'Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet' (nytimes.com) 29
The New York Times' looks at "a deal that controls the internet" — Apple's agreement to feature Google as the preselected search engine for iPhones, saying America's Justice Department views it "as a prime example of what prosecutors say are Google's illegal tactics to protect its monopoly and choke off competition..."
The scrutiny of the pact, which was first inked 15 years ago and has rarely been discussed by either company, has highlighted the special relationship between Silicon Valley's two most valuable companies — an unlikely union of rivals that regulators say is unfairly preventing smaller companies from flourishing. "We have this sort of strange term in Silicon Valley: co-opetition," said Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel from 2009 to 2017. "You have brutal competition, but at the same time, you have necessary cooperation." Apple and Google are joined at the hip even though Mr. Cook has said internet advertising, Google's bread and butter, engages in "surveillance" of consumers and even though Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder, once promised "thermonuclear war" on his Silicon Valley neighbor when he learned it was working on a rival to the iPhone. Apple and Google's parent company, Alphabet, worth more than $3 trillion combined, do compete on plenty of fronts, like smartphones, digital maps and laptops. But they also know how to make nice when it suits their interests. And few deals have been nicer to both sides of the table than the iPhone search deal.
Nearly half of Google's search traffic now comes from Apple devices, according to the Justice Department, and the prospect of losing the Apple deal has been described as a "code red" scenario inside the company. When iPhone users search on Google, they see the search ads that drive Google's business. They can also find their way to other Google products, like YouTube. A former Google executive, who asked not to be identified because he was not permitted to talk about the deal, said the prospect of losing Apple's traffic was "terrifying" to the company. The Justice Department, which is asking for a court injunction preventing Google from entering into deals like the one it made with Apple, argues that the arrangement has unfairly helped make Google, which handles 92 percent of the world's internet searches, the center of consumers' online lives...
[C]ompetitors like DuckDuckGo, a small search engine that sells itself as a privacy-focused alternative to Google, could never match Google's tab with Apple. Apple now receives an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion in annual payments — up from $1 billion a year in 2014 — in exchange for building Google's search engine into its products. It is probably the single biggest payment that Google makes to anyone and accounts for 14 to 21 percent of Apple's annual profits. That's not money Apple would be eager to walk away from.
In fact, Mr. Cook and Mr. Pichai met again in 2018 to discuss how they could increase revenue from search. After the meeting, a senior Apple employee wrote to a Google counterpart that "our vision is that we work as if we are one company," according to the Justice Department's complaint. The article remembers Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone in 2007 — and then inviting Google CEO Eric Schmidt onto the stage. Schmidt, who was also on Apple's board of directors, joked "If we just sort of merged the two companies, we could just call them AppleGoo."
He'd also added that with Google search on the iPhone, "you can actually merge without merging."
Nearly half of Google's search traffic now comes from Apple devices, according to the Justice Department, and the prospect of losing the Apple deal has been described as a "code red" scenario inside the company. When iPhone users search on Google, they see the search ads that drive Google's business. They can also find their way to other Google products, like YouTube. A former Google executive, who asked not to be identified because he was not permitted to talk about the deal, said the prospect of losing Apple's traffic was "terrifying" to the company. The Justice Department, which is asking for a court injunction preventing Google from entering into deals like the one it made with Apple, argues that the arrangement has unfairly helped make Google, which handles 92 percent of the world's internet searches, the center of consumers' online lives...
[C]ompetitors like DuckDuckGo, a small search engine that sells itself as a privacy-focused alternative to Google, could never match Google's tab with Apple. Apple now receives an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion in annual payments — up from $1 billion a year in 2014 — in exchange for building Google's search engine into its products. It is probably the single biggest payment that Google makes to anyone and accounts for 14 to 21 percent of Apple's annual profits. That's not money Apple would be eager to walk away from.
In fact, Mr. Cook and Mr. Pichai met again in 2018 to discuss how they could increase revenue from search. After the meeting, a senior Apple employee wrote to a Google counterpart that "our vision is that we work as if we are one company," according to the Justice Department's complaint. The article remembers Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone in 2007 — and then inviting Google CEO Eric Schmidt onto the stage. Schmidt, who was also on Apple's board of directors, joked "If we just sort of merged the two companies, we could just call them AppleGoo."
