Lawsuit filed alleging Google is paying Apple to stay out of the search business
prnewswire.com
prnewswire.com
Except for #6, this is literally “Google pays Apple to be the default search provider.”
The alternative option seems to be that Apple is for some reason required to use their position to enter the search market.
It's a Press Release from a law firm but I'm not sure I would take a law firm that writes like this seriously.
If that is the case they might not act anti-competetive but, rumours are [0] Apple received up to $20Bn per year in this deal. It is hard to believe that this payment is just for being the default search engine. I strongly suspect that Apple also agrees to not build their own search engine as long as this deal is on - and if that is the case, there will be a strong foundation for an anti-competetive lawsuit.
Well ask yourself what the value of this placement is? Google earns about $200 per user, mostly in ad revenue. If Google search wasn't default, they'd probably lose half the users.
There are 1 billion iPhone users. At $200 each, Google stands to loose $200b. So a price tag of $20b to keep that...
But yeah, anecdotally, just from visiting their practices, I also noticed most doctors in Austria tend to be in the Apple ecosystem for private use, but their practices and the clinics tend to be Windows.
Source?
In practical terms, if Apple launched a search engine that wasn’t the default, would it see much uptake? It seems to me that Google don’t need an agreement for that.
Presumably, what Google gets out of this is the assurance that no such skunkworks project exists.
I imagine close to ~95% of all iOS/OSX searches would likely be hitting those services if you look at the way the UI is implemented.
Because it is not $20B, but $10 / $12B. The range was partly confirmed during a trial where Google mentioned their percentage of profits paying to Apple as being default search engine.
(repeating that this is an analyst estimate/rumour so take it with a grain of salt).
To add some useful information to HN readers, Google has been paying roughly $10 per user to Apple for the past 8 years. So the growth of Google Default Search Engine placement has been growing steadily with Apple's active user. This exclude regions which does not use Google as Default Search Engine.
Unless there are dramatic changes in Google traffic accusation cost in their Quarterly report or going to make a change in 2022 ( Which I am not aware of ), that rumour is completely baseless.
I don't think Apple would want to make itself the default. That would just invite all kinds of regulatory scrutiny, and would conflict with their pro privacy image. Why bother when they can squeeze Google and get paid billions with no work?
Doesn't seem to have stopped Google with Android.
> would conflict with their pro privacy image.
How so? I'd argue that it would enhance it, because they could advertise that the default AppleSearch protects your privacy better than Google.
They did it for other markets where they do compete - maps most notably.
For Maps specifically, Google wanted Apple to
- push users to log into their Google account
- sharing location data upstream to Google
Supposedly, Google had withheld new feature access from Apple until they got location data reported upstream - turn by turn and vector tiles in particular hurt, as their absence made maps have a limited feature set and use significantly more bandwidth.
The buzz at the time made it sound like Google was still in negotiations when Apple announced at WWDC that they would be using their own maps. They were pretty much blindsided - one of the reasons it took a while before a Google Maps app actually launched for iOS.
Apple likely just decided to launch the product early. The quality of that early launch and how it was handled publicly (along with other internal disputes) is supposedly why Forstall was shown the door.
“Search is Google’s most lucrative unit. In 2020, the company generated $104 billion in “search and other” revenues”
iOS users reportedly are bringing in above average ad revenues. So, I do not rule out they’re worth $30 billion of that. If so, “up to $20 billion” could be a reasonable deal for Google. It still brings in loads of memory and deprives the competition (e.g. Microsoft) from those valuable ad targets.
If that really is $20 billion, it also seems Google is willing to give Apple a cut of over (or at least about) 30% of the revenues they make on iOS, though. Would that make an argument for Apple in their disputes over their 30% cut on app revenues?
For example, you can’t just add new search engines to iOS Safari with just a URL.
There are a few alternatives to Google but there’s no easy way for a new entrant to get in there.
EDIT: Interesting. I’m picking up downvotes for this, is there some way to achieve this (other than jailbreaking) I’ve missed?
I don't get this logic, honestly. What is the point of not being able to add any and all search engines to Apple?
I don't like this approach, but it is very consistent in their products, features tend to disappear over time and new ones only pop up if they're very sexy and can be announced on-stage.
“My search no longer works!” “Sir you have the search registry key set to ‘turkey bake time’”
“Well that’s what I was searching for, and then the search stopped working completely. iPhones are the worst, I’m gonna tell all my friends”
For example, my family member is a smart woman and I used to teach professionally. I haven’t yet found a way to teach her what a web browser is and isn’t.
This is relevant to the things she wants to get done (e.g. shortcuts don’t run in webview, gmail’s native app doesn’t support recipient groups but the web app does, etc)
After warmup, examples, Socratic questioning, task assignments, checking understanding and testing (with detailed feedback), it seems she approximately learns what a web browser is and when she is and isn’t in one, but then she doesn’t really understand it a couple days later.
She’s otherwise as clever and capable as everybody else or rather more clever.
At Apple’s scale, every added feature to a web browser adds thousands of clever people quitting in confusion.
That’s why they hide things like search engine selection under menus an average user will never see, even if accidentally pressing 37 not-quite-randomly wrong things during a session.
We here have the curse of expertise.
The best Apple UX can do for the majority of the population is say no to features more often than yes, and to hide deep under the hood any setting that persists after the device is restarted and could lead to confused angry consumers that can’t figure out what to do and don’t have nearby family members to solve it before they quit.
Likely the best bet would be a web extension manifest value to expose a potential search engine. That would mean on iOS that you still need to publish an app for your search engine option to show up.
