13 ms·

The irony of the suit will be when Google is barred from paying for preferential treatment, then everyone chooses them as the default anyway, saving Google bill

• ffggvv 6y ago
  apple actually did use bing for siri search results up until 2017 when google started bribing them
• matwood 6y ago
  Sort of. Google is paying Apple to not doing something else. When 8-12B is gone, Apple loses the incentive to not make something like DDG the default or build or buy their own search engine.
  • tptacek 6y ago
    The fact that DDG is grossly inferior to Google is a pretty strong incentive.
    • gogopuppygogo 6y ago
      Have you used it lately? It’s on par or better for 99% of what I use it for (tech, real estate, and advocacy).
      • tptacek 6y ago
        I have. Also, I just checked my browser history of searches against DDG. I stand by what I said. What they're doing is impressive, but that's not the same thing as saying that they're on the same level of result quality as Google.
      • kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
        I have to use !g a lot because of inferior results from the default search. It can be tough to even get a relevant wikipedia entry to show up in the top 5.
        • depressedpanda 6y ago
          Not really. I usually just add 'wiki' to my query. Or use !w.
      • bleepblorp 6y ago
        I use DDG daily. It's fine for simple, popular, searches (e.g. finding the website of a company by name) but is completely useless for anything even remotely complicated or specialized. DDG won't even return Stack ("Your question has been deleted as a duplicate") Overflow results for technical questions.
        • greenyoda 6y ago
          We must be asking very different technical questions, since I get lots of Stack Overflow results on DDG.
        • leokennis 6y ago
          I disagree. Google has one strong point, which is "context search". For example, "song with the trumpet intro 90s" or something, will yield crap on DDG and a YouTube link to the song you had in your head on Google. For any other search term, Google generally spams me with "answer boxes" that are universally slightly besides the point, while DDG gives me a clean page of relevant links.
    • dheera 6y ago
      There's also Bing, which IMO is not that inferior to Google.
    • acdha 6y ago
      It’s worse but Google has closed the gap a lot over the last few years as they remove anything which advertisers aren’t asking for. I periodically tried DDG for years and always switched back but about a year ago I didn’t. I still use Google a few times a week but it’s increasingly for more obscure technical things and DDG is often winning those due to not having removed their advanced search operators. Barring C-level change at Google I’m expecting the gap to disappear in a year or two.
      • _qulr 6y ago
        Could this be because Google doesn't have to compete? My impression is that Google Search is worse now than it was in the past. They've gotten complacent. So if they had to fight for users instead of taking them for granted through paying off Apple and Mozilla, then maybe Google would have to perform better. Everyone wins? (Except AAPL stockholders.)
        • bleepblorp 6y ago
          I think much of the apparent deterioration of Google Search is because high-quality information is disappearing from the web. Google can't return results that don't exist. If you Google '$PRODUCT review' and only get Amazon-affiliate scam sites pretending to be review sites, it's not because Google has been SEOed but rather because there are no actual reviews of $PRODUCT. Aside from a botched update last year, where Google would only return results that were selling things, Google Search is still very good at finding information that exists.
          • srtjstjsj 6y ago
            Google could downrank websites with affiliate links, since those are ads stuffing organic results. But they choose not to.
            • gundmc 6y ago
              Many of the only high quality review sites left (like Wirecutter) are partially monetized with referral links. I don't think this would be a good approach.
    • smnrchrds 6y ago
      Apple Maps was grossly inferior to Google Maps. It still is, but not grossly. Its inferiority didn't stop Apple from forcing it on their users.
      • judge2020 6y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple acquired DDG.
      • tptacek 6y ago
        Apple owned the outcome of that decision (and thus one of the world's best map services). They don't get that by pointing searches at DDG. In fact, even if they bought DDG, they wouldn't own DDG's search results, because DDG repackages other search engines.
        • utopcell 6y ago
          How could they buy DDG ? It serves organic results from Bing.