He'd also added that with Google search on the iPhone, "you can actually merge without merging."
Do as I say, not as I do (Score:1)
When countries form alliances it is hailed as a good thing. It brings peace and harmony, trade and wealth. But when companies do the same it is bad, stifling and frequently illegal.
Re:Do as I say, not as I do (Score:4, Informative)
When countries form alliances it is hailed as a good thing. It brings peace and harmony
Binding alliances were a major cause of the First World War.
The First World War was the primary cause of the Second World War.
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Another major cause was non-representative governments such as monarchies and dictatorships. Also, involved were simmering ethnic tensions left over from previous outbreaks.
In my opinion, those were more important that alliances. NATO has been a successful alliance. Even the Warsaw Pact could be considered a successful alliance. Where alliances do not exist we see a lot of smaller wars because those are easier to get into and they lend themselves well to ethnic and regional stupidity. Religion is also a maj
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Re:Do as I say, not as I do (Score:4, Insightful)
When countries form alliances it is hailed as a good thing by the marketing department of those countries, not necessarily by the population.
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Google Has Profits, DuckDuckDoesn't (Score:3)
Google Ads over it's lifetime has generated so much money, that it spawned other services like gMail, YouTube, and a whole mess of projects under Alphabet. That's where Google spends its profits.
DuckDuckGo licenses Google's search results, but bundles it with less intrusive ads... but those ads pay less. That means less profits, and potentially a loss if the Google bill is too high. Nice info giveaway, but it's not going to knock over Google.
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Much of this post is the opposite of the truth.
Google bought Youtube after failing to compete with them. Some argue that this offered useful legal protection, but there's really no way to know how that would have panned out.
https://www.theringer.com/2016... [theringer.com]
DuckDuckGo does not license Google's results according to any site I could find. They explicitly say they get no results from google.
https://help.duckduckgo.com/du... [duckduckgo.com]
It is literally true that Google has spawned tons of services. A rather important point n
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Underrated reply!
Thank you for the killedbygoogle.com link - so very true!
DuckDuckGo results (Score:5, Interesting)
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DuckDuckGo does not license Google's results. "It combines data from hundreds of sources including Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia and Bing, with its own web crawler, to surface the most relevant results." (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/duckduckgo-google-alternative-search-privacy [wired.co.uk])
It'd be interesting to test whether DDG uses Google, perhaps transitively.
I read that some Google engineers did a test for Bing a few years ago, proving that Bing was actually using Google (in part) to decide what results to display. Bing more or less admitted it. Cite: https://searchengineland.com/g... [searchengineland.com].
I have no idea if Bing is still doing this, or if any other search engines do it.
Instead of reading this (Score:1)
Understand that the only fact in the article is that Google pays Apple to be the default search on iPhone. You probably already knew that.
The problem is Google's control of the ad business leads to a situation where no one can have a comparable offering for search and for video content creators. Everyone else gets cents for every dollar Google gets.
The solution is to force the Google monopoly to either divest the advertising business or to offer everyone else the same access to sell and implement advertis
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Forcing Google to divest its advertising business would, I think, result in a situation not much different than we have now. Google Search Inc. would get a large payment from Google Ads Inc. to include the latter's ads in the former's search results. Meanwhile Google Search Inc. would have exactly the same incentive it does now to do these kinds of access deals with gatekeepers like Apple and Mozilla. Google Search Inc. would still be using its market power to gain preferred access to customers. In effect y
Advertising (Score:2)
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At the very bare minimum, the regular population should be informed of all the consequences of this "free" they're used to.
"Apple's traffic" (Score:5, Insightful)
How revealing is that sentence.
If people weren't such passive consumers, they would change their default search engine, be it on iOS, Android, Linux or Windows. When I install a browser, that's the first thing I do.
It shouldn't be "Apple's traffic", it should be Apple users' traffic. Gee...