[1] Due to circumstances, I have needed to demo a certain location web app to quite a few people. I am not exaggerating.
If the user rejected Safari's access to location, sites also will also not get location data. However, Safari has asked me for access the first time on several phone installs, so I believe Safari not having location services is still a user choosing to limit platform access at some point during setup or on demand in Safari.
Unfortunately the public often does not trust even the platform vendor with location access. I somewhat blame Google for leading the public narrative to that point - but it is admittedly a very easy topic to fearmonger about.
(Said as someone who often has to restore location access to Apple and Google maps on family members' phones as part of troubleshooting issues)
You joke, but I still have PTSD from the IE7 days. https://www.linux-noob.com/forums/uploads/post-12-1098049148...
What’s the point in hiding how it works behind a GUI widget?
If you just want to abstract everything behind the least UX possible, use curl to browse the web.
Watch them hide everything behind UI and all the tech nerds complain they can’t see how anything works then!
It’s IT people whining their way into closed systems with their circular back n forth; open source/diy or closed and they do it all for me!
There is no middle ground.
- Google (default, duh)
- Yahoo
- Bing
- DuckDuckGo
- Ecosia
There is no obvious option to add another search engine. Just as an additional data point here.
Is it possible to do using .mobileconfig profiles maybe?
(Off topic: Is there a specification somewhere on what's possible using .mobileconfig profiles?)
Wow nice! Now if there was a containers extension I could switch to Safari and away from Firefox.
Blew my mind. Maybe I am missing something.
I go to preferences -> search. Then to 'Default search engine', which gives me a combo which gives me Google/Bing/eBay/Wikipedia. But I can not add anything to the combo.
Further down, there is 'One-Click Search Engines' which contain the same options. No button to add one. Below is a 'Find more search engines' link which leads me to the plugins page.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-custom-se...
EG Ecosia is a recent entry, so it does seem that Apple does look into this and introduce new options that can serve their audience size with sufficient quality results. Getting included seems more about making a unique and useful product.
Other than downloading another web browser which features more fine tuning options for web browsing, one can also download safari extensions that increase the search capability in both mobile/desktop safari. One such extension is called xSearch, which presents the familiar idea of using shortcut terms to direct search queries to any number of custom configurable search providers. The share sheet extension also extends this into other apps, and similarly because it uses the standard URL scheme, it can push queries into entirely different apps other than Safari for the search to take place. (eg search this text in the Twitter app.)
Also, many other search engines uses Google's search API. But as you said, that requires direct relationship with Google sales.
Downvote patterns on HN are the most lunatic of any I've seen, including on much lower-quality fora. I wouldn't try to fit a model to it.
I just assume that's what's going on here.
It is easy to conceive of reasons why a company would not want to enable native UI elements to rely on external services without having vetted those services or established a relationship with them for recourse in the event of issues. It is harder--though not impossible--to conceive of ways to avoid these issues.
If I add an arbitrary default search engine via URL, and that search engine is later compromised or serves up garbage or malware, that's a problem for Apple, even though we'd all like to believe we're above-average users who wouldn't blame Apple for our own choices.
Apple should provide the option.
I have to assume you're not trolling, and really can't conceive of an entire large category of people who might, in response to a Facebook post, follow step-by-step instructions to change their default search engine without understanding the ramifications thereof, or how to change it back.
There are more people in that category than in the category of people who change their default search engine for good reason, knowing that it may deliver a less-optimal experience than Google under some circumstances.
What doesn't make sense is believing that every human being is always intelligent and rational and never forgets anything.
I always sort of hoped that Apple would either enter the market at some point or acquire DuckDuckGo and try to build out to a larger user base. I realise this is pretty unrealistic, as I'm sure there are far more people out there who would much prefer DDG to remain independent of a megacorp.
I assumed the reason Apple haven't entered the market is that there's likely no way to make money at it without becoming Google, so it would cause them to have two diametrically opposed privacy stances in their business (and because they'd have a long road to build a worthy competitor).
Ex: Cloud search - https://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/
I spend enough time and effort searching that paying 50$/month[0] would make sense if it would get me clearly superior tool.
[0] for reference, I pay 250$/month for place where I live (in Poland).
For my work Kagi is already beating Google. In fact there is is almost no competition, it is almost as if they are in completely different leagues:
In one month I have once gone back to find something in Google that Kagi couldn't find.
For every other query the results have been so good that I haven't even bothered to check.
For comparison, if I use Google I always find myself tweaking my queries or trying with DDG or even marginalia in weird cases, and the same with DDG.
So, apparently Kagi is scraping Google and Bing results via a browser extension. Is this legal ?
I'm still puzzled how they get so extremely much better results compared to using any of thise directly or using DDG which does the same only with Bing.
Also a bit worried because I think there was a time when DDG felt the same before they suddenly gave in and started serving answers for queries I didn't ask just like Google but I'm not really sure.
Kagi is both paying Google for API access and using Google infrastructure (GCP), helping Google make revenue that is not ad-supported.
But basically the results are good and if I don't immediately get exactly what I want one pair of doublequotes around a key phrase sorts the rest.
It's ok so far. Looking at only search (ignoring the "lenses" and listicle-like content) I cannot say it's objectively better than using searx with filtering. At least not dramatically better that I would notice. It is however much better in returning results that actually contain my search terms.
For 600$ a year, it would need to offer full-text regex search and/or exact logical operators with controllable approximation (agrep-style).
I would instantly pay 5/mo$ already though, as long as it stays BS free, and doesn't use past search results to refine further queries. Search bubble is an issue in every single service where this is being used, and I'd like my search engine to be totally exempt from it, and/or have exact control over it.
