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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

I still feel like Google should participate in the bidding and distribute the resulting money (their own and their competitors') to a charity rather than keeping it as profit. They got a fine for a reason, turning it into a profit scheme is a big middle finger to anyone who cares about monopolies.

The question would be how to pick a charity in an unbiased manner, but I guess there are a lot of ways to answer that such as picking the most well-funded charity worldwide, or distributing it over the top ten.

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From an economic perspective, this makes no sense. The economic benefits google gets from Android largely derive from the control over the default search engine. You're asking that they should donate the proceeds of this benefit. Why would they work on Android at all if they could not benefit from it economically?

The purpose of the auction and the choice is to allow competition for that default spot, and ensure google isn't using Android to further its market dominance in search. However, the EU has its head on straight enough to understand that being chosen as the default search engine for a device still has serious value. There's nothing anti-competitive about google charging a fair price for this benefit. And fortunately we know, because of the auction process, that the prices are fair (i.e. the other bidders certainly bid a price less than the benefit they expect to derive from being selected).

> Why would they work on Android at all if they could not benefit from it economically?

Someone might think their current monetization model should be discouraged via regulation.

MS used to charge manufacturers for Windows Phone - Google could undoubtedly do the same, Android has too much of a moat now for manufacturers to succeed with anything else.

Or, simply not try and skirt EU anti-trust regulation by a pay-to-play bidding system.

DuckDuckGo tweet thread + link to research on choice screens: https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1215307399978016774

How would you decide whom to put on your selection screen? Isn't that the excuse they're giving?

Distilling the android property as separate from search, and selling off the search bar to the highest bidder is the just way to create competition.

Where the eu sticks it to Google is when Google is not allowed to participate in the bidding.

If it is truly separate from search, then Google Search should pay Android. Since that benefits the same company, and since all competitors are paying Google Search as part of bidding for a place in Android, it's not a level playing field.

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