Google Allegedly Pays Apple Portion of Chrome Search Revenue as Part of Secretive Non-Compete Deal

[cateye]

Apple could've made a very bold statement against Google's privacy and tracking activities by going with a more privacy-friendly search engine (like DuckDuckGo) as the default.

But Apple's not actually interested in that. They're interested in making money, a lot of it. And they're very good at it. You don't become really really good at making great big gigantic piles of profit by taking your eye off the prize with silly for-show antics like endorsing an also-ran. You partner with other giants. That's how it works.

Don't pay attention to Apple's glitter-throwing, pay attention to what they actually do, and the partners they keep. Business first.

 

[OneBar]

Meanwhile Apple be acting like they care about your privacy while they take a payout from one of the most notorious privacy-invading companies 💅

I mean if you're using a G product on your device, YOU don't care about your privacy and Apple can't do anything about that.

 

[OneBar]

View attachment 2160082
Switching to these guys on iOS today

I used them for many years and wasn't disappointed until they started censoring searches like G does. Now I'm on Brave and it's pretty good.

 

[bluecoast]

'Absolute power, corrupts absolutely' is the famous saying.

You could also say also that absolute business success, corrupts absolutely.

I don't really like the Apple that is top of the pile.

I liked it more when it was hungry for success.

 

[FlyingDutch]

By Apple having made Google the default search on Safari, they've been essentially endorsing use of Google, helping them maintain heir search dominance and making a lot of money off of Google's tracking activities which Apple has claimed to largely be opposed to.

Apple could've made a very bold statement against Google's privacy and tracking activities by going with a more privacy-friendly search engine (like DuckDuckGo) as the default.

To you and all the people asking for DuckDuckGo as the main search engine: did you try it extensively enough ? Do you think is comparable ?

 

[Lifeisabeach]

By Apple having made Google the default search on Safari, they've been essentially endorsing use of Google, helping them maintain heir search dominance and making a lot of money off of Google's tracking activities which Apple has claimed to largely be opposed to.

Apple could've made a very bold statement against Google's privacy and tracking activities by going with a more privacy-friendly search engine (like DuckDuckGo) as the default.

You could even say it would take... courage... to make such a change.

 

[thislsmadness]

I'm sure the deal is real but the conclusions are reaching. Safari is a "credible challenger" to Chrome in the ecosystems where it exists.. its by far the most used browser on Mac/iOS. However, overall, MacOS and iOS have ~8% and ~30% of their respective markets so there is no way in hell they will ever be able to realistically challenge Chrome's dominance.

On the search thing, paying to be the default is basically standard practice. The only reason Mozilla is able to keep the lights on is because Google pays them to be the default in Firefox.

 

[growlf]

Safari is a credible challenger to Chrome though. I'm hard pressed to find features missing from Safari that are available in Chrome save for a larger extension ecosystem. I suspect most people use Chrome for its familiarity or because they want to more readily sync bookmarks/favorites/passwords with an existing Google account (or because they simply prefer it, much like why I use Firefox).

Thank you. This seemed like a very bizarre statement in the article. I use Safari almost exclusively and am perfectly happy with it. I keep Edge around as my first choice of Chromium browsers (if needed), and a copy of Chrome that is never opened.

 

[StellarVixen]

I did that a few years ago. It's not quite as good as Google, but it's very good.

Best of all, it's more like the Google of 5-10 years ago, where it just tried to find you pages relevant to your search rather than all of the other crap that Google puts on the search result pages now.

It gives you raw search results related to your search query. Doesn’t prioritize anything. Google on other hand thinks it knows better than you what you want, so first results are usually news articles and op-eds from mainstream news outlets, most popular websites, and then everything else.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

To you and all the people asking for DuckDuckGo as the main search engine: did you try it extensively enough ? Do you think is comparable ?

It wasn't when I first tried it several years ago, but now it's the default for me, going on 3, maybe 5 years now. Once in a while I still have to jump over to Google if I can't find what I'm looking for. Even when I do jump over, it's increasingly rare that Google is able to do better.

 

[senttoschool]

Building a search engine as good as Google's is a monumental challenge. People will just make fun of Apple when its search results suck compared to Google's and the first thing techies recommend everyone to do is to change the default Apple search engine to Google.

Developing a search engine is also extremely costly. Since Apple's primary business isn't selling ads, it would be extremely hard for Apple to recuperate the cost. There is no other way to make money besides selling ads for a search engine.

In addition, if Apple made a search engine, lawyers would be targeting Apple for making its own search engine the default.

It's actually lose/lose for Apple to make a search engine.

 

[DarelRex]

Google is essentially paying Apple $15B to not develop their own search engine. Given the performance of Siri I'm not sure I would be using an Apple search engine anytime soon, at least not for a lot of years to come. Not exactly their strongest development skill.

