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Comment by f33d5173 | Hacker News Reader

I'm all in fabour of anti trust against google, but this really doesn't seem like the way. Any other company can easily pony up the cash to become the default search engine, if they'd like. Yahoo gave it a pass on firefox a few years back. All it costs is money. On android, they seemingly don't abuse their ownership of the platform there to maintain their search monopoly: the complaint is about a special search specific deal like everywhere else.

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But why couldn't that be a monopolistic practice? For example, let’s say Apple is getting more than 100% of the ad revenue Google earns from iPhones, but it’s still worth it for Google only because it doesn’t have iPhone users start thinking about other search engines (thereby maintaining the monopoly). That seems pretty similar to standard oil pricing below market value to get its competitors out of business.

> That seems pretty similar to standard oil pricing below market value to get its competitors out of business.

Not quite. In economic terms, if:

> Apple is getting more than 100% of the ad revenue Google earns from iPhones

This would mean that Google is pricing it not just "below market value", but also "below marginal cost of production". You can price below market value and still make a small profit. But in your hypothetical it's literally bleeding money.

I don't think it invalidates your point that "it could qualify as a monopolistic practice". But it's an important distinction because generally selling your goods/services below the supplier's marginal cost is inherently unsustainable.

Playing for placement is common (not saying it's right, nor am I saying it's wrong)

https://thecounter.org/coca-cola-frito-lay-mars-real-estate-...

https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-slotti...

Or we could give users the choice of default search engine instead of just rewarding the winners with the most money to spend..how do you ever expect a new upstart search engine to compete with google if google can just buy defaults? Or owns the most popular mobile OS and web browser?

The completion is a click away. On Android it's settings in the browser default search, similarly for Firefox and Chrome on desktop.

If we open that floodgate, I feel like we have to talk about the browser situation too. How are innovative browser engines expected to compete in a landscape where their defaults are not respected or possible?

on iOS the most innovative browsers are just shells over safari. Every browser is safari

At least the other OS's allow you to run your own rendering engine

Users are pretty much always able to choose their search engine. I don't understand what you mean by "give users the choice of default search engine". What would that look like? A global vote on the defaults for various platforms?

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