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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

#121

Post by nabla9 »

cletus wrote: 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…

> So what's going to happen?

Apple might make their own search engine. Apple has a team that's been creating a next-generation search engine codenamed Pegasus under John Giannandrea. They already have search engines for App Store, Maps, Apple TV and News and Spotlight.

Apple web search development worked as bargaining chip in pricing negotiations with Google. Google paid them $20 billion per year to not compete as much as keeping other competitors away.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#122

Post by WheatMillington »

jd3 wrote: post #101
hugh_kagi wrote: post #21

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.

Tell me you live in a tech bubble without telling me you live in a tech bubble.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#123

Post by ssl-3 »

hintymad wrote: post #47

> 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?

If you and I, a couple of presumed nobodies, agree to have our respective companies work together exclusively on a thing and maybe trade some money and services, then that's something that can usually be legally just fine.

But if you or I are operate a monopoly (whether a natural monopoly or an artificial monopoly) and we make the same kind of exclusive deal, then: That may not be fine. We have laws (like the Sherman Act) that can restrict this sort of thing only if a monopoly becomes involved.

And to be clear: It's generally OK to have a monopoly (good fuckin' job, mate! you totally own your market! all the spoils for you!). But it's generally not OK to use that monopoly status in an anticompetitive way.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#124

Post by ankit219 »

hintymad wrote: post #47

> 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 would have been fine if Google was not a monopoly. The key part of the ruling is that judge agrees Google is a monopoly. And it's behavior is maintaining the monopoly illegally.

Because it's a monopoly, and paying over the odds for these placements, it does not allow for a competitive marketplace. These payments create significant barriers to entry for other companies to even try and increase their market share given all the frictionless access points are blocked by Google not because of superior product but payments. These payments from a monopoly have a disproportionate impact on the market by limiting opportunities for everyone else in a significant manner.

(Kind of, in a competitive market, a company can block 1-2 pathways. Here google pretty much blocked every entry point.)

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#125

Post by crazygringo »

arresin wrote: post #55
srcreigh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple could be getting paid off by google to keep this aspect of search difficult to change.

$20 billion in 2022 according to the verge via court docs: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/2/24147007/google-paid-apple...

No, absolutely not -- that says nothing whatsoever about making the default difficult to change.

It's just about what the default is.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#127

Post by crazygringo »

jsnell wrote: post #92
SllX wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google pays to be the default, not for exclusivity as evidenced by the list of SEs Apple provides to swap to. I never knew what the hell Apple was doing with the extremely limited set of search engines with the only means to change it being to choose one of the others Apple has included on a static list which cannot be modified by the user.

It's because the only way to get on that list at all is to pay Apple (as revealed in this very case).

That's false.

Google paid Apple to be the default.

There is no reporting whatsoever that there is any other payment to be in the list of alternatives. There is no evidence that Microsoft pays Apple to include Bing in the list of alternatives.

So nothing whatsoever like that was revealed in the case.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#128

Post by ssl-3 »

legitster wrote: post #74
causal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it creates a monopoly then no, it's not okay, no matter how normal.

Not necessarily - as it is written, the Sherman anti-trust act and all of the amendments distinguishes between "innocent" and "coercive" monopolies. But the definitions are very loose and hard to pin down. It's hard to even consistently distinguish a monopoly - is it market share? Earning power? Barriers to entry?

The definitions mean whatever the judge says they mean.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#129

Post by kelnos »

Maxatar wrote: post #85
causal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. People use Google because it's the default, not because they will go out of their way to keep using it. The minute Apple changes the iPhone default, all but a few iPhone users stop using Google.

Perhaps, but it's worth noting that Chrome became the dominant browser on Windows even though Internet Explorer/Edge is the default browser and comes preinstalled.

That's more the exception that proves the rule, though. Chrome originally came out when IE was still a steaming pile of garbage, and Google spent lots of marketing money promoting it as a better, faster alternative. (Something that Mozilla had been previously somewhat succeeding at, more or less, but they didn't have the same resources and eventually lost their gains and fell behind.)

These days Chrome just has so much mind-share that it overcomes the defaults on Windows. This is by no means a common outcome. This is anecdotal, but I know far more people who use Safari instead of Chrome on macOS than who use Edge instead of Chrome on Windows; Microsoft just has such a bad reputation when it comes to browsers that Chrome is able to get over that defaults hump on Windows. But a lot of people genuinely like Safari, and trust Apple in general, so the effect is (somewhat) lessened on macOS, even though IIRC Chrome still does have the lead in market share there. Just less of one, percentage-wise.

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