Exactly. What would be the reason for Microsoft to pay more when they’re not competing with anyone else (who can put up a lot of money)?
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Google and Apple's Search Engine Deal Violates Antitrust Law
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Yea I don’t like giving Google business either, I used bing for about a year but after the abysmal results I was forced to switch back to Google. The only time I use anything Google is for search, YouTube, and Gmail which I only use for spam email and through the Apple apps to avoid all the other garbage associated with it
This is quite a typical case of antitrust so I don’t think Apple can really escape it. I am quite shocked as to why Google has to pay Apple so much money to maintain this status. It’s not like the majority of people will change the default search engine to anything else other than Google.
I prefer bing because it’s not google but I hate when I am looking up restaurants and it’ll link me to a business that doesn’t even exist anymore.
Wasn’t it reported, or at least rumored, that Apple was also negotiating with Microsoft to to accept money from them to replace Google Search with Bing? Google paid up to avoid losing out on being the default search in the Apple ecosystem. Apple replied that they thought Google Search was the best for its customers…and was happy to take an easy $20 billion.
I agree that one or more AI companions will become the default interface. Since Apple has been reported to be including/offering more than one, that should avoid any anti-trust issues going forward. And perhaps Google, along with Microsoft, OpenAI, and/or Meta and others can all be there or all in the app store. Google wouldn’t likely pay nearly as much to be a non-exclusive presence, but that might still pay to be one of them. And the others are paying. And then Apple will likely start charging subscriptions for its own service as well. So I would expect that $20 billion to be at least somewhat replaced.
Yet now just about every end-user operating system bundles a browser.That is the exact same violation as United States v. Microsoft in 2001 because of Internet Explorer — Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
This is huge.
United States v. Microsoft Corp. - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Google would probably want some tracking for this. I.e. a tracking code that says "this search was made by an Apple device using the default search engine." That tracking code need to be maintained in Apple's code base.
Apple doesn't offer iCloud drive clients for other platforms, irrespective of paid iCloud accounts or not. That's a monopoly right there.But at least you don't have a situation that Apple is the bad guy with their ecosystem using an Apple search engine. You can just imagine that scenario and everyone complaining, not fair not fair.
Aww the US is doing EU DMA stuff. Where are the users now who always say “let companies do what they want”?
I wonder if Microsoft will think 20b is worth it to take away a sizeable chunk of Google’s traffic and profits?
„The Emperor‘s New Clothes“ - or in the year 2024 „When Apple detects it has no business model at all“. New products and innovation - Fail. Highway robbery in the AppStore - questionable. AppleTV/Apple Music/Apple Aracde - do those services generate any income? Google deal -busted!
In my opinion, Apples marketshare is nonsense. We have a trillion dollar company with thousands of employees that presents the same old and rotten products again and again.
In my opinion, Apples marketshare is nonsense. We have a trillion dollar company with thousands of employees that presents the same old and rotten products again and again.
Apple can never reach Google's search engine capabilities. It requires massive data engineering capabilities which Apple probably lacks. That's why even their Siri is far behind Google though Siri was first to come by. Apple has enormous amount of data that they don't know how to make money out of it! Apple is good in OS, Frameworks and devices. But when it comes to serviceable software they are behind by huge margin. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, YouTube are few examples where these platforms serve billions every second uninterrupted.
Watch as Apple in 10 years gets criticized for making Siri the default search engine on iPhones?
Seriously though if Google won’t be giving them money for this, I suspect they’ve had something crawling the web for a while, probably getting around lots of that SEO optimized nonsense, and I suspect that Apple will have a search engine of some kind (though they might not call it that) integrated soon enough.
There were rumours about them making tons of AI servers out of M2 Ultras. Would t be surprised if they do something similar where next WWDc we hear about how using some sort of in house algorithm they’re about to make a search engine that’s actually useful, “like Google was… when you first used Google.” Either that or they could do some sort of card interface where they show you search results from multiple engines with ads removed and let you pick which ones seem more relevant.
Either way, Google has been trash for so long. The number of awkward conversations I’ve had with customers who type a URL into Google and it shows them ads instead of just posing the question “were you trying to get to Microsoft.com?”
Seriously though if Google won’t be giving them money for this, I suspect they’ve had something crawling the web for a while, probably getting around lots of that SEO optimized nonsense, and I suspect that Apple will have a search engine of some kind (though they might not call it that) integrated soon enough.
There were rumours about them making tons of AI servers out of M2 Ultras. Would t be surprised if they do something similar where next WWDc we hear about how using some sort of in house algorithm they’re about to make a search engine that’s actually useful, “like Google was… when you first used Google.” Either that or they could do some sort of card interface where they show you search results from multiple engines with ads removed and let you pick which ones seem more relevant.
Either way, Google has been trash for so long. The number of awkward conversations I’ve had with customers who type a URL into Google and it shows them ads instead of just posing the question “were you trying to get to Microsoft.com?”
I think that moat is mostly just sheer quantity: Google has the massive infrastructure to basically maintain their own copy of the internet, enabling them to stay up to date and serve billions of users. There is no practical blocking of web crawlers - robots.txt is a non-legally binding little sign saying "pleeease don't crawl me", at my workplace we don't even read those when we run our scraping projects. Google themselves advise web developers that the only effective way of not getting indexed is to password protect a site. But smaller players cannot afford to index anywhere close to Google's scale.
Apple should let users decide what search engine they want. Hell, all the PC makers and cell phone makers should also. When setting up your device, a user should just be able to choose what search engine they want instead of just using whatever default is already selected in the browser. All modern browsers let you change it anyway.
End users should be more concerned about Google’s exclusivity deal with Reddit.
For those unaware (because it hasn’t been reported here) Google now has exclusive rights to crawl Reddit, meaning search results beyond a certain recent date are only available through Google.
Reddit has become a very important resource when trying to find the answer to a question because Google search is now a dumpster fire.
This is catastrophic for the average user. It silos the web and sets a precedent where the big players will make exclusive deals with sites to prevent competitors from showing results, concentrating market dominance in those with deep pockets (Google and Microsoft). You’ll need to use multiple search engines.
Of course that would open the door to a new service that aggregates the data. 🤔
I don’t see how this deal could possibly pass muster with various anti-monopoly legislation around the world.
For those unaware (because it hasn’t been reported here) Google now has exclusive rights to crawl Reddit, meaning search results beyond a certain recent date are only available through Google.
Reddit has become a very important resource when trying to find the answer to a question because Google search is now a dumpster fire.
This is catastrophic for the average user. It silos the web and sets a precedent where the big players will make exclusive deals with sites to prevent competitors from showing results, concentrating market dominance in those with deep pockets (Google and Microsoft). You’ll need to use multiple search engines.
Of course that would open the door to a new service that aggregates the data. 🤔
I don’t see how this deal could possibly pass muster with various anti-monopoly legislation around the world.
Switched to DuckDuckGo as default search engine on all my devices, years ago. Never had any issues and find all i need.
Not necessarily... IF defaults didn't work then Google wouldn't have been pouring millions ensuring it's the default...
Apple will make up for the revenue loss by raising the prices of their products more than usual /s
Forcing Google to divest from Chrome is a startImagine if the government decides to break up Google since they're a monopoly? The timing of this — right as Chrome gives warnings about how adblockers like uBlock Origin won't work anymore because of Google pushing Manifest V3 specifically to make it hard to block ads — brings me immense satisfaction.