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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

#521

Post by unethical_ban »

legitster wrote: post #81
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.

> People use Google because it's the default, not because they will go out of their way to keep using it. Is this actually true? Microsoft has bent over backwards trying making it inconvenient to get Chrome + Google on any new device. There's even the whole "Edge is the #1 browser to install Chrome" meme. Normies just really like Google.

Yes it is true.

The company I currently work at is 95% Bing users because they all use Edge and Bing is the default.

It's a medium sized company of normal non techie people.

The default matters.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#522

Post by thaumasiotes »

belorn wrote: post #425
legitster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People use Google because it's the default, not because they will go out of their way to keep using it. Is this actually true? Microsoft has bent over backwards trying making it inconvenient to get Chrome + Google on any new device. There's even the whole "Edge is the #1 browser to install Chrome" meme. Normies just really like Google.

How many stories have you seen with "I search for X, and all the top results are advertisements"? The latest that I recall that I saw on HN was "Now all results above the fold are ads". Its not uncommon to search for product X, only to find product Z being ranked above the official store of X. Google search is advertisement first, quality second. Bing may be equally crappy too. Microsoft "welcome to edge" page is a b…

> Its not uncommon to search for product X, only to find product Z being ranked above the official store of X. Google search is advertisement first, quality second.

While I was at eBay, there was a company announcement praising one executive who had noticed that eBay spent a lot of money on placing Google ads for searches like "ebay", when obviously someone searching for "ebay" can find it in the search results. He canceled the ads, and it worked! There was no significant decline in traffic.

But that's a problem for Google, and the situation you describe is the obvious solution. If people won't advertise on searches where they should appear in the actual results, the way to get them to advertise is to stop having actual results.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#523

Post by zero_bias »

mucle6 wrote: post #157
nabla9 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mu…

If apple wanted to or thought they could make a profitable search engine, wouldn't they have already done it?

They've been making the iPad calculator for years, who knows how many years they could have spent on developing the search engine

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#524

Post by MoneyFight »

morepork wrote: post #319
mucle6 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If apple wanted to or thought they could make a profitable search engine, wouldn't they have already done it?

The question is not whether Apple could make a profitable search engine. The question is whether they could make a search engine more profitable than the billions they are getting paid each year by Google to make Google search the default.

Also the cost opportunity.

If Apple decides to make a search engine and eats $100 billion out of Google's $500 billion profit (made up numbers), Google will just spend back $100 billion (or whatever constitutes a blank warfare check) for year into completely annihilating Apple's presence. They will literally stop people from finding any page that even remotely mentions their 'AppleSearch' and also deprioritize a bunch of other products too unless if you type out, exact word, 'AppleSearch' or whatever it'd be called.

So now you're Apple, here's a question: Will you spend $200 billion fighting back? When will this stop? You're Apple, and this is a stupid move.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#525

Post by MoneyFight »

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…

> but Google didn't buy its way into dominance and maintain their dominance through exclusivity deals.

Then they wouldn't have those deals in the first place.

Companies don't just piss off money for no reason. And the reason is simple: They want no competition - they strictly maintain their dominance through them.

Just saying "No" isn't enough. You have to explain why they have those deals if you think this isn't the reason why. Otherwise, anyone reasonable must disagree by default.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#526

Post by pcwalton »

cletus wrote: post #203
nabla9 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mu…

We forget that there was at least a decade of several "Google killers" a year [1]. It's a graveyeard. That was 2009 too. The volume slowed down but people are still trying (and failing) [2]. Microsoft has of course tried but Bing is only really propped up by Microsoft's deep pockets. It's not a profitable enterprise (AFAIK). And this is with Microsoft using every trick they can to bypass EU and US consent decrees and…

> It's really hard for a goose to lay a second golden egg. With Microsoft, it's their Windows/Office monopoly. With Apple it's the iPhone. Google is an outlier among outlier because they do have several golden eggs but one is much bigger than all the others (ie search).

No, in fact, Azure's revenue is higher than that of Windows and Office combined [1]. Microsoft is far more diversified than Google is. Google has been trying for a decade to achieve Microsoft's diversification and has not succeeded (Bard being the latest such failure).

[1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/microsofts-revenue-by-produ...

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#527

Post by brazzledazzle »

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…

I had a coworker insist on using ddg for privacy reasons and he was a bit smug about it even though meetings where he was presenting while searching the web always started with a ddg search and ended with him sighing and giving up by using !g to switch to google. I think, even in it's less than ideal state, people still underestimate how much time google's tailored search can save you when you train it to figure out you want to see development/technical documentation.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#528

Post by ProfessorLayton »

dntrkv wrote: post #444
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Millions might as well be zero to Apple. There is overhead when it comes to dealing with another company, combined with the potential of damaging your brand. If the number is not in the billions I doubt they would bother. The only companies capable of paying the amounts that would make it worthwhile would be excluded from this option.

This is true if:

- A new deal with another company is actually in the millions. There are a lot of numbers between zero > 20B that's currently being paid for that default setting.

- Said deal remains small and doesn't grow over time, even as a new competitor to GOOG starts eating away at their market share and spreads around search ad revenue.

Re: Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones

#529

Post by xyzzy123 »

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…

There is usually a requirement from regulator to present the top N options in random order to the user and it's likely a reasonable number of people will just pick the first in the list resulting in some market share loss for Google.
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