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Comment by ummonk | Hacker News Reader

Yeah that's the issue. Even if they weren't getting paid, they'd still have to choose Google for a reasonable user experience. And I don't see that changing. It's one thing for Apple to get into Maps, and it's another for them to get into search...

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Because google is essentially a monopoly. Almost nobody uses anything else. Because of this monopoly and all the advertising revenue, Google effectively has "infinite money" and uses it to metastasize into other areas such as maps, self driving cars etc. Nobody else can do this because nobody else has "infinite money", Google is losing money hand over fist in self driving cars, I seriously doubt that maps comes anywhere close to breaking even. It's all funded by the bottomless pool of advertising money.

Well, Apple has been getting competitive as late in Maps, and GM/Cruise is competitive on self-driving vehicles.

The big issue is Google's monopoly on english-language search, which together with Youtube gives it massive amounts of data on every person in the world, as well as giving it immense influence over public thought. I can see Youtube's monopoly ending (certainly, Instagram could have done it had Zuck not killed Instagram's attempts at long-form videos), but the gap between Google search and other competitors (only realistic ones are Bing and DDG) is immense, and probably insurmountable.

> Nobody else can do this because nobody else has "infinite money"

Apple has a higher market cap than Alphabet, Inc.

That's true, but I don't think Apple has "Fuck you" money. Google definitely has that type of cash. It has near infinite recurring revenue. They don't even need to do anything with their current technology to maintain this, just simply don't make any mistakes and their magical search goose will keep laying those golden eggs.

Apple is the most valuable company in the world who makes the most profit in the world, in the last 2017 FY they made 48B in profit compared to Google 12.6B

Apple makes so much money that they’ve given back more than 200B in buy backs and billions more in dividends, Google has yet to return anything.

Apple is only a couple of Bad iPhone designs away from being irrelevant. Everything you are saying is from a shareholder perspective, Apple does not have a monopoly like Google does. So what if they have a lot of money? Wait for a downturn and all the Apple investors who've been getting dividends DON'T get a dividend for once, it wont be pretty. Google on the other hand doesn't have as much money and isn't as "valuable" on paper only. The reality is far different. Google has infinite money but not as much money in the bank right now. Apple makes iPhone and is irrelevant outside of making iPhones. If some other companies phone becomes the "iPhone" then Apple is dead.

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