Why is that the alternative? No one is saying Apple have to provide their own search engine; people are suggesting Mac products should give the user a clear choice.
A much more obvious alternative is that Apple (or any OS provider for that matter) shouldn't be able to sell the default search engine option on their products to the highest bidder without making it easy to change. When Microsoft lost their IE law suit they added a simple set of options to Windows as part of setup to pick a browser. Apple could do the same for search engines.
You could read the current situation as Apple using their position as the only provider of Mac OS software to make $20bn/year by refusing to give users a choice of search provider. It doesn't really matter that the search is a separate company - the issue is lack of choice that distorts the market in favor of two companies (Apple and Google) rather than consumers. That's bait for anti-trust lawyers.
I agree though that Google pays Apple billions to be the default stinks. Even though in this case Apple greed aligns perfectly with user expectation.
I, for one, am happy that Google isn't able to unilaterally dictate the next generation of web standards.
If Apple decided there next phone would have no screen or phone it would automatically make it a better choice because it is so much more different from android? I don't buy that line of thinking.
Because it will make iPhones worse for a huge number of iPhone users. You might say “I don’t care if you’re less satisfied with your iPhone because you now have ‘more choice’ according to my limited definition.” But Apple presumably actually cares about how satisfied people are with their iPhones.
Instead they should allow users to do what they want with their own device.
That way everyone gets what they want, with the device that they own.
They already have the option to switch to Chrome on iOS. It's not like most iOS users know that Chrome on iOS is just a re-skinned Safari. They would use Chrome if Safari was insufficient for their needs or Chrome had some compelling feature they wanted. I have Chrome installed on my phone but it's so I can use the password manager, but I still prefer to use Safari as my browser.
So excluding and removing healthy market competition is completely OK in that respect. Or so we're told.
Even that deflection is incorrect. When it comes to the mobile market in the US, Apple has over 60% of the market, and Google has the rest. When it comes to the mobile app distribution market, they're responsible for 100% more sales than Google is, and both companies make up that entire market.
In the US, Apple is the most used mobile and mobile app provider. And even if they weren't, they have a duopoly with Google in a dozen or more markets.
For example, Microsoft had ~95% market share of the entire computing market when they tried to embrace and extinguish Netscape.
It's why it was perfectly fine for Google to use its web services to influence competition within the Android OS market.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sherman-antiturst-act.a...
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/clayton-antitrust-act.a...
This is incorrect. From the FTC[1]:
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
b) They don't have an option to change it.
c) If they were to extend its use for all searches then I can't imagine there would be an issue. And if there was it would likely be across the entire mobile search industry.
People can suggest all they want. Apple doesn't have to take that suggestion. Apple doesn't have to give you the ability to add search engines period. They give 5 choices currently from what I have read. They can also take money for making one of those the default. None of that is illegal.
No idea what (3) regular secret meetings between the executives of both companies; means - but it sure sounds realllly bad and nefarious!
Which executive is going to be dumb enough to put a crime in writing?
It's clear to anyone with half a brain that if Apple enters the search market, the deal is off.
But, the revenue Apple get from the deal/trust with Google is better than MSFT or Yahoo ever got by competing with them. It's also easy, risk free and pure profit. So, the deal essentially ensures that Apple will not compete.
Apple now also have an interest in maintaining their (alleged) trust. It's now in both parties interest to maintain Google's dominance of the space. It's also in both their interest to have a large ad market. Competition is not necessarily head-2-head. If Apple couldn't make money by funneling user to Google, they might prefer to just suppress ads. I'm sure if they asked users, users would want that. "Phone with fewer ads, ad-related tracking, etc.) is a potential selling point.
IANAL, and more to the point, I dislike both legal framework around antitrust and the intellectual framework implied by much of it. There's just a lot more to monopoly than either take into account.
Such deals are, IMO, evidence that monopoly^ in general is to the detriment of competition, innovation, churn and other such positive market outcomes. I also think more monopoly is concerning on "free culture" grounds, it perculates to politics/government, etc. Lets leave those aside though.
Apple & Google themselves were only able to innovate and prosper because monopolies did not yet control the microcomputer or the web. App stores, OTOH...
*Meant broadly. Read, Trust, cartel oligopoly, monopsony, bigness...
Apple did implement content blockers to block ads. I do not see ads when I use Safari in iOS or macOS.
It is hard to imagine someone who went through the age of Flash-based ads not looking at all injected advertisements with a sense of utter scorn, though. The split between content provider and advertising marketplace otherwise seems to mean that both consider the end user to only be valued in terms of their eyeballs.
I suspect it is because for some people, the advertisements actually are on-point and represent things they might be interested in.
I still find direct advertisement arrangements - such as temporarily co-branding a gaming site with a launching game, having a podcast talk about sponsors' products - to be much more on point.
0: https://luke.lol/search/ (hn comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29796924)
To be clear, Apple does have search and does sell advertising for it. https://searchads.apple.com
They also attempt to summarize information when you do a system-level or browser-bar search. When the search shows me the local weather or a flight status or gives me a summary and direct link to Wikipedia as I type, they are taking that engagement from Google.
What Apple hasn't shown interest in so far is being a general-purpose internet search engine.
Well, another alternative option is that Apple is forbidden from charging for being included in the list of search providers (as default or otherwise), they can't be pay-to-play, they can pick whatever providers they want they just can't charge for it, so they have to make decisions based on something other than who pays them the most.
Which, now that I think about it, doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world actually... but I really don't think US law requires it.
