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Apple gets a cut of search revenue from Chrome as part of secret Google deal

256 points by samwillis 4y ago

drcongo 4y ago
Haven't we known about this "secret" deal for years?
- goosedragons 4y ago
  We knew Apple got paid for default iOS search to be Google but I don't think we knew Apple got paid for Google using Google search in Google Chrome on iOS.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    Charging people to make a specific search engine the default for iOS search is arguably abusive of market power, but at least one could argue that it’s well-understood by consumers and competitors alike. Using that market power to demand a cut of revenue from private apps and then keeping it secret looks much worse.
    - votepaunchy 4y ago
      A monopolist search provider paying off a potential competitor is arguably abusive of market power and looks much worse.
      - luckylion 4y ago
        A "potential competitor" that has no product at all? That sounds like nonsense. They're paying for access, not to keep Apple out of search -- otherwise they'd pay a few extra billions on top so that users on Windows can't use that potential Apple search.
        graeme 4y ago
        Apple has been expanding its search activities for years. Google absolutely has giving Apple an incentive not to compete as part of its aims
        luckylion 4y ago
        Apple has a search bot, that, from how it interacts with the sites according to my logs, is a decade or so behind. I'm sure they could change that if they bothered, but I doubt they will. Why isn't Google paying Microsoft billions per quarter to stop Bing? Because Bing isn't a threat, and neither would Apple Search be. What is a threat is Apple making it hard for users on iOS to use Google Search. That's what the money is for, it's the rent they pay to have their little shop in the walled garden.
        realusername 4y ago
        Where's that Apple search engine? I've never heard of it
        agnokapathetic 4y ago
        browser auto complete (fantastic search term to click ranking data) and “Siri Suggested Websites” when you tap the “search” button on the Home Screen.
        graeme 4y ago
        > fantastic search term to click ranking data Could you expand on what you mean here?
        rafram 4y ago
        Entering a search term into the Safari URL bar will often pop up a webpage suggestion. It isn’t the first Google result. (Totally random example: try “Apache Spark tutorial.” Safari suggests a Databricks article, Google suggests something from Tutorialspoint.
    - dmix 4y ago
      If it's quid-pro-quo, ala Firefox funding itself via search defaults, I don't see how it's exploitative. I highly doubt Google is paying just to keep themselves in the Apple app store. They would (and could) have made a big fus about it unless they got something in return from Apple.
      - matthewdgreen 4y ago
        What are they getting from Apple, then? That’s the question that raises my anti-competitive fears. Presumably if Apple and Google wanted that question to be easily-answered they wouldn’t have written a secret deal.
        dmix 4y ago
        The odds they got something instead of just getting bullied is far more likely. My guess: Apple didn't compete with Google in some market with their ad platform.
        matthewdgreen 4y ago
        Every answer to this question raises more questions not answered by the T-shirt. When two enormously powerful organizations are secretly cutting deals, the chance that somebody’s losing is very high.
        Spooky23 4y ago
        Cash. Lots of cash. That lets Google grow in a softening market and compete with Facebook, etc. It’s cheaper to pay Apple than to keep Android relevant. No different than Microsoft sending a firehos of cash to OpenAI.
  - gundmc 4y ago
    The article itself says that Bloomberg reported this in 2020.
  - fIREpOK 4y ago
    Can I get paid for that too?
NetOpWibby 4y ago
[flagged]
- samwillis 4y ago
  I think this is bigger news than that. I think it's suggestive of controversial backroom deals where Apple allows Google Crome of iOS in return for a kickback on revenue. Obviously it could have been part of the negotiations around Google being the default search engine and revenue share with Safari, which if you are generous makes it less bad. But with the oncoming investigations and potential sanctions Apple is in line for (particularly in Europe) it doesn't paint the best picture.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    If Apple is forced to ask users to pick a search engine on startup then it won't be an issue for them. Huge problem for Google who will lose the most lucrative and dependable revenue source they have.
    - samwillis 4y ago
      Apple are paid $15 billion annually by Google for the Safari default. That's around 10-15% of their profit for doing nothing other than setting a default.
      - gorbypark 4y ago
        I've always wondered about the lost revenue possibilities of Apple not building their own search engine. Imagine in a perfect world (for Apple) that all Apple devices used AppleSearch 100% of the time. What kind of revenue would they need to pull in to clear 15 billion in profit per year? Some back of the napkin math shows that Alphabet is averaging about a 30% profit margin the last few years. Of course they do a ton of other stuff, most loosing money, but let's say Apple can make 30% off their search engine. That'd be 50 billion of revenue per year that Apple would need to bring in to break even with Google's 15 billion payment. Seeing as they already pull in ~20 billion per year revenue from App Store ads alone, I think it's not far fetched to think that Apple is leaving money on the table by not rolling their own search engine. I think they must be working on something, even if it's just as a backup plan in case Google is prevented from making such deals in the future due to anti-trust issues.
