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Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

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Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#111

Post by ksec »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #22
dpark wrote: post #17

”The complaint claims that the means used to effectuate the non-compete agreement included; (1) Google would share it's search profits with Apple; (2) Apple would give preferential treatment to Google for all Apple devices; (3) regular secret meetings between the executives of both companies; (4) annual multi-billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple not to compete in the search business; (5) suppression of the comp…

> "Google pays Apple to be the default search provider" If that is the case they might not act anti-competetive but, rumours are [0] Apple received up to $20Bn per year in this deal. It is hard to believe that this payment is just for being the default search engine. I strongly suspect that Apple also agrees to not build their own search engine as long as this deal is on - and if that is the case, there will be a str…

Where is that [0] reference?

Because it is not $20B, but $10 / $12B. The range was partly confirmed during a trial where Google mentioned their percentage of profits paying to Apple as being default search engine.

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#112

Post by utopcell »

eitland wrote: post #99
matkoniecz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://kagi.com/ has plans for subscriptions, I hope that they will have product worth paying for. I spend enough time and effort searching that paying 50$/month[0] would make sense if it would get me clearly superior tool. [0] for reference, I pay 250$/month for place where I live (in Poland).

With the usual disclaimer about my Google experience not being anyone elses Google experience: For my work Kagi is already beating Google. In fact there is is almost no competition, it is almost as if they are in completely different leagues: In one month I have once gone back to find something in Google that Kagi couldn't find. For every other query the results have been so good that I haven't even bothered to check…

From Kagi's FAQ: "Our searching includes anonymized requests to traditional search indexes like Google and Bing as well as vertical sources like Wikipedia and DeepL or other APIs. We also have our own non-commercial index (Teclis), news index (TinyGem), and an AI for instant answers."

So, apparently Kagi is scraping Google and Bing results via a browser extension. Is this legal ?

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#113

Post by Nextgrid »

bni wrote: post #75
onion2k wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative option seems to be that Apple is for some reason required to use their position to enter the search market. Why is that the alternative? No one is saying Apple have to provide their own search engine; people are suggesting Mac products should give the user a clear choice. A much more obvious alternative is that Apple (or any OS provider for that matter) shouldn't be able to sell the default search eng…

It is easy to change, it a dropdown in Safari settings, very easy to find. I agree though that Google pays Apple billions to be the default stinks. Even though in this case Apple greed aligns perfectly with user expectation.

The list is hardcoded to a handful of options (all of which I suspect of paying Apple, except maybe DuckDuckGo) with no way to add your own.

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#114

Post by endisneigh »

eitland wrote: post #99
matkoniecz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://kagi.com/ has plans for subscriptions, I hope that they will have product worth paying for. I spend enough time and effort searching that paying 50$/month[0] would make sense if it would get me clearly superior tool. [0] for reference, I pay 250$/month for place where I live (in Poland).

With the usual disclaimer about my Google experience not being anyone elses Google experience: For my work Kagi is already beating Google. In fact there is is almost no competition, it is almost as if they are in completely different leagues: In one month I have once gone back to find something in Google that Kagi couldn't find. For every other query the results have been so good that I haven't even bothered to check…

Do you have example queries to share? I’m curious.

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#116

Post by threeseed »

amelius wrote: post #92
bni wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is easy to change, it a dropdown in Safari settings, very easy to find. I agree though that Google pays Apple billions to be the default stinks. Even though in this case Apple greed aligns perfectly with user expectation.

It still makes me wonder: if Apple had their own search engine, would they be allowed to not have the option to change it?

a) Apple has had their own search engine for years now. It powers Safari Suggestions.

b) They don't have an option to change it.

c) If they were to extend its use for all searches then I can't imagine there would be an issue. And if there was it would likely be across the entire mobile search industry.

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#117

Post by eitland »

endisneigh wrote: post #114
eitland wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the usual disclaimer about my Google experience not being anyone elses Google experience: For my work Kagi is already beating Google. In fact there is is almost no competition, it is almost as if they are in completely different leagues: In one month I have once gone back to find something in Google that Kagi couldn't find. For every other query the results have been so good that I haven't even bothered to check…

Do you have example queries to share? I’m curious.

I have stored some result pages in Joplin and will try to post some comparisons soon, but lunchbreak is over so not until later today - at earliest ;-)

But basically the results are good and if I don't immediately get exactly what I want one pair of doublequotes around a key phrase sorts the rest.

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#118

Post by threeseed »

onion2k wrote: post #100
amelius wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still makes me wonder: if Apple had their own search engine, would they be allowed to not have the option to change it?

That would be a very clear anti-trust violation where they would be abusing position in the OS market to influence their position in the search market.

That only applies when you dealing with markets with an absence of competition.

For example, Microsoft had ~95% market share of the entire computing market when they tried to embrace and extinguish Netscape.

It's why it was perfectly fine for Google to use its web services to influence competition within the Android OS market.

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#119

Post by threeseed »

JimDabell wrote: post #35
littlecranky67 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google pays Apple to be the default search provider" If that is the case they might not act anti-competetive but, rumours are [0] Apple received up to $20Bn per year in this deal. It is hard to believe that this payment is just for being the default search engine. I strongly suspect that Apple also agrees to not build their own search engine as long as this deal is on - and if that is the case, there will be a str…

> It is hard to believe that this payment is just for being the default search engine. I strongly suspect that Apple also agrees to not build their own search engine as long as this deal is on In practical terms, if Apple launched a search engine that wasn’t the default, would it see much uptake? It seems to me that Google don’t need an agreement for that.

Apple has a search engine. It powers Safari Suggestions, Siri etc and it is enabled by default.

I imagine close to ~95% of all iOS/OSX searches would likely be hitting those services if you look at the way the UI is implemented.

Re: Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business

#120

Post by mrtksn »

fsflover wrote: post #108
mrtksn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm very annoyed by Google as their product quality keeps declining year after year and I do not have a real choice. In fact, I have no practical ability to change my e-mail address as I'm using it since 1st of April 2004 and Google does not offer me to keep the address if I want to switch to another provider. My arguments are in defence of Apple, not Google. I can move away from Apple at any time but I can't do…

> I can move away from Apple at any time For you it might be true but not for many Apple users who are deep into the Apple ecosystem.

How so? What Apple services are impossible or impractical to switch away from?

Inconvenient? Could be. Note a drop-in replacement? Sure, that's why there are different companies.

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