Apple Barred From Google Antitrust Trial, $20 Billion Search Deal at Risk (arstechnica.com) 15
A U.S. appeals court has ruled that Apple cannot participate in Google's upcoming antitrust trial, potentially jeopardizing a $20 billion annual deal between the tech giants. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that Apple waited too long to join the proceedings, filing its request 33 days after the government proposed remedies in the case Google lost last August.
"The delay seems difficult to justify," the judges ruled. While Apple can still submit written testimony and file friend-of-court briefs, it cannot present evidence or cross-examine witnesses as it had sought. At stake is Google's practice of paying Apple approximately $20 billion annually to remain the default search engine in Safari browsers across Apple devices. The government's proposed remedies would make such arrangements impermissible.
"The delay seems difficult to justify," the judges ruled. While Apple can still submit written testimony and file friend-of-court briefs, it cannot present evidence or cross-examine witnesses as it had sought. At stake is Google's practice of paying Apple approximately $20 billion annually to remain the default search engine in Safari browsers across Apple devices. The government's proposed remedies would make such arrangements impermissible.
Will this affect Mozilla? (Score:2)
81% of the income of the Mozilla foundation comes from Google. Is Google going to be allowed to continue to do that if they are prohibited from doing this? And if not, will Mozilla's CEO destroy the foundation entirely by continuing to collect a massive and unwarranted salary?
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"the mistake of reifying emptiness with the example of a person who, upon being told that a merchant had nothing to sell, asks if he can buy some of that nothing.”--Nishida Kitaro. All is, of course, dust.
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They could have an event to auction which search engine gets used. Let the companies bid for it, starting with whatever Mozilla wants to see as the minimum pay needed to keep things working. If no one else wants to pay the price, then Google can still get it. People can always pick their own search from within the program, so it's ONLY the default that these lawsuits are complaining about.
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The problem with auctions is there's a possibility no one pays for it. Let's say Mozilla puts the minimum starting bid at $20M. There's a chance no one goes for it, and even if Google was paying $40M/year to Mozilla, they may decide they no longer want
Trillion dollar company (Score:2)
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If people who are facing eviction can figure that out, then surely a trillion dollar company has a legal team that can figure it out within thirty days.
There is no way around it, Apple acted like a bunch of dumb shits here.
So, Google gets to keep its money (Score:2)
Google gets to keep its $20B. What a victory.....for.....Google!!
If anyone thinks this is going to result in Apple making its own search engine, they're insane.
Something has to be the default page. Why not Google, since it is the engine used by most people. The popular choice SHOULD be the default choice.
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I would still like them to try. They did attempt their own maps. I don't really use a lot of Apple devices but even a mediocre attempt helps keep competition alive and acts as a bit of an antitrust safeguard. Look out how many people use Bing and it's terrible.
I know the reason Apple won't do search is probably because they don't want to monetize it with visible ads.
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> I know the reason Apple won't do search is probably
> because they don't want to monetize it with visible
> ads.
That may be part of the reason. But it overlooks the elephant (not, this time) in the room:
Google didn't try to screw Apple with search they way they did with Maps. Apple Maps, and the fiasco it was at launch, came about because Google did exactly that. The original iPhone maps were, of course, Google's. But as Google ramped up its development on Android, they started to withhold fea
Re: So, Google gets to keep its money (Score:2)
the birth of Safari as well, just substitute Microsoft and IE for Google and Maps.
Well it worked out really well with Safari. IE was already garbage by then and KHTML was stable and ripe for forking. It eventually gave birth to Chrome too.
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Yeah. Once upon a time I was a QA engineer for a web retailer. And oh, did I loathe IE... particularly IE6... with an eternal burning hatred. The Mac version of IE really was better off for Microsoft withholding some of its so-called "features."
But Microsoft did withhold bug fixes and performance improvements too. I was mostly an iCab and/or Opera user, alternating depending on which was better with its latest versions, in those years... except when some shithead of a web developer had their nose up Gat
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I'm a hard core Apple user. Even if Apple did make a search engine, I would still use Google's...just like I use Google Maps rather than Apple's version.
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Google keeps their $20B and Apple's net income drops 20%.
Their income after expenses last year was $94B, presumably there is little expense for the $20B that Google gives them to update a configuration setting.
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Apple is not going to build their own, but they could totally decide to strike some kind of deal with say, Perplexity.