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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

#161

Post by ksec »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #137
ksec wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, my bad I forgot to add the [0] reference: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/27/google-could-pay-apple-... (repeating that this is an analyst estimate/rumour so take it with a grain of salt).

Thanks to analyst and Macrumors continue to pump out and report BS the internet has never educated people on any issues. Although I dont doubt this could be the usual Apple PR play when they intend to negotiate a new deal with Google. As they have done so in the past 5-10 years with Qualcomm, Broadcom, Google, Intel etc.

To add some useful information to HN readers, Google has been paying roughly $10 per user to Apple for the past 8 years. So the growth of Google Default Search Engine placement has been growing steadily with Apple's active user. This exclude regions which does not use Google as Default Search Engine.

Unless there are dramatic changes in Google traffic accusation cost in their Quarterly report or going to make a change in 2022 ( Which I am not aware of ), that rumour is completely baseless.

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

#162

Post by MomoXenosaga »

hetspookjee wrote: post #43
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you get downvotes, this is true, at least for iOS. There's no way a user can add a new search engine, they can only choose one of the five choices.

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?

In fairness you don't have to use Safari.

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

#163

Post by ksec »

xadhominemx wrote: post #160
ksec wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s proportional to Google ad revenue, which has grown a lot since 2020

If I remember correctly the notion of Google Sharing Ad revenue with Apple came from Oracle in a trial and was never proven. Not to mention the number dont add up from 2014 - 2019. We will see how this play out once we have Google's number from quarterly report.

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

#164

Post by littlecranky67 »

ksec wrote: post #161
littlecranky67 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, my bad I forgot to add the [0] reference: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/27/google-could-pay-apple-... (repeating that this is an analyst estimate/rumour so take it with a grain of salt).

Thanks to analyst and Macrumors continue to pump out and report BS the internet has never educated people on any issues. Although I dont doubt this could be the usual Apple PR play when they intend to negotiate a new deal with Google. As they have done so in the past 5-10 years with Qualcomm, Broadcom, Google, Intel etc. To add some useful information to HN readers, Google has been paying roughly $10 per user to Appl…

Well the $12-10Bn are confirmed due to court documents, so assuming it grew in 2022 is not that wrong. What are a couple of billions here and there anyway :)

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

#165

Post by bell-cot »

> [...] alleging violations of the Antitrust Laws of the United States.

> The complaint charges that Google and Apple agreed that Apple would not compete in the internet search business against Google. [...]

IANAL, but how credible a threat must the potential competition be, for a sober judge to get interested? If Bob's Pizza Parlor got $10/year from Google for not competing in the internet search business - would that be anything but a bizarre joke? Similar for Apple - sure, they've got $billions. But also shareholders who don't want those $billions squandered. Apple's in-house expertise in developing and running internet search engines is ~nill. And how many companies, ever, have managed to create and profitably run an internet search engine - in a market with at least one established and profitable competitor?

With $lots_of_billions on the table, Apple's head negotiator might say all sorts of things, to squeeze yet more $$$ out of Google. (1)"Bing is offering us more." (2)"Customers are complaining that your search results are getting crappy." (3)"We'll set up our own search engine." (4)"We'll invent a time machine, and set both of Larry Page's grandmothers up with better husbands."

How many of those statements are credible? Legal? If (2) and (3) hit at Google's deep-seated fears, but (3) is not actually credible, is this any different (beyond the emotional cheap shot) than (4)?

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

#166

Post by MomoXenosaga »

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 ?

I use startpage.com that does the same. It's just a proxy for Google search.

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

#167

Post by fsflover »

mrtksn wrote: post #132
fsflover wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage, Apple Watch... iCloud?

iMessage: WhatsApp, Signal, SMS etc. No One uses iMessage outside of the US, alternatives are very good and available on all platforms. You don't lose access to your social circle by switching away from iMessage. Apple Watch: Just another device that has numerous alternatives. Many excel in some way, not crappy alternatives. iCould: There are numerous alternatives, free and paid and work very well. So, if you like to…

Same things can be said about your email address at Google. I moved to an alternative within a year, manually, by changing all services one after another. It was hard but worth it.

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

#168

Post by modo_mario »

headmelted wrote: post #52
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…

This. I always sort of hoped that Apple would either enter the market at some point or acquire DuckDuckGo and try to build out to a larger user base. I realise this is pretty unrealistic, as I'm sure there are far more people out there who would much prefer DDG to remain independent of a megacorp. I assumed the reason Apple haven't entered the market is that there's likely no way to make money at it without becoming…

Doesn't duckduckgo just mostly use microsoft's search results?

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

#169

Post by Closi »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #155
Closi wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That qualifies as "already in the search business" IMO. Well they are definitely in the search business anyway, as >20% of Apple's annual revenue is from search. It's just that all the revenue apple makes from search comes directly from Google in the form of a $20bn payment, and Google powers almost all their actual web searches (i.e. not instant suggestions), so I think it's hardly an independent 'search business'…

I'm honestly not seeing the difference you're drawing between "web searches" and "instant suggestions". If I type some characters into a search box, and the phone displays the title and domain of a website that it thinks I might be looking for, that counts as a "web search" to me. iOS Safari does that using an Apple-powered web index. But whatever.

The difference is the index size and generality for me - for instance I can search "lkasdjfai" in Google and it will show me the one time that someone once said that on Flickr.

Siri only needs to return a result when it thinks its got a worthwhile result to show, it won't search all documents to find the phrase I want (and returns nothing if I search lkasdjfai, and falls back to Google results). It never even says "siri found no matches for lkasdjfai".

I can't use Siri to search for my cousin for instance (I just tried) but with Google he comes up straight away.

So for me, a web search is when you are searching any arbitrary phrase and bringing back results for any query, where instant suggestions is an optional response when you think you have a good result.

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

#170

Post by judge2020 »

Bombthecat wrote: post #145
quitit wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing the issue is because there isn’t a lot of merit in saying Apple and Google are totally stitched up when the options change by region and for the plaintiff there are at least 4 additional options other than Google. EG Ecosia is a recent entry, so it does seem that Apple does look into this and introduce new options that can serve their audience size with sufficient quality results. Getting included seems…

Most other search engines use Google under the hut anyway.. I'm wondering sind quite a whole, when Google will block them..

Only Startpage uses Google, to my knowledge, as there isn’t an API you can enable to start getting Google’s search results (without entering into talks with their sales / exec team). Bing does, though, and that’s why Brave and DuckDuckGo use Bing under the hood a lot.
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