The putative class they're suing to represent is apparently "All consumers and businesses who paid Google to place advertising on Google search in the United States since January 1, 2005."
I think the basic argument is "Apple might have created a competing search engine business, but Google paid them not to, which hurt people buying Google ads because competition would imply those Google ads may have been cheaper, therefore Apple and Google need to pay the better part of a trillion dollars to these customers and then be broken up into smaller companies."
That's the feeling I got. I mean if this was the case, then Apple could be sued by Google for extortion - "pay us or we'll build a competitor". This lawsuit makes no sense.
Which is to say it is a tall order and might not succeed. But if it does.. goodness, what a hit they'll take.
So that probably explains the convoluted cause of action, in that the only legal way to challenge it is probably with a weird convoluted cause of action like that, because it has to come back to consumer prices somehow to have a chance in court.
Google (or anyone) can have a monopoly and engage in anticompetitive practices, it's only illegal if you can show it hurt consumer prices.
The law didn't always work that way and doesn't need to, but that's more or less how it is now.
https://www.pbwt.com/antitrust-update-blog/congress-hears-ch...
There is a good chance that if Apple did have a search engine it would be Ad free, which might still depress prices of Google ads, but it would also decrease effectiveness of those ads.
As far as I see, the plaintiff is not in the tech business, as they're a school that teaches how to operate cranes[1]
Buyers don't have the option to buy from just one supplier. They want to reach everybody in their niche. Thus, they have to buy from every supplier and cannot negotiate the price down. If they leave, a competitor will take those clients and pay whatever those users are worth.
If the web experience wasn't 90% Google (outside of social media), and the phone experience wasn't 50% Apple / 50% Google, everything would be cheaper due to competition.
Just look at the percentages app developers pay. In a free market with five alternatives, there probably wouldn't even be an app store. We'd do native app downloads over the web and invest a ton of energy into security and privacy controls.
This has been demonstrated to be false. This scenario is exactly what we used to have in the windows PC era and no one invested "a ton of energy into security and privacy controls".
That unfulfilled need is exactly what propelled Apple to the #1 spot when it came to the mobile era.
Anti-virus?
iPod is what propelled Apple to the #1 spot. They had a significant lead on touch, cool brand, music, luxury, and slick UI. It has nothing to do with their app store or software distribution model or other such "nerdy" topics that most consumers aren't even aware of.
That has never happened. Not in any era.
The phone market isn't 50% Google unless you count Samsung as a subsidiary of it. Nor does the existence of Apple help me, the consumer, since they obviously don't compete on price.
The lawyers needed to find a plaintiff with standing (you can't just sue because you don't like something, you have to be able to show damages).
#1 Why does there need to be a plaintiff? A trust affects consumers and society broadly detrimentally, not some specific competitor. The competitor google is likely trying to suppress is some theoretical startup anyway, they probably don't exist to sue.
#2 Why the focus on specific damages? The specific harm of such a trust are inherently unknowable.
The Google-Apple deal isn't new, and has been widely reported on. Google pays more to apple than 2nd place (MST/YAHOO) has ever delivered in topline revenue. Apple can (a)take pure profit with no effort or risk, (b)build a competing business with much worse best-case prospects, or (c) leave room in the market for someone else to try. It's not really a choice.
Meanwhile, Google's largest investments (eg chrome, android) are just an insourced version of the Apple-Google trust. Monopolistic deals and strategies aren't a side-show, they're the primary activity of these companies.
To me, it's increasingly obvious that monopoly issues are structural. It's not what Google/Apple do, it's what they are. Dealing with antitrust in an infraction->lawsuit manner, post facto, is a designed to fail structure.
IMO there are two choices, besides just accepting the prevalence of monopolies, cartels & trusts. (1) They can be broken up. (2) They can become "regulated monopolies," with a regulatory structure designed to prevent monopolistic harms before they happen. Yes, it will harm their profitability.
so it seems to me that disastrously bad regulation has created self-sustaining monsters. which market worshiping politician would dare burst that multi trn-bubble?
Reminds me of the "housing affordability" question. If politicians had a magic wand that turns a city with $1m median house prices into a $250k one...
That way homeowners make more money and housing becomes cheaper at the same time.
Depending on the context of course..
There doesn't need to be an independent plaintiff. The DoJ can bring an antitrust suit directly, and often does. For example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Not saying it can't be done, just that it seems to be fairly hard.
All cases must have standing (a damaged party) and must demonstrate damage.
This is first year law stuff. Without these requirements, anyone could sue anyone for all sorts of made up baloney - and the suits themselves would be the punitive.
The target of the murder shouldn't have to be murdered for there to be some grounds for a lawsuit. Similarly, you might arrest someone for driving while intoxicated even though they haven't done any actual damage to person or property.
Along these lines, I think the idea is that someone shouldn't have to show specific demonstrable harms that have already occurred in cases of antitrust.
It's a gray area but it seems like with some things, harm should be implied or something to be avoided?
Having said that - they have not yet presented evidence in court, so they may indeed have evidence.
Summary judgment motions come after the discovery process (the expensive process that often leads to tech companies' dirty little secrets reaching the light of day). If the dollar figure is right, the companies would probably try to settle before summary judgment.
A motion to dismiss, on the other hand, is a pre-discovery mechanism to dismiss claims. These are relatively cheap (by large company standards). I think there's a decent chance this case gets bounced on an MTD.
If it gets past the MTD and into discovery, there's probably an early settlement where the lawyers get paid off.
China has screwed up a lot with the messaging behind their regulations on tech companies, but the spirit of promoting competition from them was good.