deanCommie 4y ago
> “This perhaps explains why Apple has not launched a rival search engine or invested in the development of its Safari browser to the point that it could become a credible challenger to Chrome,” I'm sorry what? On iOS, Safari is superior to Chrome in every way. People use Chrome for the cross-platform Google account integration
- threeseed 4y ago
  I would add that on macOS as well Safari is far superior in many aspects e.g. battery life, efficiency, performance. Also it argues that Apple takes more time to think through features rather than just blindly adding them. For example only allowing Web Push for apps installed to the phone rather than the bombarding the user.
  - gorbypark 4y ago
    Yeah, I think most complaints about Safari come from web developers. I do a fair amount of web dev yet use Safari as my default browser. As a user, it's great. It seems faster and leaner and it's definitely batter for battery life. The one downside is the extension ecosystem isn't as good as Chrome, but Ad Guard works ok (not as good as uBlock Origin, but good enough) and that's really all I need.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      It’s shocking that Safari is the only browser that seems to aim specifically for not eating battery and not turning your laptop into an oven. With the ever rising importance of mobile platforms you’d think these things would be a bigger priority at Google and Mozilla, especially since Google has not one but two mobile platforms, but instead the focus seems to be on gee-whiz bells and whistles of questionable value.
      - cassianoleal 4y ago
        Firefox is very good on macOS these days. Very low memory and CPU footprint, great battery life. I haven't run numbers but it feels similar to Safari in that I can use it pretty much all day without reaching for the charger - that is, unless I'm doing a lot of video confs.
wnevets 4y ago
Don't forget Apple really cares about your privacy unlike that mean Google.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sfe22 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Apple does limit tracking for iPhone users, across the web. They don't need to "cut a deal" with individual companies to do that. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21192830/apple-safari-intelligent-tracking-privacy-full-third-party-cookie-blocking https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21192830/apple-safari-int...
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      > Apple does limit tracking [to first party data collection] for iPhone users Fixed that for ya. Google is still collecting data on you through Google search. Facebook is still collecting data on you in app. The machine is working as intended. All that changed is that small(er) sites can’t load up on trackers for a few extra bucks. But don’t confuse that with blocking tracking. Oh and Google conveniently released tag manager support for first-party cookies so they track you by pretending not to be 3rd party trackers. Oh and apple still tracks you throughout iOS even less transparently.
      - marcellus23 4y ago
        Facebook using information that I give them while using Facebook.com, or the App Store using information about what apps I browse on the App Store, is not exactly a shocker, nor something I particularly find concerning. The word "tracking" doesn't even seem to really apply to this case -- the whole reason tracking is bad is that it means "tracking" me across multiple unrelated websites or apps (like, you know, a tracker would follow the trail of a person or a wild animal), allowing companies to correlate what would otherwise be independent, anonymous profiles. Apple collecting analytics even with the toggle turned off is clearly wrong. But I don't think they're being sneaky about the usage of the word "tracking". > The machine is working as intended. It sounds like you're implying the anti-tracking measures had no effect, but Facebook's revenue numbers would disagree.
yucky 4y ago
Maybe a dumb question, but how exactly is this sort of revenue kept secret in a publicly traded company?
- groffee 4y ago
  I mean is it? We're reading about it on HN.
  - yucky 4y ago
    I didn't think I need to state the obvious, but clearly I meant "for so long". If it's been secret revenue for any length of time in a public company, that is the part I'm trying to understand.
  - fIREpOK 4y ago
    You believe everything you read?
- waboremo 4y ago
  Financial reports aren't as strict as you might believe them to be. There are many widely accepted tactics utilized to keep certain things secret or just in general to paint a better picture. You can report on a deal with another company, but not specify every detail of that deal. Nobody would ever notice unless you're doing something egregious as suddenly having a 500% increase in "Other" revenue, or in the case of this situation being specifically investigated.
- Zigurd 4y ago
  It isn't a major part of Google's costs, nor a major part of Apple's revenue. Subsidies from apps, while they are usually bundled apps, which Apple doesn't do, are commonplace in hardware vendors' income. For PC makers, it is a more significant part of their business model.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    It’s like 15% of their profit, not all that small.
siliconc0w 4y ago
