Apple’s Google search payment will likely continue for years, despite antitrust | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s Google search payment will likely continue for years, despite antitrust

9to5mac.com

18 pointsretskrad16 comments

The hypocrisy is apparent. Apple claim that they consider privacy a human right. But they are actively promoting google search for money. If their excuse for making google the default search engine would be that it's the best, that may be excusable, but taking money for doing so exposes the lie.

Privacy might be a human right, but profit is a company’s duty. Corporations have no morals if they impact the bottom line. And since no one will stop buying iPhones because Google pays Apple to be the default search engine, this is not a stance Apple needs to change - in their eyes.

So... fiduciary responsibility trumps human rights? I guess I'm not super surprised to hear that coming from Apple.

its the law in the US

This a complete myth. Management and founders have broad power to set priorities.

That’s ridiculous. This sort of all-or-nothing style thinking is remarkably common about things like this. And makes no sense. Like, take Subway, it is supposed to be a healthier option, they picked a mascot based on this and have in-store badging from the American Heart Assoication.

They also sell soda, apparently they’re complete hypocrites then, engulfed in a huge lie!

Safeway sells mostly cakebread. The "healthy" branding is an advertising gimmick, going all the way back to their founding as "Doctors Associates, Inc" to mislead customer into thinking something medical related was involved in the business.

Very poor analogy. Safeway give you the choice to eat fresh and healthy. They never claimed everything they sell, or their whole company are on a mission for healthy diet.

What guarantee does DuckDuckGo make that should make me believe they’re going to be better than Google and Bing?

Right now their (and other supposed privacy oriented engines) promise is as good as a promises made in ToS of Google/Bing… and frankly I trust Google would keep my data safer given their focus on security than a other outfits that may be infected with a spyware and not even know it.

I agree. But Apple is taking money from Google, which shows that privacy isn't a consideration when selecting the default search engine. Hence the apparent hypocrisy.

Exchanging money for goods and services is the norm and frankly I’m not even sure if anyone offers true privacy! Even EU wants to insert spyware on every box now so it’s really preferences in the play. To each their own.

I am sorry I have to nitpick here. Apple claim they consider privacy as "Fundamental" human right.

Do terms of the agreement also include:

1. Safari not allowing adding of any custom search engines/services not on the list? (see 4)

2. Not having Safari on Android?

Is this a three way GAMe noting also that [0]:

3. No Safari on Windows.

4. In most countries search choices in the choice list are only Google, Bing or Bing syndicates?

[0] https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/05/gatekeepers-of-the-western-w...

Not trying to argue one way or another regarding what you said, but I thought it would be interesting to list the search engines present in safari at the moment, given you mentioned it in your first point.

That would be Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia.

Also, if you use a third-party browser, you can add whichever search engine that you want. Just checked, and Firefox on iOS indeed allows adding any search engine manually.

If Google stops paying and people have to manually select Google, the result would be almost identical to the current situation.

I think it's best to think the payment as a protection fee that Google pays so that Apple don't launch their own search engine and mug Google. They are already building one.

Yeah, but that didn't work so well when they tried to copy Google Maps.

Google Maps is the 5th most downloaded app on iOS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com