Competitive markets are more important than free markets for positive societal outcomes.
You have got to be joking..
In many areas they went too far, and their approach to enacting the rules led to mass, unnecessary fear, but the spirit behind a lot of the changes was good. e.g. Alibaba can't ban links to competitors within their social apps.
Apple does not allow use of custom search engines, unless you pay to get on their list, or consumer has to go through hoops with extensions.
Do I need to draw more lines to make the dots connect for you?
https://podtail.com/podcast/caixin-global-podcasts/china-sto...
It's narrated by an Asian-American guy, the article is written by a Chinese guy called Ren Yi.
I only learned a few things about China, so I'm uneducated on the matter, but I think we underestimate how massive their rural population is, and how huge the rift is between the rich and poor, but like I said, I'm uneducated on the matter.
I think it's not a bad thing if China adopts EU style protections from big companies for citizens. I don't see the problem with that. If I understood correctly, the avg CN citizen is racked with debt, schools are borderline torturous, can barely afford a home, a lot of the water is leaded, the land is contaminated, mothers can't trust the domestic baby formula or anything really, huge sexism issue for women, rape is common, theft is common, scams are everywhere and a million other issues, it reminds you of the avg US citizen and their million other issues. Imagine if the avg CN citizen ends up living a healthier life than the avg US citizen, despite the huge head-start, now that would be really sad, because it would shine a light on how stagnant life is for the avg US person.
Yes, I'm no fan of China's authoritarian nature, but the rules they are enacting must be judged on their own merits. And frankly, many of them are appropriate and coming from the perspective of increasing competition.
Basic economics implies that increased competition is good for the consumer.
The place where china really misstepped was doing everything suddenly and abruptly, which sparked tons of fear and scared investor capital away from their companies.
This part is a bad outcome due to increased cost of financing/debt for their companies, less competitive on engineer comp due to lowered share price and so on.
They could have done the same regulations but with much more forward notice and detailed their thinking rather than handing down abrupt decrees
Here's a hint, whether a regulation passes through a democratic process or through authoritarian decree, it's the same rule at the end of the day, and should be judged on its own merits.
Everybody dissenting here has provided no rebuke or detailed response, just seemingly uninformed quips. I'd rather hold discussion to a higher standard of objectivity, personally
The humorous version.[1]
The network effect is so strong in some areas that you tend to end up with a monopoly or near-monopoly. This isn't good for either a communist or a capitalist society.
The US tends toward oligopoly. Three big banks, three big cell phone companies, three big drugstore chains, four big meat packers. In tech, the magic number seems to be two. Two big search engines, two big smartphone platforms, two big desktop systems, two big auction providers, two big social networks.
[1] https://twitter.com/lillianmli/status/1478742997839740928
For goodness sake do the minimum amount of research before squealing helplessly about needing to jailbreak your device.
No way in hell the free Samsung phone deals that carriers have all the time are given to more tech savy people than non-tech savy people.
That doesn't make it ok to lie and mislead people in the process of making that complaint, though. It's very very easy to change the default search engine setting in iOS. It's about as easy as Apple could possibly make it. To allege otherwise, or to state that "jail-breaking" is somehow required, is simply a lie.
Just make the argument without lying.
You missing a crucial point here. Using an alternative browser on iOS is not actually that helpful. Nine-times out of ten, I use spotlight (swiping down from the home screen) to type search queries because it's much faster than entering an app. This will always use the built-in search provider. Secondly, I use siri to do quick lookups, "search for ravioli recipe" which also uses default search provider. Any context menu like "Lookup" or "Search on X" uses the built-in provider.
A blanket statement such as yours suppresses ideas. Let people talk... isn't that why HN exists.
I for one think allowing the ability to add a custom search is a no-brainer and I think this deal may be a real reason why it doesn't exist. It's so easy to add this that it seems real shady it doesn't exist...
California Crane School Inc seem to be a provider of training for crane operators, so I'm curious why they're suing Google over this particular allegation. I wonder: is there any possibility that they're a proxy for some other party or parties?
Post == Article Critical of Google
Top Comment === Plays down the severity of said criticism
The upvotes don't seem to have much correlation between the post title and the comments. I wonder is such behavior caused by certain UI features on this site/app, or are comments graded differently?
People who take the time to comment tend to exhibit (a little) more critical thinking skills
I have a hazy memory of even seeing this effect on HN given a proper name at some point in the past.
As to why, I think it's largely cultural or found in personality traits that techies and hackers often have. Most us techies have a desire to "well, actually", even if we know it's rude and have learned to suppress or positively channel that urge. But at the end of the day, by proving something wrong, however pedantic, we get to prove we're smart. That's why the percentage of pedantry is probably higher on here and Wikipedia than on TikTok and Snapchat.
The contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Statement from Apple in 2017 when they switched to Google from Bing:
> Switching to Google as the web search provider for Siri, Search within iOS and Spotlight on Mac will allow these services to have a consistent web search experience with the default in Safari.
(https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/apple-switches-from-bing-t...)
That qualifies as "already in the search business" IMO.
Well they are definitely in the search business anyway, as >20% of Apple's annual revenue is from search.
It's just that all the revenue apple makes from search comes directly from Google in the form of a $20bn payment, and Google powers almost all their actual web searches (i.e. not instant suggestions), so I think it's hardly an independent 'search business' and more of a 'search partnership with Google'.
If I type some characters into a search box, and the phone displays the title and domain of a website that it thinks I might be looking for, that counts as a "web search" to me. iOS Safari does that using an Apple-powered web index.
But whatever.