Paying your competition not to compete, if only we had a government entity focused on limiting anticompetitive behavior.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  Except that in this case Apple is a distributor. This is a pretty normal distribution agreement. Apple isn't in the search engine business, so to say they are being paid to not compete is like saying Best Buy is being paid not to compete (ie, they don't produce computers) by Lenovo. Many distribution agreements have a clause saying the distributor can't create their own product and compete. The reason is, as a distributor, you get a lot of insight into the customers, the product, the pricing. It's completely reasonable when you consider the full value chain of a product. Further, if Apple did compete in the search engine business, many would claim they would be unfairly competing by using their dominant market position in smart phones to dominate another industry. Competition issues are complex.
- robocat 4y ago
  So many comments on this topic assume that Google is the bad guy: that Google suggested a payment for anticompetitive reasons. Alternatively, Apple could have forced Google to pay, as part of a money skimming exercise because Apple has Google by the balls so why not get a cut? Without more information, it is just picking sides to speculate that Google is the bad guy and Apple is the good guy.
  - bengale 4y ago
    Or paying to acquire traffic is just a business arrangement and no one needs to be “the bad guy”.
- roenxi 4y ago
  We don't need a government regulator guaranteeing Google's profits. If Apple is in a position to dictate the defaults and Google wants them to make a certain choice, then Google should have to pay. Bringing in a regulator to control how Apple chooses the default search engine is a bad idea. We've seen similar attempts in the EU trying to break Internet Explorer and it turned out to be quite impotent compared to the march of Google Chrome. Regulators are ineffective at solving this sort of thing. Although it occurs to me that you might mean Apple should build their own search engine - which is a terrible idea. Google is really good at search engines and Apple wants their customers to have the best experience. Forcing Apple to build and promote an inferior search engine would be terrible for everyone.
marmee 4y ago
Very cowardly of Google, bribing Apple instead of counting on its superior product (at least up until a few years). This is a behavior that has a long history there, the no-poach agreements with Apple, selling Pixel in an extremely limited market, etc. This inexplicable fear in dealings with Apple means their situation is worse now when Google Search is in trouble
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
joemaller1 4y ago
how big is the secondary browser market on iOS? I can’t imagine searches on iOS-Chrome are worth very much.
- theiz 4y ago
  The assumption following this revaluation is that this is an incentive for Apple to keep this secondary market as small as possible. A google search in ios safari means a revenue for Apple. Another browser does not. With this, there is a double vendor lock-in.
- bagacrap 4y ago
  Yeah this sounds like Apple shaking down Google for additional revenue, rather than Google somehow sidestepping competition. Google is paying for the privilege of being able to compete in the browser space on iOS, because if they didn't, Apple would find some reason to ban Chrome from the platform. I'm thinking Satya is pretty jealous of this arrangement. Recent comments of his suggest that he thinks Google should be paying Microsoft every time a Windows user searches on Google.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
    >I'm thinking Satya is pretty jealous of this arrangement. Recent comments of his suggest that he thinks Google should be paying Microsoft every time a Windows user searches on Google. I don’t doubt Satya feels that way, but for the situation to really be analogous, Google would need to be the default search on Windows instead of Bing. Google has to deal with Apple because Google wants to be the default on the iPhone.
  - photonbeam 4y ago
    Ah, captive audience mindset, not tool-provider mindset :/ This is short term thinking
- grujicd 4y ago
  If you're not entirely on Apple ecosystem, secondary browser is the way to go to share bookmarks, history, etc. For example I'm using iPads since the first version came out, but otherwise I'm on Windows/Android. Also plenty of people around here own combination of iPhone and Windows. That said, I don't know how many of them know or care about non-default browsers.
whstl 4y ago
(EDIT) I was talking about a different deal here. I originally assumed this was the Google/Safari deal. It is interesting, however, to see the amounts: 2007, 25 million: https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote 2009, 82 million: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-billion-next-year-to-be-default-search-engine-on-ios/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-bill... (sorry couldn't find the original article) 2013, 1 billion: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-billion-next-year-to-be-default-search-engine-on-ios/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-bill... (same as above) 2015, 1 billion: https://searchengineland.com/prediction-apple-will-not-renew-google-safari-default-search-engine-216461 https://searchengineland.com/prediction-apple-will-not-renew... 2016, 1 billion: https://www.macworld.com/article/227243/report-google-is-the-default-iphone-search-engine-because-it-paid-apple-1-billion.html https://www.macworld.com/article/227243/report-google-is-the... and https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/22/google-paid-apple-1bn-to-be-default-ios-search-engine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/22/google-pa... 2017, 3 billion: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-paying-apple-3-billion-remain-safaris-default-search-engine/211308/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-paying-apple-3-bi... 2018, 9 billion: https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-billion-to-remain-default-search-engine-on-safari-306082 https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-bi... 2018, 12 billion: https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en... 2019, 9 billion: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/12/apple-may-have-been-paid-95b-by-google-in-2018-to-stay-default-safari-search-option https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/12/apple-may-have-be... 2020: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/deals-with-apple-aapl-mozilla-show-how-google-googl-discourages-competition https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/deals-wit...