I think Google is paying Apple to keep Google the default search engine in Safari for those users who have never set it to anything else (like DuckDuckGo, Bing, or Yahoo). If Bing offered more money, then maybe it would be Bing. What does that have to do with Apple developing or not developing its own search engine?

And have you noticed that when you start typing a search term into Safari's address bar, you get a drop-down with "Siri Suggested Site" or "Siri Knowledge"? When you click that suggestion, it goes straight there, and you never touched Google (or whatever you'd chosen as your default Safari search engine). I guess Google didn't pay quite enough money to discourage Apple from doing that.

 

[thislsmadness]

By Apple having made Google the default search on Safari, they've been essentially endorsing use of Google, helping them maintain heir search dominance and making a lot of money off of Google's tracking activities which Apple has claimed to largely be opposed to.

Apple could've made a very bold statement against Google's privacy and tracking activities by going with a more privacy-friendly search engine (like DuckDuckGo) as the default.

Not necessarily since DDG got caught with some shady backdoor deal with MS that allowed them to track users. They only removed it because they got caught.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I think Google is paying Apple to keep Google the default search engine in Safari for those users who have never set it to anything else (like DuckDuckGo, Bing, or Yahoo). If Bing offered more money, then maybe it would be Bing. What does that have to do with Apple developing or not developing its own search engine?

And have you noticed that when you start typing a search term into Safari's address bar, you get a drop-down with "Siri Suggested Site" or "Siri Knowledge"? When you click that suggestion, it goes straight there, and you never touched Google (or whatever you'd chosen as your default Safari search engine). I guess Google didn't pay quite enough money to discourage Apple from doing that.

I don't know offhand what it is today, but I know early on, Siri used Bing and a couple other sources that I can't quite recall the names of to source its results.

 

[6787872]

we need to start jailing apple executives. all the tech companies c-suites, really.

 

[OneBar]

To you and all the people asking for DuckDuckGo as the main search engine: did you try it extensively enough ? Do you think is comparable ?

I never had a problem with it and I used them for several years exclusively. Then they decided they were going to start censoring information like G does so they got dumped.

 

[Rogifan]

Google is a privacy invading bad actor…except when they’re paying Apple billions to be the default search option on iOS.

 

[gusping]

Safari is a credible challenger to Chrome though. I'm hard pressed to find features missing from Safari that are available in Chrome save for a larger extension ecosystem. I suspect most people use Chrome for its familiarity or because they want to more readily sync bookmarks/favorites/passwords with an existing Google account (or because they simply prefer it, much like why I use Firefox).

I agree. My only reason to have an alternative browser installed (Firefox) is that some websites STILL don’t load correctly or at all in Safari.

 

[cocky jeremy]

View attachment 2160082
Switching to these guys on iOS today

I tried it. Unfortunately, I like finding the things I'm looking for.

 

[cocky jeremy]

By Apple having made Google the default search on Safari, they've been essentially endorsing use of Google, helping them maintain heir search dominance and making a lot of money off of Google's tracking activities which Apple has claimed to largely be opposed to.

Apple could've made a very bold statement against Google's privacy and tracking activities by going with a more privacy-friendly search engine (like DuckDuckGo) as the default.

Apple is a business. They aren't turning down $15,000,000,000. That's be insane to.

 

[Nozuka]

It is a crazy amount of money for basically doing nothing. Must be nice

 

[ignatius345]

This may explain why Apple has been reluctant to launch a rival search engine or develop Safari to the point of becoming a credible challenger to Chrome on macOS

Exactly how is Safari not a credible challenger to Chrome on MacOS? It runs fast and cleanly and has tab groups, iCloud tabs, and a pretty capable password manager.

 

[satchmo]

I'm not sure how capable Apple is in developing a competitive search engine to Google when Spotlight is so poor in finding anything.

 

[ignatius345]

I use Chrome on MacOS because of a browser extension which allows me to create multiple categories of web pages, name the category, and then save bookmarks with images to those categories.

Check out Tab Groups in Safari. It does exactly what you're describing here, and they sync between any device you're running Safari on (provided you're signed in with the same Apple ID). You can also share a tab group and everyone sees the same tabs.

I use this at work constantly and it works brilliantly. The syncing of tabs happens very quickly, such that I can open a new tab on my MacBook and see it open in the same tab group on my iMac in seconds.

 

[GeoStructural]

Safari is a credible challenger to Chrome though. I'm hard pressed to find features missing from Safari that are available in Chrome save for a larger extension ecosystem. I suspect most people use Chrome for its familiarity or because they want to more readily sync bookmarks/favorites/passwords with an existing Google account (or because they simply prefer it, much like why I use Firefox).

Some websites simply do not work on Safari, I am forced to use Chrome on my mac because of it. And there is not just a larger but a vastly huge amount of extensions for Chrome compared to Safari. I do prefer Safari for energy consumption and RAM management.