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When I took a negotiations course, there was one interesting thing they teach. It is legal to pay someone to enter the market (e.g. Microsoft paying Apple to m

When I took a negotiations course, there was one interesting thing they teach. It is legal to pay someone to enter the market (e.g. Microsoft paying Apple to make a search engine if they thought most of their users would be former Google users). It is, however, illegal to pay someone to stay out of the market. Given that Apple was developing a search engine, the DOJ is arguing that Google decided to offer Apple a lot more money than Apple felt they would make with their own search engine. So Apple preferred the Google money to developing their own engine. While not an explicit deal to stay out of the market, the argument is that it is equivalent to paying Apple to stay out of the market.

elicash 3y ago
Here's a negotiations question: Is Google overpaying or underpaying for "default"? If you believe the price tag is so high because Google is secretly paying Apple to stay out of the market, then they'd be overpaying what would otherwise be a fair market price. But the key argument in this case has been that the value of being "default" is so high that companies like Microsoft can't compete, since those extra queries make google way better. In that sense, Google would be UNDERPAYING. To make your overpaying argument, Microsoft should have been arguing that being default is worthless and that Google was clearly paying Apple for some "other" nefarious reasons, like not developing their own search engine. I actually think that's a much stronger argument because I think there's evidence of it. But it's not the main argument being made in this weird case about how important it is to be default. They could have just looked at the evidence of a deal between Google and Apple for Apple to not compete and left it at that. They've made this too complicated. The involvement of these other search companies is irrelevant.

elicash 3y ago

Here's a negotiations question: Is Google overpaying or underpaying for "default"? If you believe the price tag is so high because Google is secretly paying Apple to stay out of the market, then they'd be overpaying what would otherwise be a fair market price. But the key argument in this case has been that the value of being "default" is so high that companies like Microsoft can't compete, since those extra queries make google way better. In that sense, Google would be UNDERPAYING. To make your overpaying argument, Microsoft should have been arguing that being default is worthless and that Google was clearly paying Apple for some "other" nefarious reasons, like not developing their own search engine. I actually think that's a much stronger argument because I think there's evidence of it. But it's not the main argument being made in this weird case about how important it is to be default. They could have just looked at the evidence of a deal between Google and Apple for Apple to not compete and left it at that. They've made this too complicated. The involvement of these other search companies is irrelevant.