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Those stories are about what Google pays Apple to be the default Safari search engine. This new claim is that Google pays Apple cut of search revenue, in addition to that.
  - samwillis 4y ago
zerr 4y ago
How does Apple verify that the correct amount is paid? Do they audit Google's search finances?
- worldsavior 4y ago
  I guess it's legal, and you don't mess with legal. Or maybe they have a guy who verifies it without involving anyone else.
  - navigate8310 4y ago
    If they mess with legal and go to tribunals to settle, wouldn't that attract unwanted attention?
    - worldsavior 4y ago
      It would. But if it happens, then they don't care that people would know. Now we know, does it change anything?
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
    “Guy who verifies” sounds pretty plausible to me. With both companies having tens of thousands of employees within miles of each other, and many who have worked at both, and get drunk together, it would be pretty hard to keep everyone involved from noticing if the numbers didn’t match up.
- slavboj 4y ago
  You build the possibility of undercounting into your pricing.
numair 4y ago
Sorry, I don’t buy it. I think the redacted product is Siri, and the author’s dismissal of this possibility shows how people underestimate the number of voice searches conducted using that service. As far as I know, it is the world’s most-used “AI service.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- crazygringo 4y ago
  I took a look at the PDF linked from the Register article but sadly the term is replaced with an icon in reflowed text, rather than a black bar, so you can't judge the width of it to tell which term is more likely. I agree Siri would make sense, but on the other hand I can't imagine any reason Siri would be redacted.
st3fan 4y ago
Most business deals are secret. Why is it so special that this deal needs to be called out as secret?
- urbandw311er 4y ago
  The article has also been edited to acknowledge that the business deal was already reported on 3 years ago. Some secret.
- fIREpOK 4y ago
  Maybe because they try to make it look like they care about privacy?
  - testTED 4y ago
    As does Mozilla, another large recipient of $ from GOOG.
    - ddtaylor 4y ago
      Two companies doing something sketchy doesn't make it not sketchy.
      - testTED 4y ago
        Correct.
  - seymourhersh 4y ago
    [dead]
- umeshunni 4y ago
  Because it drives clicks
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zahma 4y ago
renewiltord 4y ago
This is going to be wild for many of you to hear, but Google gets a cut of my phone plan as part of a secret deal I have with them for phone service.
lencastre 4y ago
Was this really a secret? Or more like an open secret? They are codependent in a way and AAPL seems to have the upper hand, currently.
Nevermark 4y ago
Given Apple heavily taxes their App ecosystem, even for transactions which incur no direct cost to Apple, nobody can know how many opportunities that don’t occur to Apple to pursue - that would have, if they had to compete for those dollars with actual offerings of their own. Not as strongly anti-competitive as not competing with a giant, but an angle on the App Store transaction tax that had not occurred to me before.
scotty79 4y ago
Should publicly traded companies be allowed to have secret deals?
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  Of course yes.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    I think not. We should have more transparency in the economy. Money of the stock market is a nice carrot. It already forces companies to be more transparent. I think we should bump up the transparency requirements.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      Transparency for the same of transparency isn’t a moral virtue. Having secrets or plans hidden from others is fine and a normal part of society and a well functioning economy.
      - scotty79 4y ago
        Transparecy definitely is a moral virtue and improves working of nearly all sysytems, markets included. However it doesn't arise naturally. It must be forced by external incentive because in the absence of it selfish interests of system participants strongly disincentivises it. When it's forced it benefits all, saving all participants from making bad calls.
        ericmay 4y ago
        I disagree, and you and I both know that it isn’t by our very nature. For example please be transparent about your home address, email, phone number and employee, and annual salary for the last 10 years here. As it relates to companies it stifles innovation for starters. > It must be forced by external incentive because in the absence of it selfish interests of system participants strongly disincentivises it. Are you saying here that transparency must be “forced” because the absence of transparency disincentivizes transparency?
muraiki 4y ago
Flagged because this "secret" has been known since 2020 (the article has been updated to state this but kept the clickbait title)

