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Apple makes billions from Google Search each year
- jackallis 8y agoi did not read the article, but i assume it was not the users who got paid. Google should pay the users.
- wmf 8y agoThe users get to use a pretty good search engine.
- calibas 8y agoUnless you want remotely objective results for searches about US politics. Here's a good experiment, search for "Kamala Harris" in DuckDuckGo and Google, then compare the results. It makes me think spreading Google's influence is about more than just helping users find the "best" search engine. Edit: Try to search Google anonymously to get somewhat consistent results, and for an added challenge see how many pages you have to go through to see an article about her and Willie Brown.
- seiferteric 8y agoI'm struggling to see a significant difference. What are you seeing?
- calibas 8y agoThe first 3 results are the same, then Google tends to be glowing endorsements for Kamala with absolutely nothing critical. Google: "2020 candidate Kamala Harris says her top priority is raising incomes" "Kamala Harris: young, black, female – and the Democrats' best bet" "2020 candidate Kamala Harris wants to give working class families $500 a month" DuckDuckGo: "Kamala Harris says she smoked marijuana in college while listening to music that didn't exist yet" "Extramarital affair with Kamala Harris?" "Willie Brown on Kamala Harris: 'We dated,' I 'influenced her ..." There's clear favoritism there.
- ceejayoz 8y agoThe Washington Examiner pot story is #4 on Google's "top stories" section in my search results. You see pro-Harris bias; I see you looking for more tabloid-y results.
- calibas 8y agoThe "tabloid-y results" are also the truth of how her career started, strangely missing from Google. I think the biggest bias here is people wanting to believe Google's search results can still be trusted.
- ceejayoz 8y ago#4 on the top stories hardly seems like "missing", and I can't say I fault the news algorithm for weighting a senator and presidential candidate's current policy proposals over a blurry memory of what song she listened to while smoking pot in college, or a relationship from twenty years ago.
- calibas 8y agoThis is exactly what I'm talking about. The "tabloid-y results" that are also the truth of how her career started are not her smoking pot in college. You don't even know what I'm referring to because Google's results don't mention it.
- ceejayoz 8y ago> You don't even know what I'm referring to because Google's results don't mention it. I'm well aware of both stories you highlighted. Both are far less important than the current policy proposals of a presidential contender, so I argue Google is correct not to highlight them as the top couple of stories about Harris if you search for her.
- calibas 8y ago
- tonmoy 8y agoI see exactly same top 5 results. Not sure what you mean
- peaktechisnow 8y agothey should make you CEO! Shareholders would love you!
- josefresco 8y agoApple is sure concerned about privacy of their users until the Google dump truck full of cash arrives. Apple isn't the one tracking you everywhere but they're happy to sell access (to you) to someone who does!
- fitzroy 8y agoIt can be changed to another search engine without even opening Safari.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoMost people will never change their default search. This is why Google's dominance mostly started with pushing Google Toolbar installs which changed your default in IE for you, and later, of course, with it's push into Chrome and Android and paying Apple to be default there. If Chrome switched it's default search to DDG (no, this is not a plausible scenario), most people would be using DDG for search in a week.
- wolco 8y agoThe point is they are selling out your privacy for money. A lot of it.
- desertchicken 8y agoDoes the same standard not apply to companies like Mozilla?
- wolco 8y agoYes.
- askafriend 8y agoYou can change your settings easily. No need for such dramatic statements.
- 8y ago
- nkingsy 8y agoMy question is, would Apple default to different search engine if they weren't getting paid? Given Google's utter dominance in search, it would likely be seen as anti-user behavior to default to something else. This one and the fact that Microsoft takes all the licensing revenue from Android seem to bubble up every few months. Head-scratching stuff from companies playing on levels of scale where strange things start to make sense.
- e1ven 8y agoApple had previously used Bing as the default search in certain areas, such as Siri and the Search bar.
- wlesieutre 8y agoBut did they switch because they could get more money from Google, because they could give users better search results with Google, or because they didn't want to confuse users who google things and get confused that the google is broken and says bing instead?
- wolco 8y agoMoney. Google offered the same or better experience when bing was the default.
- Despegar 8y agoIf they weren't getting paid they'd just switch to Bing or DuckDuckGo. As much as Google might like to believe that people will specifically seek them out because they are a better product, search is a utility and most people will be fine with Bing/DuckDuckGo. We know this exactly because Google pays TAC.
- glbrew 8y agoI agree in general but if 1.4 billion devices simultaneously started using duckduckgo their servers would melt through the mantle and merge with the inner core.
- bgdnyxbjx 8y agoInteresting. That’s like more than the entire yearly revenue of Bing.
- aboutruby 8y agoThey must negotiate very well because as an iOS user I would be disappointed to not have Google as default (like when Firefox switched to Bing).
