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Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

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Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#361

Post by sprkwd »

afiori wrote: post #306
solarkraft wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been reports and speculation that they’re doing just that. Of course it’s worth it for the negotiation threat alone, but Apple also really doesn’t seem to like depending on Google. I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.

my experience (sample size < 5) is that people that use Google with an adblocker have a very nice experience and don't have an adblocker have a miserable experience.

I would say that for the internet as a whole.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#362

Post by londons_explore »

_laiq wrote: post #350
geocar wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people overestimate how easy it is to make a search engine, and underestimate how hard it is to sell search to advertisers. I think this is closer to a 50B problem than a 1B problem. Not impossible, but I don’t know anyone who has 50B that they would want to spend fighting uphill to kill google.

I find this really hard to believe. Say, you manage to recruit the top-30 engineers who know all the in-and-outs of the google search engine. Add to that, their recent replacement of trad AI methods with full NN I believe, and I can't realistically believe it's not more than a 1B problem. One of the reasons Google is going horizontal because their search engine can't be "magical" forever, this applies to their ad pla…

Remaking Google requires engineering talent and lots of clickstream data (ie. Hundreds of Billions of search queries and information about what search results were clicked by which users).

Nobody else has this, and until they do, they won't be able to recreate Google.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#363

Post by dijit »

rjzzleep wrote: post #360
f6v wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.

Don't Ubisoft and Epic have their own game stores inside of the playstation store? And given how hard Sony and Microsoft compete to pursuade games to be released exclusively on either platform isn't it a bit of different dynamic?

> Ubisoft and Epic have their own game stores inside of the playstation store?

No. Sony PlayStation is almost identical to the Apple App Store in that there’s only 1 way to get your software working on retail units.

In fact it’s a lot worse in many ways, you need two specific types of hardware to even develop software- Sony is quite old school and draconian when it comes to testing, validation and communication.

At Ubisoft we had entire teams of compliance testers for Sony/Microsoft- and if you ever tried to get content outside of their stores (ie; loading after the game launches) they are quite aggressive about pulling the game down.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#364

Post by estaseuropano »

Renaud wrote: post #288
solarkraft wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been reports and speculation that they’re doing just that. Of course it’s worth it for the negotiation threat alone, but Apple also really doesn’t seem to like depending on Google. I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.

>DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible I would like someone to make some objective research on that. My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing. I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something. I very ra…

I can't add research but perspective: I search in English, German, French and sometimes other languages. For EN DDG is hit and miss, I'd say 1/2 times it gives me the result that I'm looking for. For DE and FR the result quality is often much lower.

This means at least about half the time I end up with a !g I'm my DDG search.

I don't think bing will be a useful competitor in the long term, but a company that focuses on non-English national/linguistic markets, especially those with own character sets can compete in that area, innovate and hopefully also branch out on the EN market (see Yandex - RU; Yahoo - JP; various CN players).

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#365

Post by depressedpanda »

TeeMassive wrote: post #130
woofie11 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketshare. The law sees marketshare. * Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no monopoly. * Microsoft had no effective competitors. You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.

I've once worked for a large corporation that got hit hard by antitrust. Think a few tens of billions of dollars. Why? A seller was caught giving freebies if they bought their products. That's it. That's all it took. I know because due to that incident we had to follow online formation every god damn month about antitrust. You don't have to have a "monopoly" to trigger antitrust legislation. The mere mention of "deal…

What Apple and Google are doing is a lot worse than handing out freebies.

Why aren't they getting hit hard by antitrust?

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#366

Post by pvitz »

cywick wrote: post #325
woofie11 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it varies. When I don't find something with DDG, I use !g to switch to Google. Google often finds it. But the reverse is true too. DDG is now my default, but before, when Google didn't find something, I'd switch to DDG. There is an implicit learning curve switching search engines. The way one crafts searches differs in subtle ways I don't understand on a conscious level.

Instead of using !g as fallback, I prefer to use !sp. You still get the Google results but they are proxied via startpage.com for better privacy.

I used to mainly use startpage.com, but when they were sold to a subsidiary of an adtech company, I stopped using them.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#367

Post by MrDresden »

As much as I am for healthy competition, and would love for the revenue cut to be smaller (even smaller than the current 15%), my main concern as a mobile application developr who has focused predominantly on the Android ecosystem is further fragmentation.

If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when.

If your application is taking payments directly through the app (not using ads, and the app is no extension to the primary web portal) then a split community could cause havoc to the already struggling app developer.

There is a reason most developers do not create versions for the Amazon Fire, and this might end up being similar situation (if it goes the worse way possible)

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#368

Post by dwaite »

wayneftw wrote: post #170
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which they already got busted for and had to pay fines on. If you mean they are still doing it, then provide evidence, don’t just assert its true.

Nobody here is talking about things that Apple and Google got busted for already. Everything that we're getting today is new.

So no link to evidence?

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#369

Post by oldgradstudent »

rewq4321 wrote: post #347
summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

The evidence of collusion between Apple and Google coming out of the Epic case is amazing to me. I'd always thought it was a sort of unspoken "game theoretic" type of collusion (which I'm sure it is in part), but it looks like they've had very explicit communication about it: https://mobile.twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428417681351348... > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showe…

>I'd always thought it was a sort of unspoken "game theoretic" type of collusion (which I'm sure it is in part), but it looks like they've had very explicit communication about it:

Why would you even think that after the whole salary fixing scandal? There's no enforcement of antitrust law and no incentive not to collude freely and egregiously.

Had Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Paul Otellini, and everyone else directly involved in the wage fixing scandal, spent a year in federal prison per violation, the situation might have been different.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#370

Post by geocar »

_laiq wrote: post #350
geocar wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people overestimate how easy it is to make a search engine, and underestimate how hard it is to sell search to advertisers. I think this is closer to a 50B problem than a 1B problem. Not impossible, but I don’t know anyone who has 50B that they would want to spend fighting uphill to kill google.

I find this really hard to believe. Say, you manage to recruit the top-30 engineers who know all the in-and-outs of the google search engine. Add to that, their recent replacement of trad AI methods with full NN I believe, and I can't realistically believe it's not more than a 1B problem. One of the reasons Google is going horizontal because their search engine can't be "magical" forever, this applies to their ad pla…

Here are just a few of the things you aren’t considering:

* how many people worldwide keep their google places information up-to-date and not their local government office or their website.

* how advertisers can get value for their search ad campaigns; how to convince them of this

* how much google ad/targeting intelligence comes from off-site (eg Adsense, partner programs, xml ads)

* how many websites and website owners focus obsessively on their google presence making sure that even where Google’s tech gets it wrong they can get it corrected.

* how valuable the feedback loop is: google ads literally tells google what pages and terms are useful, what people like, and what to do more of at scale

* giving away free email and chat to build a whitelist of “good shares”

And that doesn’t cover video or the inverted index you need to provide governments access to emails and search terms. And so on.

These are largely not-software problems.

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