256 points by samwillis 4y ago

drcongo 4y ago

Haven't we known about this "secret" deal for years?

goosedragons 4y ago
We knew Apple got paid for default iOS search to be Google but I don't think we knew Apple got paid for Google using Google search in Google Chrome on iOS.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Charging people to make a specific search engine the default for iOS search is arguably abusive of market power, but at least one could argue that it’s well-understood by consumers and competitors alike. Using that market power to demand a cut of revenue from private apps and then keeping it secret looks much worse.
  - votepaunchy 4y ago
    A monopolist search provider paying off a potential competitor is arguably abusive of market power and looks much worse.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      A "potential competitor" that has no product at all? That sounds like nonsense. They're paying for access, not to keep Apple out of search -- otherwise they'd pay a few extra billions on top so that users on Windows can't use that potential Apple search.
      - graeme 4y ago
        Apple has been expanding its search activities for years. Google absolutely has giving Apple an incentive not to compete as part of its aims
        luckylion 4y ago
        Apple has a search bot, that, from how it interacts with the sites according to my logs, is a decade or so behind. I'm sure they could change that if they bothered, but I doubt they will. Why isn't Google paying Microsoft billions per quarter to stop Bing? Because Bing isn't a threat, and neither would Apple Search be. What is a threat is Apple making it hard for users on iOS to use Google Search. That's what the money is for, it's the rent they pay to have their little shop in the walled garden.
        realusername 4y ago
        Where's that Apple search engine? I've never heard of it
        agnokapathetic 4y ago
        browser auto complete (fantastic search term to click ranking data) and “Siri Suggested Websites” when you tap the “search” button on the Home Screen.
        graeme 4y ago
        > fantastic search term to click ranking data Could you expand on what you mean here?
        rafram 4y ago
        Entering a search term into the Safari URL bar will often pop up a webpage suggestion. It isn’t the first Google result. (Totally random example: try “Apache Spark tutorial.” Safari suggests a Databricks article, Google suggests something from Tutorialspoint.
  - dmix 4y ago
    If it's quid-pro-quo, ala Firefox funding itself via search defaults, I don't see how it's exploitative. I highly doubt Google is paying just to keep themselves in the Apple app store. They would (and could) have made a big fus about it unless they got something in return from Apple.
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      What are they getting from Apple, then? That’s the question that raises my anti-competitive fears. Presumably if Apple and Google wanted that question to be easily-answered they wouldn’t have written a secret deal.
      - dmix 4y ago
        The odds they got something instead of just getting bullied is far more likely. My guess: Apple didn't compete with Google in some market with their ad platform.
        matthewdgreen 4y ago
        Every answer to this question raises more questions not answered by the T-shirt. When two enormously powerful organizations are secretly cutting deals, the chance that somebody’s losing is very high.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        Cash. Lots of cash. That lets Google grow in a softening market and compete with Facebook, etc. It’s cheaper to pay Apple than to keep Android relevant. No different than Microsoft sending a firehos of cash to OpenAI.
- gundmc 4y ago
  The article itself says that Bloomberg reported this in 2020.
- fIREpOK 4y ago
  Can I get paid for that too?

NetOpWibby 4y ago

[flagged]

samwillis 4y ago
I think this is bigger news than that. I think it's suggestive of controversial backroom deals where Apple allows Google Crome of iOS in return for a kickback on revenue. Obviously it could have been part of the negotiations around Google being the default search engine and revenue share with Safari, which if you are generous makes it less bad. But with the oncoming investigations and potential sanctions Apple is in line for (particularly in Europe) it doesn't paint the best picture.
- threeseed 4y ago
  If Apple is forced to ask users to pick a search engine on startup then it won't be an issue for them. Huge problem for Google who will lose the most lucrative and dependable revenue source they have.
  - samwillis 4y ago
    Apple are paid $15 billion annually by Google for the Safari default. That's around 10-15% of their profit for doing nothing other than setting a default.
    - gorbypark 4y ago
      I've always wondered about the lost revenue possibilities of Apple not building their own search engine. Imagine in a perfect world (for Apple) that all Apple devices used AppleSearch 100% of the time. What kind of revenue would they need to pull in to clear 15 billion in profit per year? Some back of the napkin math shows that Alphabet is averaging about a 30% profit margin the last few years. Of course they do a ton of other stuff, most loosing money, but let's say Apple can make 30% off their search engine. That'd be 50 billion of revenue per year that Apple would need to bring in to break even with Google's 15 billion payment. Seeing as they already pull in ~20 billion per year revenue from App Store ads alone, I think it's not far fetched to think that Apple is leaving money on the table by not rolling their own search engine. I think they must be working on something, even if it's just as a backup plan in case Google is prevented from making such deals in the future due to anti-trust issues.

