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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

#121

Post by eitland »

utopcell wrote: post #112
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…

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 ?

My interpretation of this is they pay for API access and sends anonymised queries to Google and/or Bing.

I'm still puzzled how they get so extremely much better results compared to using any of thise directly or using DDG which does the same only with Bing.

Also a bit worried because I think there was a time when DDG felt the same before they suddenly gave in and started serving answers for queries I didn't ask just like Google but I'm not really sure.

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

#122

Post by freediver »

utopcell wrote: post #112
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…

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 ?

Anonymized request means that the client's IP is not passed to the server. Since both search engine have a paid search results API, it is enough to simply proxy the API request to achieve this claim.

Kagi is both paying Google for API access and using Google infrastructure (GCP), helping Google make revenue that is not ad-supported.

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

#123

Post by fsflover »

mrtksn wrote: post #120
fsflover wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

iMessage, Apple Watch... iCloud?

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

#125

Post by lwkl »

politelemon wrote: post #46
dathinab wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a OS monopoly on the Apple hardware platform which affects millions of people with marked effects which can make switching away from it costy and hard. It abuses this Monopoly position to force through other products, like it's app store, and give major advantage to it's services over the competition. Sometimes outright debiting l denying it's competition marked entry. Even if we only look at a while phone O…

Sorry you're being downvoted but this is HN and it's common to give Apple benefit of the doubt. You are right, and the term is monopolistic power, which is different from monopoly. Monopolistic power involves platform abuse which is what you're describing. Additionally they use their position to enforce their own services, so their forced rollout of Apple Login was an example. Another example is all browsers being fo…

> It's a repeat of the MS-IE escapades of a few decades ago but everyone's OK with it.

Is it though? Safari seems to be pretty close to the HTML standard and at least not implement any proprietary features. Sure there may be bugs or they may lag behind but they are making an effort to be compliant.

I'd say Google seems to be the one leading a lot of decisions regarding to standards and implement them the way they want before they are actually standardizes and because they have the biggest market share Apple and Firefox just have to follow their decision.

Ideally Apple would allow third party browsers on iOS, but I think it's beneficial for users that they don't. I do believe that without it Chrome would have a much bigger market share and developers wouldn't be forced to support browsers other than Chrome and Google would have even more power over web standards than today. I guess Chromium being open source would make it a bit better.

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

#126

Post by konschubert »

cornel_io wrote: post #54
hetspookjee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so happy that Apple keeps me safe of dangerous search engines. /s I don't get this logic, honestly. What is the point of not being able to add any and all search engines to Apple?

Apple hates any sort of technical customization in their mass-market products. They always have, and keep stripping them down to the most dumbed-down settings screens they can figure out while still allowing the bare necessities (which they apparently don't consider adding an alternative search engine to be). I don't like this approach, but it is very consistent in their products, features tend to disappear over time…

Not to take away from your overall correct point, but... Let me introduce you to focus modes....

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

#128

Post by malwrar »

nikanj wrote: post #96
cornel_io wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple hates any sort of technical customization in their mass-market products. They always have, and keep stripping them down to the most dumbed-down settings screens they can figure out while still allowing the bare necessities (which they apparently don't consider adding an alternative search engine to be). I don't like this approach, but it is very consistent in their products, features tend to disappear over time…

Every customization option means more complaints from some customer who managed to mess up that setting. “My search no longer works!” “Sir you have the search registry key set to ‘turkey bake time’” “Well that’s what I was searching for, and then the search stopped working completely. iPhones are the worst, I’m gonna tell all my friends”

I’m sure Apple’s world-renowned UX team can innovate a way to allow new search engines to be added w/o bricking your phone. I’d rather have that than lack if real, capital-laden competition in search.

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

#129

Post by WanderPanda »

threeseed wrote: post #116
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?

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.

addition to a): The quality of its results is laughably bad

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

#130

Post by why_only_15 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #64
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #36

Here's the complaint: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Northern_Distri... The putative class they're suing to represent is apparently "All consumers and businesses who paid Google to place advertising on Google search in the United States since January 1, 2005." I think the basic argument is "Apple might have created a competing search engine business, but Google paid them not to, which hurt people buying…

> I think the basic argument is "Apple might have created a competing search engine business, but Google paid them not to That's the feeling I got. I mean if this was the case, then Apple could be sued by Google for extortion - "pay us or we'll build a competitor". This lawsuit makes no sense.

Are these sort of entirely business-related threats extortion in a business context? This seems like regular business practices to me.
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