Siri only needs to return a result when it thinks its got a worthwhile result to show, it won't search all documents to find the phrase I want (and returns nothing if I search lkasdjfai, and falls back to Google results). It never even says "siri found no matches for lkasdjfai".
I can't use Siri to search for my cousin for instance (I just tried) but with Google he comes up straight away.
So for me, a web search is when you are searching any arbitrary phrase and bringing back results for any query, where instant suggestions is an optional response when you think you have a good result.
So...either there are general paradigms/regulations/principles to apply, or we'll simply return to this state repeatedly, no?
IMHO the collective furor necessary to drive development in the space (eg, Google and Apple both maintain whole web browsers) is necessarily weakly-coordinated at scale and will probably always inevitably cue this sort of thing to rise up.
*shrug*
If this is not profitable (via the search ads) then it would be easier to argue it is just done to keep competition away.
What that means is that Apple entering search doesn’t by default make them a monopoly nor anti-competitive. But if they then change iPhones to only support “Apple Search” with no option to change that default, then Apple could be liable for claims including abuse of monopoly.
And in the EU, companies actually need to pay, if they do not install some google apps: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/19/17999366/google-eu-andro...
The question was about monetary cost, i.e. "free as in beer", not "free as in speech" or "free of effort".
Apple do control the reach of search engines to their customers in a similar manner of LV might choose to allow Cartier sell bracelets in their shops instead designing and selling their own bracelets. The point is, people can always go to Chanel if that arrangement doesn't fit them.
At worst, it could be a situation where the clients of a company are not happy with the recent products and they need to start buying from another shop.
I don't see how regulators should intervene in this. If not happy, go buy Samsung or Google pixel.
That said, Microsoft were still forced to present a randomized list of browser options to the user upon first install so there is also precedence of changeable defaults not being enough to satisfy complaints of anticompetitive business.
This is all hypothetical though because it's still far from clear that Apple have ever wanted to enter the search market, let alone got paid not to, let alone what might happen to the iPhone if they did.
Plenty of sites claim they have a majority in the USA
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
UK
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-kin...
Japan
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/japan
Each of those countries could easily bring suit. They wouldn't care at all that in some other country Apple is not the largest player.
Louis Vuitton is a bad example as their market share is tiny. AFAIK there is no clothing brand with a market percent as large as Apple's mobile market percent. Maybe Luxotica in eyewear but some articles claim their market is only around 20%
It looks like Apple managed to design devices that Americans like more than the ones the other brands designed and there's nothing wrong about it.
Can Apple abuse it's position position in the market, even the smallest company can do that but the key is that if that happens people do have the option to do purchases from somewhere else.
No I did not say that. I say, there's a healthy competition and there's no monopoly as people have viable alternatives and in many other countries people choose these alternatives and people where Apple is dominant do have the same alternatives to choose from.
There's no such thing as "right of minimum market share" that Apple violates by selling too many devices.
People do have the options and if they still buy Apple that's not monopoly, that's success.
In fact, I have no practical ability to change my e-mail address as I'm using it since 1st of April 2004 and Google does not offer me to keep the address if I want to switch to another provider.
My arguments are in defence of Apple, not Google. I can move away from Apple at any time but I can't do the same with Google.
For you it might be true but not for many Apple users who are deep into the Apple ecosystem.
Inconvenient? Could be. Note a drop-in replacement? Sure, that's why there are different companies.
Apple Watch: Just another device that has numerous alternatives. Many excel in some way, not crappy alternatives.
iCould: There are numerous alternatives, free and paid and work very well.
So, if you like to get rid of Apple, you simply tell the people you care that they can reach you from WhatsApp or your favourite alternative. Buy the new device, follow the transfer data and setting instructions, erase your iPhone&watch, give them away or sell them and you are done.
But the you claim that people can’s move away from Apple is false. Why do you keep advancing it?
An obviously false statement.
> Try to use their watches without an iPhone.
Their watches are an iPhone accessory advertised as requiring an iPhone in order to work.
Anyone who buys one thinking otherwise has been misinformed by someone other than Apple, and can return it to the store for a full refund. Then they can buy one of many Android wear or other smartwatches instead.
>An obviously false statement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc.#Accusa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform#Aspects
> Their watches are an iPhone accessory advertised as requiring an iPhone in order to work.
Not in their video ads. Also, at https://www.apple.com/watch/ it's buried at the end of the tiny font.
Are you really trying to claim people are buying Apple watches they can’t use because they don’t have an iPhone?
That doesn’t seem grounded in reality.
I really don't understand why you are so much defending Apple.
>> However everyone agrees that Apple created a walled garden which is hard to escape.
Apple agrees it’s closed in some ways. Far from ‘everyone’ thinks it’s hard to escape.
This is more honest. It’s just your opinion. Not something ‘everyone agrees’ with.
You are entitled to your opinion. But its a delusion when you think everyone must believe what you do.
You claimed everyone agrees it’s hard to leave. That’s simply false.
It abuses this Monopoly position to force through other products, like it's app store, and give major advantage to it's services over the competition. Sometimes outright debiting l denying it's competition marked entry.
Even if we only look at a while phone OS marked it's a dis dual pool with Google (all attendings a minor enough to not matter). And both abuse this close to Monopol position, though one more then the other.
You are right, and the term is monopolistic power, which is different from monopoly. Monopolistic power involves platform abuse which is what you're describing.
Additionally they use their position to enforce their own services, so their forced rollout of Apple Login was an example. Another example is all browsers being forced to use Safari under the hood. It's a repeat of the MS-IE escapades of a few decades ago but everyone's OK with it.