deanCommie 4y ago

> “This perhaps explains why Apple has not launched a rival search engine or invested in the development of its Safari browser to the point that it could become a credible challenger to Chrome,” I'm sorry what? On iOS, Safari is superior to Chrome in every way. People use Chrome for the cross-platform Google account integration

threeseed 4y ago
I would add that on macOS as well Safari is far superior in many aspects e.g. battery life, efficiency, performance. Also it argues that Apple takes more time to think through features rather than just blindly adding them. For example only allowing Web Push for apps installed to the phone rather than the bombarding the user.
- gorbypark 4y ago
  Yeah, I think most complaints about Safari come from web developers. I do a fair amount of web dev yet use Safari as my default browser. As a user, it's great. It seems faster and leaner and it's definitely batter for battery life. The one downside is the extension ecosystem isn't as good as Chrome, but Ad Guard works ok (not as good as uBlock Origin, but good enough) and that's really all I need.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    It’s shocking that Safari is the only browser that seems to aim specifically for not eating battery and not turning your laptop into an oven. With the ever rising importance of mobile platforms you’d think these things would be a bigger priority at Google and Mozilla, especially since Google has not one but two mobile platforms, but instead the focus seems to be on gee-whiz bells and whistles of questionable value.
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      Firefox is very good on macOS these days. Very low memory and CPU footprint, great battery life. I haven't run numbers but it feels similar to Safari in that I can use it pretty much all day without reaching for the charger - that is, unless I'm doing a lot of video confs.

wnevets 4y ago

Don't forget Apple really cares about your privacy unlike that mean Google.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sfe22 4y ago
[flagged]
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Apple does limit tracking for iPhone users, across the web. They don't need to "cut a deal" with individual companies to do that. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21192830/apple-safari-intelligent-tracking-privacy-full-third-party-cookie-blocking https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21192830/apple-safari-int...
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    > Apple does limit tracking [to first party data collection] for iPhone users Fixed that for ya. Google is still collecting data on you through Google search. Facebook is still collecting data on you in app. The machine is working as intended. All that changed is that small(er) sites can’t load up on trackers for a few extra bucks. But don’t confuse that with blocking tracking. Oh and Google conveniently released tag manager support for first-party cookies so they track you by pretending not to be 3rd party trackers. Oh and apple still tracks you throughout iOS even less transparently.
    - marcellus23 4y ago
      Facebook using information that I give them while using Facebook.com, or the App Store using information about what apps I browse on the App Store, is not exactly a shocker, nor something I particularly find concerning. The word "tracking" doesn't even seem to really apply to this case -- the whole reason tracking is bad is that it means "tracking" me across multiple unrelated websites or apps (like, you know, a tracker would follow the trail of a person or a wild animal), allowing companies to correlate what would otherwise be independent, anonymous profiles. Apple collecting analytics even with the toggle turned off is clearly wrong. But I don't think they're being sneaky about the usage of the word "tracking". > The machine is working as intended. It sounds like you're implying the anti-tracking measures had no effect, but Facebook's revenue numbers would disagree.

yucky 4y ago

Maybe a dumb question, but how exactly is this sort of revenue kept secret in a publicly traded company?

groffee 4y ago
I mean is it? We're reading about it on HN.
- yucky 4y ago
  I didn't think I need to state the obvious, but clearly I meant "for so long". If it's been secret revenue for any length of time in a public company, that is the part I'm trying to understand.
- fIREpOK 4y ago
  You believe everything you read?
waboremo 4y ago
Financial reports aren't as strict as you might believe them to be. There are many widely accepted tactics utilized to keep certain things secret or just in general to paint a better picture. You can report on a deal with another company, but not specify every detail of that deal. Nobody would ever notice unless you're doing something egregious as suddenly having a 500% increase in "Other" revenue, or in the case of this situation being specifically investigated.
Zigurd 4y ago
It isn't a major part of Google's costs, nor a major part of Apple's revenue. Subsidies from apps, while they are usually bundled apps, which Apple doesn't do, are commonplace in hardware vendors' income. For PC makers, it is a more significant part of their business model.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  It’s like 15% of their profit, not all that small.

siliconc0w 4y ago

Paying your competition not to compete, if only we had a government entity focused on limiting anticompetitive behavior.

