Hacker News Reader

Comment by nip180 | Hacker News Reader

Considering the large amounts of money Google pays Apple to be the default search engine we are talking about one hell of a loss leader.

View on HN

15-20% of net income. No way they will ditch that.

They also have app store search. So odds of it being ad free are zero.

Plus 'Get the new iPhone 12 Pro!' and intercepting android device search queries. Can rapidly become not a loss leader.

Depends on what you mean by "intercepting". You can do that now on Google AdWords if you're will to out spend anyone else for those keywords like 'Android'. In that instance, all it means is that an ad for your product appears when someone searches your rival. In fact, I'm pretty sure this SOP for marketing teams.

If you mean replace any relevant search results for 'Android' with 'iPhone 12' and/or 'iOS 14', then yeah, that would be pretty egregious. However, I can't see that actually happening for a couple of reasons. 1) it would be so obvious it was happening that there's no denying it, 2) it would be so damaging that it would be a service killer as it's all anyone would talk about and never trust it

You are assuming this would be operated at a loss. Apple could sell their own advertising. Or if it's good enough, just use it to make the iPhone experience better. Ad free search would be a pretty nice feature if results are top Q.

Also assumes the DOJ/ court systems/ legislation isn't going to block this kind of deal regardless.

(The press has been talking about an Apple search engine on and off for 5 years so I'm skeptical).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com