gratifying to see the CEO of Microsoft genuflect to Apple’s indisputable POWER! 🤣

(Bill Gates could never have brought himself to issue such a statement 😂.)
 
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LOL, coming from Microsoft:

tempImageVtfT9G.png
 
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Wah wah I feel so bad for Microsoft complaining about a monopoly!

That being said I also hate Google and have been using DuckDuckGo for many years as my primary search engine across all of my Apple devices. I also use ChatGPT a lot, and occasionally still Google if I'm having trouble finding something as a last resort.

I actually hope the government breaks up the deal between Apple and Google. Just do what they made Microsoft do with Internet Explorer: When you setup a new device, one of the options you go through is to set a default search engine. Provide a list of options, scramble the order randomly each time, and also provide the option to set your own custom search engine website if yours isn't listed. Easy. Then Apple will stop getting fat off of that deal and need to replace it with their own search to help make up the revenue. Then we might actually have some competition someday since Microsoft can't seem to crack it.

IMO Google has ruined search through the gamification of their SEO algorithm. So many top results are just useless garbage sites that only exist to get clicks with mostly AI written content using certain keywords to game the system. They just write pages and pages of insubstantial SEO-optimized garbage. I feel like search has gotten worse over time. With AI, it will only get worse until we get AI search that can counteract that. Everything on the future of the web is going to be AI brinkmanship. For example I've already seen it happening with CAPTCHAs. AI cracking CAPTCHAs that only humans could do previously, so then you need a better AI to detect if another AI is doing the CAPTCHA.

The future is just going to be AI war online. Trillions of bots fighting 24/7/365.26. One side's sole purpose is to milk as much information and money out of real users online. The other side's sole purpose is to protect information and money of the real users online. I see an end result of there being fewer real users online, because the internet will become less useful and more of a hellscape than it already is. Perhaps there will one day be a "higher level" internet that sits on top of this internet, and verifies real users through government issued tokens. The main issue I have with that is obviously losing anonymity, but unfortunately I think that will one day be the only way to guarantee stability online as well as a usable internet as it will stamp out offenders. The problem is that will likely segment large portions of the internet, likely along international borders, as many countries probably won't do a good job at verification or policing of users. Ugh, this whole thing is gonna be a mess.
 
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I 📢 💩💩💩💩💩💩👖🔥👖🔥👖🔥👖🔥
 
mnsportsgeek said:
Bing being trash also contributes.
Click to expand...
But it's not... it's a decent search engine. Likewise Google is a decent search engine.. but I dislike Google as a company.

Bing is a genuinely good alternative, amongst others, for those not wanting to use Google products.
 
Worldwide, Windows OS still own like 90% marketshare and Android has roughly about 70%.

I think this is more of a MS/Bing problem, rather than a Google/Apple one.
 
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The reason Google got where it did is that the competition were nowhere near. Nothing to do with Apple and any agreements.

I've tried at least Yahoo!, WebCrawler, Lycos, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Yandex, Inktomi and AllTheWeb, as well as Bing and Ecosia. For a while, AltaVista was a clear winner.

Then we went through unfathomable merging of results and company ownerships. And being totally inundated by paid results and adverts.

And have now ended up using DuckDuckGo by default, for most things. The country option is quite helpful. But for some reason have Ecosia as default on one instance of Safari.

Have to switch to Google for some purposes - especially one site I use that has its own appalling within-site search service. So I use the site:xxx.yyy.com option and get quite good search (ineffective in DuckDuckGo for my purposes). And for broad-brush shopping, nothing else gets near Google. Though I never buy through those searches - they are always "I wonder if anyone sells..." queries.

But all search these days seems far too soft - it thinks it knows best. If I want to search for "Jhon", there is often a particular reason I don't want results for "John".
 
webkit said:
A similar argument could've been made regarding IE as it related to the DOJ case against Microsoft in the 1990s. Microsoft made IE the "default" browser on Windows and while they may have discouraged computer OEMs from offering alternative browsers, end users could at least still easily "look past" IE and download Navigator. Microsoft was still charged with anticompetitive behavior.
Click to expand...

You’re forgetting how Microsoft forced Internet Service Providers to require and conform their customer services around Microsoft Internet Explorer (a/k/a “Spyglass/Mosaic”) and how Microsoft also worked to pollute HTML and other Internet standards so that the Net and websites would only work “right” on Windows.

Bill Gates called it ”embrace and extend” — where Microsoft would “embrace” open Internet standards, and then “extend” them with proprietary Microsoft Windows-only/IE-only standards.

Yeah…”embrace and extend”…embrace like a reticulated python!

This is a fact of history.
 
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Let’s say you buy a new iPhone.

You set it up and open Safari for the first time.

If Safari asked you what search engine you would like to make your default and gave you a list of 5-6 different engines with Google being at the bottom, would it be within reason that a good majority of people will go down the list and pick Google?
 
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Microsoft had plenty of chances already, it just never did anything particularly useful with them on the browser/search engine front.
 
It is ironic that MS is commenting on monopolistic practices, but that’s a result of experience; being forced to remove IE as the default browser in Windows back in the 90s. Which is kind of laughable in hindsight, but I guess you could argue it was the same thing but different time period. People didn’t know they could download another browser so they often used the default option. Of course, today there are many browser options.

I don’t see why the same shouldn’t apply to Google search in the modern age, especially when there are huge kick backs involved to Apple, etc. People should be made aware of their options. If anything, I see it as government inaction or complacency (especially when government is lobbied by said tech companies).
 
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