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danielmarkbruce 4y ago
Except that in this case Apple is a distributor. This is a pretty normal distribution agreement. Apple isn't in the search engine business, so to say they are being paid to not compete is like saying Best Buy is being paid not to compete (ie, they don't produce computers) by Lenovo. Many distribution agreements have a clause saying the distributor can't create their own product and compete. The reason is, as a distributor, you get a lot of insight into the customers, the product, the pricing. It's completely reasonable when you consider the full value chain of a product. Further, if Apple did compete in the search engine business, many would claim they would be unfairly competing by using their dominant market position in smart phones to dominate another industry. Competition issues are complex.
robocat 4y ago
So many comments on this topic assume that Google is the bad guy: that Google suggested a payment for anticompetitive reasons. Alternatively, Apple could have forced Google to pay, as part of a money skimming exercise because Apple has Google by the balls so why not get a cut? Without more information, it is just picking sides to speculate that Google is the bad guy and Apple is the good guy.
- bengale 4y ago
  Or paying to acquire traffic is just a business arrangement and no one needs to be “the bad guy”.
roenxi 4y ago
We don't need a government regulator guaranteeing Google's profits. If Apple is in a position to dictate the defaults and Google wants them to make a certain choice, then Google should have to pay. Bringing in a regulator to control how Apple chooses the default search engine is a bad idea. We've seen similar attempts in the EU trying to break Internet Explorer and it turned out to be quite impotent compared to the march of Google Chrome. Regulators are ineffective at solving this sort of thing. Although it occurs to me that you might mean Apple should build their own search engine - which is a terrible idea. Google is really good at search engines and Apple wants their customers to have the best experience. Forcing Apple to build and promote an inferior search engine would be terrible for everyone.

marmee 4y ago

Very cowardly of Google, bribing Apple instead of counting on its superior product (at least up until a few years). This is a behavior that has a long history there, the no-poach agreements with Apple, selling Pixel in an extremely limited market, etc. This inexplicable fear in dealings with Apple means their situation is worse now when Google Search is in trouble

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joemaller1 4y ago

how big is the secondary browser market on iOS? I can’t imagine searches on iOS-Chrome are worth very much.

theiz 4y ago
The assumption following this revaluation is that this is an incentive for Apple to keep this secondary market as small as possible. A google search in ios safari means a revenue for Apple. Another browser does not. With this, there is a double vendor lock-in.
bagacrap 4y ago
Yeah this sounds like Apple shaking down Google for additional revenue, rather than Google somehow sidestepping competition. Google is paying for the privilege of being able to compete in the browser space on iOS, because if they didn't, Apple would find some reason to ban Chrome from the platform. I'm thinking Satya is pretty jealous of this arrangement. Recent comments of his suggest that he thinks Google should be paying Microsoft every time a Windows user searches on Google.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
  >I'm thinking Satya is pretty jealous of this arrangement. Recent comments of his suggest that he thinks Google should be paying Microsoft every time a Windows user searches on Google. I don’t doubt Satya feels that way, but for the situation to really be analogous, Google would need to be the default search on Windows instead of Bing. Google has to deal with Apple because Google wants to be the default on the iPhone.
- photonbeam 4y ago
  Ah, captive audience mindset, not tool-provider mindset :/ This is short term thinking
grujicd 4y ago
If you're not entirely on Apple ecosystem, secondary browser is the way to go to share bookmarks, history, etc. For example I'm using iPads since the first version came out, but otherwise I'm on Windows/Android. Also plenty of people around here own combination of iPhone and Windows. That said, I don't know how many of them know or care about non-default browsers.

whstl 4y ago

(EDIT) I was talking about a different deal here. I originally assumed this was the Google/Safari deal. It is interesting, however, to see the amounts: 2007, 25 million: https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote 2009, 82 million: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-billion-next-year-to-be-default-search-engine-on-ios/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-bill... (sorry couldn't find the original article) 2013, 1 billion: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-billion-next-year-to-be-default-search-engine-on-ios/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/google-to-pay-apple-1-bill... (same as above) 2015, 1 billion: https://searchengineland.com/prediction-apple-will-not-renew-google-safari-default-search-engine-216461 https://searchengineland.com/prediction-apple-will-not-renew... 2016, 1 billion: https://www.macworld.com/article/227243/report-google-is-the-default-iphone-search-engine-because-it-paid-apple-1-billion.html https://www.macworld.com/article/227243/report-google-is-the... and https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/22/google-paid-apple-1bn-to-be-default-ios-search-engine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/22/google-pa... 2017, 3 billion: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-paying-apple-3-billion-remain-safaris-default-search-engine/211308/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-paying-apple-3-bi... 2018, 9 billion: https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-billion-to-remain-default-search-engine-on-safari-306082 https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-bi... 2018, 12 billion: https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en... 2019, 9 billion: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/12/apple-may-have-been-paid-95b-by-google-in-2018-to-stay-default-safari-search-option https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/12/apple-may-have-be... 2020: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/deals-with-apple-aapl-mozilla-show-how-google-googl-discourages-competition https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/deals-wit...