Is it though? Safari seems to be pretty close to the HTML standard and at least not implement any proprietary features. Sure there may be bugs or they may lag behind but they are making an effort to be compliant.
I'd say Google seems to be the one leading a lot of decisions regarding to standards and implement them the way they want before they are actually standardizes and because they have the biggest market share Apple and Firefox just have to follow their decision.
Ideally Apple would allow third party browsers on iOS, but I think it's beneficial for users that they don't. I do believe that without it Chrome would have a much bigger market share and developers wouldn't be forced to support browsers other than Chrome and Google would have even more power over web standards than today. I guess Chromium being open source would make it a bit better.
- Missing features, supper buggy to a absurd point where you need to wonder if Apple isn't intentionally crippling it. But hey, because some many people in management use it companies tend to work around all this bugs spending millions on it.
For users Chrome is like IE in the past.
- Having all kind of new features no one else has and people developing sites which only work for it correctly.
Still that has little to with the original comment.
I mean how is Apple outright banning competition (for example like Steam) from a marked coverying hundreds of million of people not a massive abuse of power which needs to be stopped for all the same reasons a monopoly is bad.
To just name one point (((there are other like absurd cuts for something which is just a payment service (in-app payments after paying for an app), often abusive/absurd behaviour on publishing apps, stiffing innovation (if not made/controlled by them), intentionally hindering repeatability and repair-ability regulation, including creation of an repair program where they pretend to help but actually just make sure you can't provide a proper repair service under it (let's see what will happen with the more recently announced program), intentionally vendor lock-in for developer all through their eco-system, surprisingly bad software quality for many parts facing developers at least parts which are not iOs, a whole bunch of subtle things which forces people to write apps instead of e.g. just providing a website or similar service, etc. etc. etc.))) Oh did I forgot to mention how they use the marked power to push down the prices of suppliers that they basically only can make profit by employing bs. like inhuman working conditions or resources mined with child labor and similar and then pretending it's not their problem because they also forced the supplier to sign a contract that they don't do that.
Just because it's "per definition" not a monopoly doesn't mean it hasn't the same bad effects and other equally bad, not monopoly specific effect.
Also tbh. the problem with Safari isn't that it's slow in adapting standards Google forces through. The problem is that it's complete unreasonable buggy including on many old features with absurd bugs sometimes, and that they also lack behind on features which widely agreed to not "have been forcefully pushed through by google", like WASM. Often they support this things on paper but so buggy that it's unusable/very expensive to support them. And guess what most of this problems are focused on more "web appish" features instead of classical "web siteish" features, but that is surely a coincidence that this greatly benefits them by forcing people into the app store.
> Ideally Apple would allow third party browsers on iOS, but I think it's beneficial for users that they don't.
Lack of competition is always a bad thing for users.
Also, our layman definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[3]:
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...
[2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
[3] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
I would say, Apple is very popular in the US but I don't see how it can be a monopoly when you can just order another device from Amazon and that device being just good or maybe better. In many other rich countries, people are choosing Samsung, Americans can do that too if they want.
I would love to make this argument the next time vaccines are mentioned. Remember vaccines cause autism and turn the frogs gay. Any attempt to correct this using medical jargon or methods is literally out of scope for the average hacker news commenter and should be avoided.
On the other hand, when discussing vaccines and viruses there are numerous research in the open that we can use to build on. Any use of correct medical jargon or methods is fine as it is not a protected information. Of course you can misunderstand it but you can also understand it properly since the research and data is in the open.
Discussing what's just based on information and observations we have is like discussing vaccines and viruses based on the research and observations we have access to.
Discussing the legal process is like discussing the FDA application of a drug. It can happen only if you are part of the process or after it comes to a conclusion and information used in the ruling is made public.
One of the most important discussions in tech has to do with what companies are monopolies, in essence you are saying Hacker News cannot have this important discussion!
I can't really comment more on this idea as I feel I would be compelled to violate HN guidelines.
Anyway, I don't like to pretend that we are in a court. Law is simply a system that countries find useful to deal with issues and it is its own thing that not always just and can change over time and need specialisation for doing correctly.
Just remember, Alan Turing was lawfully castrated back in the 50s. Let's not pretend that the lawful process is analogous to justice, it's simply a rules system where actors are executing the rules based on the available information and cannot be performed when rules, actors or information is missing.
Even if we were judges, how are we supposed to execute the legal process without collecting the necessary data, have the claims and defences? Therefore, the legal definition is irrelevant and it's actually wrecking the discussion by pushing it to a position where we don't have the tools to work on.
"Apple has been the biggest profit and revenue generator in the handset business. In Q2 2021, it captured 75% of the overall handset market operating profit and 40% of the revenue despite contributing a relatively moderate 13% to global handset shipments."
And those are global numbers. Now what do you think their US numbers look like, or their app store numbers? They hold plenty of monopolistic power to enable abuse, and that's enough to be regulated if the government was so inclined.
And, this lawsuit isn't just about Apple, it's about Google too. Certainly you don't have any doubts about their monopoly status.
> I don't see how regulators should intervene in this.
TFA proposes some remedies in very broad strokes. Looks good to me. Unregulated monopolies and oligopolies extract excessive profits from consumers and limit choice through anti-competitive practices. You might be fine with that. I'm not.
Actually, it means that their customers are so happy with the Apple product that they are willing to pay a premium to have it. Apple's large margins are merely an opportunity that no one was able to fetch.