- jws 8y agoTo put that back into relatable numbers, there are about 1B installed iOS devices. So Google is paying $9/year for each device to be the default search engine.
- TheSoftwareGuy 8y agodoes the $9.4B figure include mac devices?
- luckylion 8y agoAre those all capable to run the latest version / receive updates? Otherwise, they're paying even more per device.
- reaperducer 8y agoAre those all capable to run the latest version / receive updates? Otherwise, they're paying even more per device. You can still use the web browser all the way back to the original iPhone. Updates are irrelevant. Source: Googled using Safari on my launch day iPhone just a few days ago.
- y4mi 8y agoUpdates are relevant, if we're talking about possibly changing the default search engine. It's currently Google...and if they want to change it, they'd have to update these EOL devices. This could significantly increase the price per device
- solarkraft 8y agoThe default browser doesn't change with updates. This is about new devices shipped.
- innagadadavida 8y agoThat has been true so far with Apple, but if they are unhappy with Google, they could retroactively switch users to DDG
- Hernanpm 8y agointeresting, that is the price to stop apple create its own search engine.
- netdur 8y agoThere's absolute no way they can do, the search engine is very very expensive to operate, to be successful you have to be better than Google and that require none existing technologies (such quantum storage). edit: Google is not doing the best at searching, they are doing the best by budget current economy allows, to be better than Google you have to cut cost of operation in very dramatic way, so you can expand the beyond where Google stands now, other than that, you can't outperform Google.
- hindsightRegret 8y agoI, for one, welcome our quantum word salad overlords.
- shhehebehdh 8y agoDon't be rude to non-skilled English speakers. The comment is wrong but not because of its poor English.
- luckylion 8y agoI suppose that depends on how you finance it. For Apple, it could be a feature of their ecosystem; for Google, the search engine is just there to lure you in so they can show you ads. That would be a totally different story: does Google actually have incentive to provide you with the best organic results next to which the ads would look out of place and bad? I don't think it would be a good business decision for Apple though, and there's no guarantee that they could even get there with throwing billions of dollars at it.
- throwawaymath 8y ago> to be successful you have to be better than Google and that require none existing technologies (such quantum storage). Sorry, what? Can you clarify?
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoQuite a cost to pay for a generation of people that don't know how to set a default search engine.
- 2019ideas 8y agoThis is the biggest benefit of Apple users.
- max76 8y agoI'd like to see a citation that Apple users are more likely to not change settings than average users. Most people don't enjoy configuring systems and leave most of the defaults most of the time.
- 2019ideas 8y agoThe most obvious and not controversial- Home screen on the iphone vs a home screen on Android.
- eugeniub 8y agoMeanwhile DuckDuckGo (probably valued at under $50 million) is worth less than 1% of that fee. No wonder Google continues to retain a monopolistic market share.
- ucaetano 8y agoWell, Google isn't the one putting it up for sale. Apple could easily add a user choice prompt, where users can pick from the top 3 search engines in a country. But I guess they like that $10B very much.
- reaperducer 8y agoApple could easily add a user choice prompt, where users can pick from the top 3 search engines in a country Settings > Safari > Search Engine
- max76 8y agoSure, this changes Safari's default search engine. Siri will still return Google results. Ask Siri "Do a web search for {search query}" and you'll see google'logo at the bottom of the list.
- ucaetano 8y agoThat's not what I meant. If Apple didn't want to push a search engine and take financial advantage of it, it could show a prompt the first time the user opens the browser, asking the user to select the search engine from a list. But I guess Apple just loves that nice shiny pile of cash too much to give it up!
- reaperducer 8y agoBut I guess Apple just loves that nice shiny pile of cash too much to give it up! Or perhaps a company that is focused on the user experience decided not to make 98% of its users change the setting.
- tonmoy 8y agoThat is about 7% of google’s 2018 revenue! It is 30% of google’s net operating income!!
- wmf 8y agoI looked it up: "Cost of revenues was $59.5 billion, consisting of [traffic acquisition cost] TAC of $26.7 billion and other cost of revenues of $32.8 billion. Our TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 23%." So yeah, you have to spend money to make money. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419000004/goog10-kq42018.htm#s31376B09D3B756EEB619A1219E4F06AA https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419...
- Theodores 8y agoIn Apple's reporting where they don't have the breakdown in iPhone sales any more there is talk of revenue from other services going up. Maybe this is part of that success story.
- resters 8y agoI would love to know how google determines the value of being the default search engine... estimating it is required to agree to the fee structure.
- pcprincipal 8y agoThe concept of owning demand is explored really well in this blog post[1]. A good excerpt: > In short, if somebody successfully inserts themselves between you and your customer, they can exercise tremendous control over you, including taking a big chunk of your profits or outright killing you. [1] https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2018/10/22/own-the-demand/ https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2018/10/22/own-the-dem...