CharlesW 4y ago
Those stories are about what Google pays Apple to be the default Safari search engine. This new claim is that Google pays Apple cut of search revenue, in addition to that.
- samwillis 4y ago

zerr 4y ago

How does Apple verify that the correct amount is paid? Do they audit Google's search finances?

worldsavior 4y ago
I guess it's legal, and you don't mess with legal. Or maybe they have a guy who verifies it without involving anyone else.
- navigate8310 4y ago
  If they mess with legal and go to tribunals to settle, wouldn't that attract unwanted attention?
  - worldsavior 4y ago
    It would. But if it happens, then they don't care that people would know. Now we know, does it change anything?
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
  “Guy who verifies” sounds pretty plausible to me. With both companies having tens of thousands of employees within miles of each other, and many who have worked at both, and get drunk together, it would be pretty hard to keep everyone involved from noticing if the numbers didn’t match up.
slavboj 4y ago
You build the possibility of undercounting into your pricing.

numair 4y ago

Sorry, I don’t buy it. I think the redacted product is Siri, and the author’s dismissal of this possibility shows how people underestimate the number of voice searches conducted using that service. As far as I know, it is the world’s most-used “AI service.”

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crazygringo 4y ago
I took a look at the PDF linked from the Register article but sadly the term is replaced with an icon in reflowed text, rather than a black bar, so you can't judge the width of it to tell which term is more likely. I agree Siri would make sense, but on the other hand I can't imagine any reason Siri would be redacted.

st3fan 4y ago

Most business deals are secret. Why is it so special that this deal needs to be called out as secret?

urbandw311er 4y ago
The article has also been edited to acknowledge that the business deal was already reported on 3 years ago. Some secret.
fIREpOK 4y ago
Maybe because they try to make it look like they care about privacy?
- testTED 4y ago
  As does Mozilla, another large recipient of $ from GOOG.
  - ddtaylor 4y ago
    Two companies doing something sketchy doesn't make it not sketchy.
    - testTED 4y ago
      Correct.
- seymourhersh 4y ago
  [dead]
umeshunni 4y ago
Because it drives clicks
deleted 4y ago
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zahma 4y ago

renewiltord 4y ago

This is going to be wild for many of you to hear, but Google gets a cut of my phone plan as part of a secret deal I have with them for phone service.

lencastre 4y ago

Was this really a secret? Or more like an open secret? They are codependent in a way and AAPL seems to have the upper hand, currently.

Nevermark 4y ago

Given Apple heavily taxes their App ecosystem, even for transactions which incur no direct cost to Apple, nobody can know how many opportunities that don’t occur to Apple to pursue - that would have, if they had to compete for those dollars with actual offerings of their own. Not as strongly anti-competitive as not competing with a giant, but an angle on the App Store transaction tax that had not occurred to me before.

scotty79 4y ago

Should publicly traded companies be allowed to have secret deals?

carlosjobim 4y ago
Of course yes.
- scotty79 4y ago
  I think not. We should have more transparency in the economy. Money of the stock market is a nice carrot. It already forces companies to be more transparent. I think we should bump up the transparency requirements.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Transparency for the same of transparency isn’t a moral virtue. Having secrets or plans hidden from others is fine and a normal part of society and a well functioning economy.
    - scotty79 4y ago
      Transparecy definitely is a moral virtue and improves working of nearly all sysytems, markets included. However it doesn't arise naturally. It must be forced by external incentive because in the absence of it selfish interests of system participants strongly disincentivises it. When it's forced it benefits all, saving all participants from making bad calls.
      - ericmay 4y ago
        I disagree, and you and I both know that it isn’t by our very nature. For example please be transparent about your home address, email, phone number and employee, and annual salary for the last 10 years here. As it relates to companies it stifles innovation for starters. > It must be forced by external incentive because in the absence of it selfish interests of system participants strongly disincentivises it. Are you saying here that transparency must be “forced” because the absence of transparency disincentivizes transparency?

muraiki 4y ago

Flagged because this "secret" has been known since 2020 (the article has been updated to state this but kept the clickbait title)