    • matwood 6y ago
      I think any inferiority is mainly because DDG doesn't build a user profile. I tested this the other day by searching for 'rust'. On Google the entire first page of results were either about the programming language or some game. DDG had something about iron oxide as the third result. Whenever I use DDG, I just have to remember that DDG does not have my personal profile, and adjust accordingly. Then the results are fine, and even better if I'm searching outside my normal profile.
      • pessimizer 6y ago
        > I think any inferiority is mainly because DDG doesn't build a user profile. It is. I haven't accepted cookies from google in many years, and when I get frustrated enough to !g bang on ddg it never finds me anything better.
• lumost 6y ago
  Who says apple hasn't built a viable alternative already? 12 billion might just be the cost of keeping them out of the search market. It's not 2000 anymore. Building a web scale search engine no longer requires novel distributed systems work, and the most viable search algorithms have strong open source implementations. It's still a very hard problem to get right, but you can create an "interesting" poc in a few weeks. Recent work on unspervised content based recommenders can help reduce click stream data requirements.
  • lehi 6y ago
    > Who says apple hasn't built a viable alternative already? App Store search says.
    • mjlee 6y ago
      I've never used the Google Play store - is it actually much better?
      • Denvercoder9 6y ago
        No, it's pretty much garbage.
      • ffpip 6y ago
        It's filled with ads and open source ripoffs. These kind of apps don't exist in App Store due to heavy human review.
        • snazz 6y ago
          It's worth mentioning that Apple's human review can be very incompetent. They rejected an update to iSH on TestFlight (https://ish.app https://ish.app) because the reviewer thought that the app's shell prompt was a "blank screen". That said, in general, I appreciate the greater average quality of apps in the App Store.
        • robertlagrant 6y ago
• sjg007 6y ago
  It would be a big hit.. but here’s where I think openAI has a big play and it’s a shame MSFT has exclusive access. You train gpt-3 to rank web pages and of course general knowledge. Anyone doing a gpt-3 search mashup?
• polote 6y ago
  I disagree with you There is probably going to be another search player willing to pay to be the default on Apple, with the increase of usage, due to being the default, they will make more money, with more money they will be able to improve their service faster. Unless search quality is critical for Apple, which would be surprising seeing the search quality of Siri
  • ffggvv 6y ago
    not just money but data. the more data they get the better their search results get. and the better their results get the more money they get in a loop. meaning a startup can’t compete due to the sheer amount of data google has
  • treis 6y ago
    I'm surprised by how many people are ok with this sort of pay to play. The search engine (or any other tech) that wins in the market should be the one best at being a search engine. Not the one willing to pay Apple the most money.
    • edogg 6y ago
      It’s just the default - if another search engine is compelling people are free to switch
      • whimsicalism 6y ago
        "just the default" seems to diminish the enormous importance of defaults. changing "just the default" on organ donation to presumed consent w/ family veto, for instance, would essentially end all organ supply issues in the nation.
      • kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
        If it doesn't matter that it's 'just the default' why is the DoJ so upset about Google paying to be the default? You can't simultaneously argue that being the default is irrelevant and that it's bad to pay to be the default.
• whimsicalism 6y ago
  If this path is so obvious, then why would Google continue paying at all? But yeah, I'm sure we all know more about Google's strategic outlook than high-level Google execs.
• grishka 6y ago
  They might mandate that the user be asked to pick a search engine from a randomly-ordered list during initial setup. We've already been through this with Microsoft and web browsers.
  • twblalock 6y ago
    Most people would choose Google if presented with a list during setup.
    • greenyoda 6y ago
      If the list was allowed to include a short description provided by the search provider, and DDG's said something like "Your privacy is important. We never track you or record your searches.", many more people might choose DDG. I've been using DDG since they first launched, and that simple promise was all it took to get me to try them out the first time I heard of them.
      • kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
        Let's not delude ourselves into thinking that DDG has even a percent of a percent of Google's brand recognition. The fact that we are even discussing this shows what sort of a bubble we are in. The vast vast majority of users in the real world don't know or care about DDG. No matter what your opinion of the company, Google's brand reputation is well earned and pervasive, and it started and was built from scratch, as opposed to DDG which basically stuck its own logo on Bing's API.
