Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

prnewswire.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 388 posts

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

#181

Post by snarf21 »

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…

I've always found this fight for search choice on iOS to be bad for Apple. If they had to give a choice for search engine on setup or make it easy to switch the default, 99.99% of people would still choose Google and Apple would lose $BB. I agree that Google results have gotten worse over the last 5 years or so but we have to remember that they aren't optimizing for usefulness, they are optimizing for profit.

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

#182

Post by roody15 »

I have always found it problematic that on mobile safari you cannot change search providers. They have a small list to choose from (bing, yahoo, duckduckgo, google). but no way to add anything else. You have to jailbreak the device just to add a different search provider. This seems anticompetitive IMO.

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

#183

Post by koheripbal »

netcan wrote: post #83

The whole structure of antitrust regulation is, by negligence or design, weird and weak. #1 Why does there need to be a plaintiff? A trust affects consumers and society broadly detrimentally, not some specific competitor. The competitor google is likely trying to suppress is some theoretical startup anyway, they probably don't exist to sue. #2 Why the focus on specific damages? The specific harm of such a trust are i…

The questions you are asking are fundamental to the legal system - they are not specific to antitrust laws.

All cases must have standing (a damaged party) and must demonstrate damage.

This is first year law stuff. Without these requirements, anyone could sue anyone for all sorts of made up baloney - and the suits themselves would be the punitive.

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

#184

Post by adam_arthur »

roody15 wrote: post #182

I have always found it problematic that on mobile safari you cannot change search providers. They have a small list to choose from (bing, yahoo, duckduckgo, google). but no way to add anything else. You have to jailbreak the device just to add a different search provider. This seems anticompetitive IMO.

That way they can charge you to get on the list!

China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good.

Competitive markets are more important than free markets for positive societal outcomes.

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

#185

Post by throwoutway »

adam_arthur wrote: post #184
roody15 wrote: post #182

I have always found it problematic that on mobile safari you cannot change search providers. They have a small list to choose from (bing, yahoo, duckduckgo, google). but no way to add anything else. You have to jailbreak the device just to add a different search provider. This seems anticompetitive IMO.

That way they can charge you to get on the list! China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good. Competitive markets are more important than free markets for positive societal outcomes.

> China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good.

You have got to be joking..

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

#186

Post by adam_arthur »

throwoutway wrote: post #185
adam_arthur wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That way they can charge you to get on the list! China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good. Competitive markets are more important than free markets for positive societal outcomes.

> China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good. You have got to be joking..

No post body was provided.

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

#187

Post by redanddead »

throwoutway wrote: post #185
adam_arthur wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That way they can charge you to get on the list! China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good. Competitive markets are more important than free markets for positive societal outcomes.

> China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good. You have got to be joking..

Explain your POV

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

#188

Post by thathndude »

bleah1000 wrote: post #85

I don't think this is even worthy of being reported on. There is a high likelihood of this being thrown out in summary judgement. You can't claim something without at least some facts that indicates that Apple was going to build a search engine and the payments made by Google made Apple stop development. My guess is this is more of a PR stunt than a real lawsuit.

Lawyer clarification incoming:

Summary judgment motions come after the discovery process (the expensive process that often leads to tech companies' dirty little secrets reaching the light of day). If the dollar figure is right, the companies would probably try to settle before summary judgment.

A motion to dismiss, on the other hand, is a pre-discovery mechanism to dismiss claims. These are relatively cheap (by large company standards). I think there's a decent chance this case gets bounced on an MTD.

If it gets past the MTD and into discovery, there's probably an early settlement where the lawyers get paid off.

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

#189

Post by evancoop »

Though collusion between two tech giants is obviously distasteful and anticompetitive, how is this ultimately addressed? Sure, governments could force Google and Apple to break into smaller entities...but as long as humans still largely choose the best software, there will still be network effects that lead to dominant players emerging. In turn, there will be new giants.

So...either there are general paradigms/regulations/principles to apply, or we'll simply return to this state repeatedly, no?

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

#190

Post by jrochkind1 »

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…

> The alternative option seems to be that Apple is for some reason required to use their position to enter the search market.

Well, another alternative option is that Apple is forbidden from charging for being included in the list of search providers (as default or otherwise), they can't be pay-to-play, they can pick whatever providers they want they just can't charge for it, so they have to make decisions based on something other than who pays them the most.

Which, now that I think about it, doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world actually... but I really don't think US law requires it.

Post reply on HN