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Comment by mdale | Hacker News Reader

Apple tried to run a similar game with Facebook to get a cut of revenue from all ads that ran on Facebook. [1]

Apple probably would have slow rolled web cohort privacy more like what Google is doing in Chrome if FB would have paid to play.

That did not work out and FB paid far more in market cap and loss in rev then if they would have just kissed the ring.

So all told it's odd that Google is on trial for playing in Apple device Monopoly.

Maybe Google would do best to point to the deviation of FB business for not playing ball with Apple; showing their hands were tied ;)

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-apple-vs-facebook-pr...

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Apple's not on trial here. They're also on trial for the sorts of things you mentioned, as is FB.

It'll be interesting to see if the courts actually enforce the law, or if these cases get decided on political influence instead. Previous testimony in this case is pretty damning for Google, since it implies their ad business is built on multiple levels of fraud. That ought to be enough to get them to lose the case.

Time will tell. Happily, it's possible for all three of those players to be found guilty. It's not an either/or situation.

> Previous testimony in this case is pretty damning for Google, since it implies their ad business is built on multiple levels of fraud.

I have not been following this as closely as I should have. Is there a specific source of that testimony that I can search for?

What fraud has been committed? I didn't see that in the article. It's been known for a very long time that Google paid Apple to be the default search engine. Long before this trial.

The fascinating thing to me is all this revenue is essentially a direct consequence of market share.

How much Google pays to Apple is directly proportional to how much Google needs to be on Apple devices to maintain search hegemony.

Apple is being paid for being popular. The economics of maintaining a search monopoly are weird.

It's not weird at all, they're paying to reduce friction for users to use their product.

It's no different than Coca-Cola working ceaselessly to make sure Coke is available in popular places -- and in the case of Coca-Cola, literally everywhere on the planet.

It's different though, because the Google revenue machine relies on having "sufficient" market share (particularly in Search and Maps).

Fall below that line, whatever it is, and their ability to generate revenue looks very different.

So it'd be more like if people stopped wanting Coke if it fell below 40% market share.

A closer analogy would be the price Coke could charge third parties to be co-stocked in Coke machines.

Are you arguing that it's non-linear? Because I'm pretty sure Firefox is paid based on a tiny 3% slice of market share.

Firefox isn't paid based on market share, they are paid to exist. It's a figleaf and it costs Google about 0.2% of their annual turnover. Compared to being broken up or fined that's much cheaper for Google.

Okay, then why did Yahoo outbid Google for placement?

Doesn't that support the claim that Google doesn't actually care about ads on Firefox? Just that someone is paying them enough?

Or it signals that Google limits bids to what's profitable, and Yahoo outbid them. Which would suggest it does care, but only up to a limit.

I don't know offhand how the contracts work, if there's a minimum traffic sent clause, or any other direct tie in to user behavior, or if this is a lump sum auction "give us a billion dollars and we'll make you default for a year" scenario. Either way, I expect Google would scale the amount they pay based on traffic sent. Happy to read details from anyone who has them =)

But my question is: why did Yahoo outbid them? Yahoo doesn't need a fig leaf at all.

Firefox search revenue is more about keeping it alive and Chrome out of anti-trust crosshairs.

Apple needs to be broken up. Tbh all the big guys do

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