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Apple wants to defend its multi-billion dollar search engine deal with Google, which is in danger because Google has been found guilty of violating antitrust law. Apple has asked the court handling Google's lawsuit with the U.S. government for an emergency stay [PDF], so that Apple has time to intervene and plead its case before a remedy is decided on.

Google-Logo-Feature-Slack.jpg

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Google for anti-competitve behavior in the search market way back in 2020, and after a lengthy legal battle, the DoJ won. A main component of the lawsuit was Google's deal with Apple, which sees Google pay billions annually to be the default search engine for Safari. The court decided that the agreement between Apple and Google violated antitrust law, and is a major reason Google has been able to maintain its search engine monopoly.

The U.S. government asked the court to bar Google from entering into contracts with Apple, among other restrictions, and that will cost Apple a lot of money. In 2022, for example, Google paid Apple $20 billion. Apple already asked the court to allow it to be more involved in the case as remedies are decided on, and the court denied the request due to timing. Apple appealed the decision, and is asking for a stay while the appeal plays out.

Apple says that because its deal with Google is at stake, it deserves a right to participate, and without a stay, it will "suffer clear and substantial irreparable harm."
Apple will be unable to participate in discovery and develop evidence in the targeted fashion it has proposed as this litigation progresses toward a final judgment. If Apple's appeal is not resolved until during or after the remedies trial, Apple may well be forced to stand mute at trial, as a mere spectator, while the government pursues an extreme remedy that targets Apple by name and would prohibit any commercial arrangement between Apple and Google for a decade.
In addition to prohibiting deals between Apple and Google, the U.S. Department of Justice also has more extreme remedies in mind, including forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser and uncoupling Android from other products like Google Search and the Google Play Store. Google has a lot to defend against, and will prioritize Chrome over its deal with Apple.

When initially asking to take a larger role in the case, Apple said that Google "can no longer adequately represent Apple's interests" because of the wide scope of the case. Unsurprisingly, the DoJ does not want Apple involved in the remedies portion of the trial, which is set to start in April.

If the court decides that Google can't pay Apple to be the default search engine on Safari, Apple would still have to offer Google Search as an option in some capacity, but would not be able to continue to collect money for doing so.

Article Link: Apple Wants to Help Google Defend Search Engine Deal Worth Billions
 
Apple wants to defend its multi-billion dollar search engine deal with Google...
This is stating the obvious. Why would Apple want to give up the ~$20 billion per year? That's free money.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Google for anti-competitve behavior in the search market way back in 2020, and after a lengthy legal battle, the DoJ won.
The old DoJ won. The new DoJ which is undergoing a leadership change could drop the case, hence all the moves by the big tech companies and their CEOs over the past few months
 
That $20B is pure profit. There must be a default search engine, why not profit massively from it.

On the other hand, this is Apple's way to extort Google to stay out of the search business all the while Google gets to increase its search share.
 
I'm no fan of Google, but whether by hook or by crook, Google is undeniably the best search engine...for now. If the government wants more competition, that's fine, break Google up into pieces. I would prefer the government allow companies to contract with Google for its search engine.

With more competition, Apple would have more choices, but for the time being, Google is the only practical choice.
 
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if Apple forces people to choose a default search engine, like the old Windows default browser days, most people will still just choose Google, mostly because they've never heard of any of the other options.

Will Apple lose a lot money? Probably.
Will Google lose a little bit of money? Maybe.
But not much else will change except that one line of code.
 
This is stating the obvious. Why would Apple want to give up the ~$20 billion per year? That's free money.
Imagine if Apple put all that money to work or maybe even a fraction of it…

Siri would have brains; iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS and all the other OS-es Apple will come up would be state of the art and stable available in all languages at the same time.

Their pro software like Final Cut Pro, motion, logic etc. would get regular updates and the choice for moviemakers.

Their consumer software like pages, numbers, keynote, iMovie would get regular updates and enjoy a greater audience.

It’s a pity Timmy is more focused on paying dividends to shareholders instead of making great products again.
 
Here's a possible remedy, Apple has to break-out deals like this as a separate line item when giving financial results, exact amounts and what company it's with. No throwing it under services like it's anything of the sort. Investors need to know how much of Apple's profit is tied up in shaky deals like this.

I consider this ill-gotten gains, since Apple and Google weren't open to the fact that there was payola going on.
 
That $20B is pure profit.
True. And depending on how much money Apple would lose trying to develop a competing search engine, perhaps understates the effect on the bottom line.

There must be a default search engine, why not profit massively from it.
Not true. EU has mandated a search engine "ballot" when you set up the phone. It's not *that* complicated to ask people to make a choice.
 
I understand why Apple would want to keep the deal. I am not so sure Google will be fighting hard for it. If such deals are prohibited, Google, most likely, will keep all the customers for free (because they are the best and they are the search engine that people are most familiar with and most trusting of)
 
Imagine if Apple put all that money to work or maybe even a fraction of it…

Siri would have brains; iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS and all the other OS-es Apple will come up would be state of the art and stable available in all languages at the same time.

Their pro software like Final Cut Pro, motion, logic etc. would get regular updates and the choice for moviemakers.

Their consumer software like pages, numbers, keynote, iMovie would get regular updates and enjoy a greater audience.

It’s a pity Timmy is more focused on paying dividends to shareholders instead of making great products again.
It’s even more of a pity to see shareholders care nothing about “good products”. Only “profitable products”, even if they are potentially bad. Just do the bare minimum and test the tolerance of customers, while trying to get away with as little as possible. Shame really, guess most shareholders don’t care about Apple products. Only Apple Corp.
 
I understand why Apple would want to keep the deal. I am not so sure Google will be fighting hard for it. If such deals are prohibited, Google, most likely, will keep all the customers for free (because they are the best and they are the search engine that people are most familiar with and most trusting of)
It's still a risk. Yes it's unlikely Google will lose a ton of customers for this, but $20B is a way to keep the status quo.
 
defaultSearchEngine = .google

Not necessarily. It's a default setting. It may not even be a line of code. It may be one line in a .plist or json file.

Maybe for the interface in Safari but the search term, per character for auto complete needs to be sent to Google, the results the need to be displayed in the autocomplete table, so its the UI & the API.
 
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It’s even more of a pity to see shareholders care nothing about “good products”. Only “profitable products”, even if they are potentially bad. Just do the bare minimum and test the tolerance of customers, while trying to get away with as little as possible. Shame really, guess most shareholders don’t care about Apple products. Only Apple Corp.
This quarter should show apple isnt doing the nastiest minimum. But yup I understand ymmv.
 
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