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Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

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Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#101

We face a number of challenges simply letting our paying customers change their search engine: 1. On iOS the list of allowed search engines is simply baked into OS, we have a fiddly extension that hooks outbound calls to /search and redirects them but I wish we didn't need to. 2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such a…

I'm surprised Kagi Search wasn't mentioned once in the ruling given that it's the most compelling Google competitor on the market.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#102
post #31

I expect this to be bad for everyone except Google if the ruling holds. Why? Mozilla and Apple will lose significant revenue from having Google as the default search engine and Google will no longer have to pay those billions. What's more, no one else can pay to be the default either (eg the short-lived Mozilla Bing deal). So what's going to happen? Most users will probably still use Google, nobody is getting paid an…

> but Google didn't buy its way into dominance annd maintain their dominance through exclusivity deals This is a huge claim. Do you have any evidence to back it up?

I fail to see your reasoning. The court's argument is Google is maintaining this dominance via these default deals, not that it got there through them.

Given the last 25 years of history, Google's product has gotten worse after these default deals. Previously it established the dominance because it found whatever a user searched for. Arguing otherwise just feels unrealistic. They never had any exclusive deals with any provider.

Edit: Changed exclusive to default.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#104

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

[flagged]

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#105

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

When you are the primary player in the industry, you're creating a massive, unscalable monopolistic wall that no one else can climb.

They pay Apple alone around 20 billion per year. There is no way anyone else can even think about competing with that. It's not because they happened to get the highest bid. It's because they're paying for the elimination of anyone else getting a foothold.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#106

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

This is explained in quite a bit of detail in the judge's ruling: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rZ1UlL.0... Starting about page 197.

> Google understands there is no genuine competition for the defaults because it knows that its partners cannot afford to go elsewhere. Time and again, Google’s partners have concluded that it is financially infeasible to switch default GSEs or seek greater flexibility in search offerings because it would mean sacrificing the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars that Google pays them as revenue share.

[...]

> That was the key takeaway from the testimony of Neeva’s founder and former Google Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce, Dr. Ramaswamy. The court found him to be a particularly compelling witness. He put it best. When the court asked why Google pays billions in revenue share when it already has the best search engine, he answered that the payments “provide an incredibly strong incentive for the ecosystem to not do anything”; they “effectively make the ecosystem exceptionally resist[ant] to change”; and their “net effect . . . [is to] basically freeze the ecosystem in place[.]” Tr. at 3796:8–3798:22 (Ramaswamy). No one would ever describe a competitive marketplace in those terms. When the distribution agreements have created an ecosystem that has a “strong incentive” to do “nothing,” is “resist[ant] to change,” and is “basically [frozen] in place,” there is no genuine “competition for the contract” in search. It is illusory.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#107

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

Yeah, they aren't allowed to pay billions anymore. Which begs the question:

What about of money are they allowed to pay?

Will there be a state-run auction?

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's more, no one else can pay to be the default either (eg the short-lived Mozilla Bing deal). Not sure if that is true-competition laws often prohibit the dominant market player from doing certain things, yet still allow smaller players to do the same thing.

I assume OP meant in terms of money. Apple will not accept scraps (like tens of Millions) for the default search engine, after getting billions from Google. And no-one else will have the financial resources or be willing to burn these amounts (Microsoft) to offer similar numbers.

They don't need to offer similar numbers? If this ruling prohibits Google, the dominant search engine, from buying their Safari defaults, then Apple has a choice of:

- Zero dollars

- More than zero dollars from a smaller search competitor (Bing? New AI player?)

I suspect Apple will want more than nothing. They also have quarterly financials to report.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#110

> Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. I still find it hard to understand why this makes sense. Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time, and whoever bids higher will get such deals? Why is it different for Google this time?

> Don't companies make exclusive deals all the time,

Companies with monopoly power must work with different rules.

Having monopoly power is not illegal, abusing it is.

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