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Why is the plaintiff, California Crane School, suing Apple and Google? As far as I see, the plaintiff is not in the tech business, as they're a school that teaches how to operate cranes[1] [1] https://www.californiacraneschool.com/
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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.
I don't want to speak for anyone, but I think the idea is more akin to conspiracy to commit murder or something. Maybe driving while intoxicated? The target of the murder shouldn't have to be murdered for there to be some grounds for a lawsuit. Similarly, you might arrest someone for driving while intoxicated even though they haven't done any actual damage to person or property. Along these lines, I think the idea is…
Why is the plaintiff, California Crane School, suing Apple and Google? As far as I see, the plaintiff is not in the tech business, as they're a school that teaches how to operate cranes[1] [1] https://www.californiacraneschool.com/
They use Google Ads: I Googled "crane schools in california" and one of the results was an ad for California Crane School. Apparently they think that they are paying too much on those ads: "The complaint alleges that advertising rates are higher than rates would be in a competitive system".
Buyers don't have the option to buy from just one supplier. They want to reach everybody in their niche. Thus, they have to buy from every supplier and cannot negotiate the price down. If they leave, a competitor will take those clients and pay whatever those users are worth.
Slighlty off topic but has anyone else noticed the following trend on HN recently? Post == Article Critical of Google Top Comment === Plays down the severity of said criticism The upvotes don't seem to have much correlation between the post title and the comments. I wonder is such behavior caused by certain UI features on this site/app, or are comments graded differently?
The top comment on HN for any given topic is usually contrarian. It's in our cultural DNA. Perhaps the effect is intensified for some topics like tech giants — I haven't noticed — but keep an eye out and you'll see it happening everywhere. I have a hazy memory of even seeing this effect on HN given a proper name at some point in the past. As to why , I think it's largely cultural or found in personality traits that t…
The contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
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> "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…
I think it's very possible that the payment is just for being the default search engine. Because one alternative is that Apple picks another company to be the default search engine. And suddenly Google has lost the most affluent group of consumers and has gained a major competitor. They would pay almost any amount to prevent that from happening. I don't think Apple would want to make itself the default. That would ju…
They did it for other markets where they do compete - maps most notably.
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I hope it is, because the alternative is that they're being allowed to get away with something that's against the law, bad for the free market, and anti-consumer.
Really? One of the few things keeping the creeping Google Chrome monopoly in check is bad for the consumer and bad for the market? I, for one, am happy that Google isn't able to unilaterally dictate the next generation of web standards.
”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 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…
#5 is the key point to my mind. For example, you can’t just add new search engines to iOS Safari with just a URL. There are a few alternatives to Google but there’s no easy way for a new entrant to get in there. EDIT: Interesting. I’m picking up downvotes for this, is there some way to achieve this (other than jailbreaking) I’ve missed?
It is easy to conceive of reasons why a company would not want to enable native UI elements to rely on external services without having vetted those services or established a relationship with them for recourse in the event of issues. It is harder--though not impossible--to conceive of ways to avoid these issues.
If I add an arbitrary default search engine via URL, and that search engine is later compromised or serves up garbage or malware, that's a problem for Apple, even though we'd all like to believe we're above-average users who wouldn't blame Apple for our own choices.