"We work as if we are one company" (Score:3)
FTA: "In fact, Mr. Cook and Mr. Pichai met again in 2018 to discuss how they could increase revenue from search. After the meeting, a senior Apple employee wrote to a Google counterpart that "our vision is that we work as if we are one company," according to the Justice Department's complaint."
NYT in 2014: Jobs 'a walking antitrust violation' (Score:4, Interesting)
Steve Jobs Defied Convention, and Perhaps the Law [slashdot.org]: James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that recent revelations that Steve Jobs was the driving force in a conspiracy to prevent competitors from poaching employees raises the question: If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail? Jobs 'was a walking antitrust violation. I'm simply astounded by the risks he seemed willing to take,' says Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an expert in antitrust law. 'Didn't he have lawyers advising him? You see this kind of behavior sometimes in small, private or family-run companies, but almost never in large public companies like Apple.' In 2007, Jobs threatened Palm with patent litigation unless Palm agreed not to recruit Apple employees, even though Palm's then-chief executive, Edward Colligan, told him that such a plan was 'likely illegal.' That same year, Jobs wrote Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google at the time, 'I would be extremely pleased if Google would stop doing this,' referring to its efforts to recruit an Apple engineer. When Jobs learned that the Google recruiter who contacted the Apple employee would be 'fired within the hour,' he responded with a smiley face. 'How could anyone have approved that?' says Hovenkamp. 'Any competent antitrust counsel would know that's illegal. And they had to know they'd get caught eventually.
See also: $415 Million Settlement Approved In Tech Worker Anti-Poaching Case [slashdot.org]
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When Jobs learned that the Google recruiter who contacted the Apple employee would be 'fired within the hour,' he responded with a smiley face.
I really hope that employee sued for wrongful termination.
Citation needed. (Score:1)
"Nearly half of Google's search traffic now comes from Apple devices, according to the Justice Department"
Well, err, lets see. There are far more android devices than apple, and there are also a metric f*ton of PC's as well, with people searching for google.
So I'm calling bullsh!t on that one. And that tells me everything I need to know about the true motivations of those trying to make a case.
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goople is better (Score:1)
Amaface for Zuck and Bezos.
Orasoft
Ooglebook
Alphazon
Fapple
I for one welcome our existing transnational overlords. Bezos is annoying but at least he seems like he can tie his own shoes unlike Trump and Boris Johnson and he won't snap your neck just because he's bored like Putin.
True, Apple really does have the market power (Score:1)
The weirdest part of the whole process is that it is the company that is paying the $8-12 Billion that's being called the monopoly, as opposed to the company that's demanding $8-12 Billion to put them as the default search engine. With the exact same evidence and chain of thought, doesn't this actually mean Apple is the one with the market power here?
I don't remember Microsoft paying HP billions to choose IE as its browser - it was shoved down their throat, like a good little monopoly should.
Google is better (Score:2, Informative)
This argument would make sense if there was a viable Google competitor being suppressed. As search engines stand now, Duckduckduckgo is a massive ball of suckage in distant second place. And Bing isn't even worthy of applying to the competition.
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heh, you clearly haven't used duckduckgo for any length.
I switched away from google search over 10 years ago, first to bing, and then a couple years later to DuckDuckGo and haven't looked back - it's been around 7/8 years now since I've been using it.
I use it for every search query, whether images, or locations (thanks Apple Maps!), or restaurant reviews, or commonly programming queries.
I think I only used bing / ixquick for an image search 2/3 times in those years, otherwise, DuckDuckGo returns the most re
This article is stupid (Score:2)
The default search engine on the default browser on the default OS on basically every single desktop computer in the world, is Bing.
Everyone who uses Windows still switches to Google.
The EU forces all Android phones to show a search engine selector on setup. The selector has no default option, and the order of engines is semi-randomly chosen based on a marketplace, and Google is never #1.
Everyone in the EU still switches to Google.
In order to unseat Google's monopoly, first you need to develop something peo
Switch your default (Score:1)
After more than a decade of using Google for search, I've changed all my browsers to use DDG. I am happy with the results I get through DDG and don't miss Google Search at all. I still need to find an alternative for GMail. GMail has been my primary email account for nearly 20 years.