You can verify that people are not paying Apple more because they don't have an option not to do so by by checking the shops for availability of other brands(they are available) and their viability(They are viable, in fact, many reviewers and techies say that Samsung/Google/LG/Whatever are much better than Apple).
> Apple's large margins are merely an opportunity that no one was able to fetch.
In a functioning free market, competitors would have picked up the slack long ago (iPhone is 14 years old now), and cashed in on those high profit margins too.
Now, you can choose to believe that literally every multi billion dollar tech company in the world is so stupid and incompetent as to be unable to replicate Apple's "premium user experience" to capture similar profit margins, or you can look for simpler explanations, that inevitably generalize as anti-competitive practices.
That doesn't deny the popularity of Apple's products, by the way. Believe it or not they can be both genuinely popular and monopolistic / anti-competitive, with both of those factors contributing to insanely above-market profit margins.
"You can buy LG" just shows that you don't understand the distinction between concentrated market power power, anti competitive business practices, and actual monopoly, nor the fact that antitrust regulations do not require their target to be an actual monopoly with zero competitors available for sale (and for good reason).
> They are viable, in fact, many reviewers and techies say that Samsung/Google/LG/Whatever are much better than Apple
Bing and DDG are also available and viable, and "[some] techies say" that they're better than Google. So what. This metric is utterly irrelevant.
The simpler explanation is they are not willing to invest the cash needed to create the Apple premium user experience.
See Microsoft pulling the plug on Windows phone and Microsoft stores. They decided to rest on their laurels (licensing fees for Excel almost pure profit and Azure rather than plow tens of billions into creating quality hardware and software and a retail experience for customers.
I'm not familiar with the Eurovision show you mention, so not sure of the relevance.
It's a scheme, people take loans to buy Apple shares, then future generations will take even bigger loans to buy Apple shares from the previous people for 10x the price, then repeat ad infinitum. They don't even need to do any productive work anymore. Just busy-work, like Bitcoin is doing using ASIC miners to burn electricity.
Google forced my search engine (gigablast) basically out of business. I had ixquick.com as a big client at one time; I was providing them with search results from my custom web search engine. Then their CEO called me one day and told me he was cancelling, even though he'd been a client for over 10 years. He said it was because of some change Google had made to their agreement. Ixquick needed Google's results and ads for their startpage.com website, and, even though my results were shown on their ixquick.com and later ixquick.eu site, apparently Google wasn't good with that.
Except Apple Maps has definitely been improving and Google Maps doesn't seem to be substantially improving anymore. At the current apparent trajectory Maps will catch up quickly.
Google Search is even going in the other direction. (Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392702)
I wouldn't bet against Apple if they were incentivized to compete in this space. Their whole shtick is using feats of engineering to dominate lazy competitors.
I get this with Google Maps and not Apple Maps so your anecdotal experience is at least questionable.
>Applebot is the web crawler for Apple. Products like Siri and Spotlight Suggestions use Applebot.
"His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the country."
> (4) annual multi-billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple not to compete in the search business;
Assuming the allegation is correct, what recourse would Google have if Apple took the multi-billion-dollar payment and then entered the search business?
Surely a lawsuit would only set Google up for anti-trust complaints, so would their only recourse be to not fork over subsequent multi-billion-dollar payments to Apple? It seems analogous to a broken agreement between criminals -- one or more parties is outside the protection of the law.
Could this reasoning also be used to defend against the allegation, i.e. surely Google wouldn't put themselves in such a situation where they could have no guarantee or surety that Apple wouldn't just take the money and run?
I think the complainants are really asking "why don't they do Apple Search, just as they now do Apple Maps, i.e. their own search?"
How would this make Google unhappy and willing to pay billions to prevent it? They could buy DDG or Bing or some other product to get a head start, and then pour their limitless $$$ into improving it. It might not succeed any more than Apple Maps has, but then, a $3T competitor is not to be taken lightly.
(the right one, of course...)
It makes a similar set of complaints for the same practices and, in my opinion, is very well-written.
> The complaint charges that Google and Apple agreed that Apple would not compete in the internet search business against Google. [...]
IANAL, but how credible a threat must the potential competition be, for a sober judge to get interested? If Bob's Pizza Parlor got $10/year from Google for not competing in the internet search business - would that be anything but a bizarre joke? Similar for Apple - sure, they've got $billions. But also shareholders who don't want those $billions squandered. Apple's in-house expertise in developing and running internet search engines is ~nill. And how many companies, ever, have managed to create and profitably run an internet search engine - in a market with at least one established and profitable competitor?
With $lots_of_billions on the table, Apple's head negotiator might say all sorts of things, to squeeze yet more $$$ out of Google. (1)"Bing is offering us more." (2)"Customers are complaining that your search results are getting crappy." (3)"We'll set up our own search engine." (4)"We'll invent a time machine, and set both of Larry Page's grandmothers up with better husbands."
How many of those statements are credible? Legal? If (2) and (3) hit at Google's deep-seated fears, but (3) is not actually credible, is this any different (beyond the emotional cheap shot) than (4)?
This makes me wonder about the whole firm.
> "The complaint claims that the means used to effectuate the non-compete agreement included; (1) Google would share it's search profits with Apple;"
This doesn't really make sense in my layman's view: They complain that Apple stays out of search (which is not their core business) and then want to break up Apple. For what reason? Because they are operating outside of their core business?
They have no in-house expertise and the small scale search products they do make are very, very bad.
If Apple learned from their launch of Maps it should be to wait until it’s ready. Of course Google didn’t give them a choice in the case of Maps.
Ask HN: Why is Google paying Apple to be default search engine on iPhones?
Why is only prnewswire covering this breaking news?