      • sumedh 6y ago
        > I've been using DDG since they first launched, and that simple promise was all it took to get me to try them out the first time I heard of them. You will do that the vast majority of people wont, for them Google means search.
• SquareWheel 6y ago
  Apple won't be the biggest loser; Mozilla will be. If Google is compelled to stop making search deals, Mozilla loses 90% of their income. They just laid off tons of staff. How many more will they be forced to cut? Apple I suspect will be just fine. But this isn't good news at all on the browser monoculture front.
  • ehsankia 6y ago
    While not as much as Mozilla, most reports saying it's still 10-20% of their profit, which isn't insignificant.
  • jmnicolas 6y ago
    I love Firefox and it's my browser of choice but at this point I'm fine with Mozilla dying: it's just a cash machine for a few executives.
  • ziml77 6y ago
    Wouldn't they just try to get Microsoft to pay instead? I doubt Mozilla cares which search engine they're getting paid to make default as long as they're getting money somehow. And MS hasn't given up on trying to push Bing on people, so I could see them going for a deal like that.
    • SquareWheel 6y ago
      It's certainly possible. I suspect if Google drops out though, then the price for Bing being included would go way down. They'd have no big players to bid against. I don't see Yandex or Baidu being interested. It's also possible Microsoft would exercise caution, considering this suit against Google. They may want to sidestep any deals that could paint a target on their back in the future.
  • Traster 6y ago
    It would be an absurd conclusion to reach that Google can't pay Mozilla to feature their search, but can sink billions into Chrome to gain market share.... and feature their search. I don't see a sensible end state though. What do you do? Spin off Chrome, destroy it as a business by preventing it from doing a deal with Google to feature Google search... and then what? Act surprised when web browser development stops dead?
• hrktb 6y ago
  No money coming to Apple could have other effects, like more aggressive anonymization of search data, or even caching on Apple’s side, or any other technical setup that their contract prevents them from doing now. Also Google is not the best engine everywhere nor for everyone. I think a sign of this is if it was that simple Google wouldn’t be paying that much in the first place.
• ma2rten 6y ago
  I don't think it's that clear that that would be the outcome. If Apple was allowed to get payed by Bing, because they are not the market leader, I think some people would switch back to Google but many people would just keep Bing. Also Apple could build its own search engine (using either google or bing as an api) or they could say buy DDG.
• makomk 6y ago
  Before Google was so aggressive about paying everyone to set themselves as the default search engine, Bing used to pay to be the only search option on a number of mobile devices and disable the ability to change that default (presumably because everyone would just switch back to Google). So for a while, a lot of Android devices sold by mobile networks in places like Europe forced searches to Bing with no way to change that. If the Justice Department contines with this attempt to stop Google paying to be the default, I can easily see this ending in a situation where their non-search competitors are worse off financially and consumers have substantially less choice than they do now.
• v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
  I can pretty much guarantee many tech-illiterate users will not really realize anything changed. Or they won‘t care. Funny fact: check out the mobile version of bing.com. The MS logo is hidden from the viewport unless you scroll up. Almost as if MS is pretty ok with not advertising to people too much that they’re on their platform.
• leokennis 6y ago
  Have you seen normal people using their iPhones and iPads? If so, did they ever change any default? I have family members who I'd call "computer literate 101" (i.e. they can use e-mail, create a PowerPoint, buy something on the web). Their homescreen is a history of their apps downloads, everything just gets added to the next available space. They do not use folders, they do not move icons. They do not enable large text size even though it would help them see the text better. They do not change the default ringtone. They do not use "do not disturb" when they're in a restaurant. The reason is, they don't even know these options exist. They have never opened the Settings app. To change the default search engine, you need to go three screens deep in Settings.app. If Google stops paying Apple and Apple changes the default (for new users) to Bing or whatever, 99.5% of new users will just use Bing.
• finnthehuman 6y ago
  Or it will change everyone’s impression that google is the only option. I used a distro that made yahoo default in Firefox. It’s fine. I’ll end up switching to google eventually but haven’t been arsed to do it yet.