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Ooof. Google gives Apple like a third of its search revenue on iOS searches. Apple gets tens of billions of bucks from this. Presumably it is so much money in p
by CobrastanJorji 2y ago
Ooof. Google gives Apple like a third of its search revenue on iOS searches. Apple gets tens of billions of bucks from this. Presumably it is so much money in part because Microsoft would happily pay half that to be the default instead. But if Google isn't allowed to offer anything at all, Microsoft is free to offer only a sliver of what it otherwise would have, because what's Apple gonna do otherwise, send all of its users to Duck Duck Go?
- mcintyre1994 2y agoI suspect the biggest concern Apple has is that it’s a big part of their services revenue, which is what’s holding their earnings up currently. They want Services to be seen as a big interesting business, but it’s mostly Google and App Store games. It’d be a big problem for them to report a drop in services revenue, and they’re not going to find anything to replace it quickly enough.
- bilbo0s 2y agoFrom a legal perspective, Apple's biggest concern, by far, is that this case could set a precedent for using courts to sanction Apple without letting Apple in court. Next to that, revenue is meaningless. Because they can take your revenue from whatever source via judgement, without giving you so much as an opportunity to file a brief in front of the court. This is one time where there is much more on the line than money. At least for Apple. Maybe for everyone if the Supremes were to say this is OK. (Unlikely in the extreme, but still.)
- DanHulton 2y agoThis is an underrated comment and should be WAY higher. Like a lot of things Apple does, this isn't about the thing itself, but about the next ten to twenty years of related things.
- brookst 2y agoAlso consider that a good portion of Apple's services revenue is from services running on GCP, which would be prohibited. They could go all-in with AWS and Azure, but that's a significant tech change and reduces their negotiating power with those alternatives.
- scarface_74 2y agoAnd how does that help? You’re going from the 3rd largest cloud provider to the first and second? Apple already runs some of its workloads on AWS. It was an open secret inside AWS before. But they brought an Apple person on stage at the last reinvent
- avianlyric 2y agoI think GP point, is that the proposed remedy: “contract between Google and Apple in which there would be anything exchanged of value.” would force Apple ditch all Google services, including GCP. Given paying Google for GCP services would require a contract exchanging something of value.
- scarface_74 2y agoI know, I’m saying that it is a dumb remedy to “we don’t like BigTech colluding so we are going to force Apple to leave the third largest cloud provider (an also ran) for the first and second largest provider”
- brookst 2y agoIt’s a dumb remedy in general, seemingly created without any understanding of the industry.
- hn_go_brrrrr 2y agoIt makes a lot more sense if you view it as "we're really gonna stick it to Google" and not "we're going to make a more competitive marketplace".
- computerfriend 2y ago> what's Apple gonna do otherwise, send all of its users to Duck Duck Go? Now that they're not encumbered by the Google deal: build their own search engine.
- xp84 2y agoYup! And the fact that Apple has so far appeared completely uninterested in doing this (compare this to how aggressively Apple competes against Google Maps!) proves that this anticompetitive financial arrangement harms competition, which harms consumers (and probably even harms advertisers, since having Google Search in such a dominant position means Google has much more pricing power to sell ads than they would if a large chunk of iPhone users moved over to Apple Search).
- voxic11 2y agoApple created maps because Google refused to implement turn by turn directions in the ios version of google maps (for a few years at least).
- kumarm 2y agoIf I remember correctly apple wanted Turn by Turn navigation while also not adding any ads to the app (essentially be their maps but no revenue).
- scarface_74 2y agoApple was paying for Google Map data.
- xp84 2y agoThe actual Google maps app was released and had TBT before Apple Maps even came out. The previous/original “Maps” app was using Google map tiles but was written in-house by Apple. Whatever its feature lacks were is on Apple, and Google had already delivered that feature to customers, without Apple needing to spend all that money.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago> what's Apple gonna do otherwise, send all of its users to Duck Duck Go? I mean, ye
- claytongulick 2y agoOr Kagi :D
- scarface_74 2y agoWhich pays Google…
- Apocryphon 2y agoHow does Kagi pay Google
- scarface_74 2y agoThey pay Google for search results and are a front end for it with.
- claytongulick 2y agoLots of sources, including their own indexer [1] [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...
- reginald78 2y agoApple is one of the most valuable companies in the world. They'd probably just buy an also ran search engine and make it the default. I'd say the only reason they didn't do this already was Google's money bag was so big and replacing them would be so easy if it shrank or disappeared. Smaller companies are the ones that will really get screwed by this ruling, Apple will be fine.
- jayd16 2y agoThat would possibly recoup the laziest of users but wouldn't the bulk simply switch to Google, leaving Apple with none of that revenue?
- paxys 2y agoExactly. Users have to manually download Chrome yet it has a 70% market share. Changing the search engine on mobile is already easy enough, far easier than installing a browser. Google will get a majority of its share back, while Apple will get nothing.
- BryantD 2y agoGoogle has a strong position in search, and pushes Chrome every time you hit their top level page. Also Chrome is the default on Android, yeah? I don't think you can extrapolate from that market share to determine how likely people are to change browsers.
- creato 2y agoThe parent's market share claim is for desktop OSes, where Android is irrelevant. It's still far easier to not install chrome than it is to install it: downloading a thing, running the downloaded thing, click through all the dialogs, ignore all of Windows's nags to stick with Edge (which is probably a greater abuse of platform control than advertising on the search page), ...
- 2y ago
- jayd16 2y ago> Microsoft is free to offer only a sliver of what it otherwise would have Would Apple even be able to make a deal with anyone at that point?
- adam_arthur 2y agoI seriously doubt Apple would move to Bing by default, even if there were some short term monetary gain. Using a subpar/cluttered search interface is so far off from their brand image. I find it 10x more likely Apple would suddenly find the motivation to make their own search engine if forced to end their deal with Google. (They say they wouldn't under any circumstance, but seems to be posturing to me) Regardless, it's clear getting paid Billions to give people the default they'd choose anyway is a good deal for them. I wonder who at Google negotiated this, because the terms seem very bad for them. They only make sense if the premise was to prevent Apple from starting a competitor
- TimTheTinker 2y ago> I find it 10x more likely Apple would suddenly find the motivation to make their own search engine if forced to end their deal with Google. I think that could only work if someone successfully makes the case internally that an Apple search engine built in to Safari (not as a first-class web app) would boost the Apple brand and/or Safari market share enough to justify it. Maybe even offer it as a subscription. To monetize it with ads would go completely against their DNA -- ad revenue incentivizes companies to violate users' privacy and build a sub-optimal UX. So it would have to be either a subscription or a platform feature.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoHow does Apple make money on Apple Maps without ads?
- scarface_74 2y agoIt doesn’t need to. It’s a part of the platform. It’s a necessity. But I’m sure they make some money off of the Uber/Lyft integration
- FateOfNations 2y agoThe $1199 I paid for my iPhone is how they make money on Apple Maps.
- chrisco255 2y agoOr just don't use a default at all and have users select a search provider when they get their phones. Would mean they don't get any kickbacks though. They could also, and probably should, route most requests through Siri first, that is, when they finally get Siri up to the level of modern LLMs.
- ahoka 2y agoOf course they would make a half assed Siri Search. Oh wait, that might work.