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Comment by 4star3star | Hacker News Reader

I'm stunned that Apple collects $19 billion per year from Google to simply set Google search as the default on Apple devices.

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Yes, the biggest privacy invader on the planet effectively purchased a monopoly on Apple devices.

It's just the default. Can't users change it? It's only "effectively a monopoly" because there's no interest among users in changing it.

Google pays Apple $20 billion a year to avoid competition and maintain a monopoly on Apple devices.

The fact that Apple users don't know any better doesn't change this.

There's two choices. Either they set a default, or they make the user choose which engine to use.

If they set a default, whoch is obviously the preference from a seamless experience perspective, how should Apple decide which engine to default to?

The obvious answer is let search providers bid.

If Google were paying Apple to keep other options off the platform, that would be a different story, but it's not a monopoly when a user continues to drive to the closest gas station despite there being an alternative right next door...

Bad analogy. A gas buyer is still making a choice.

Google pays Apple to eliminate the need for choice. And Apple users are accustomed to choices being made for them.

There's no world where it's monopolistic to be the default choice when other choices exist. They're making no effort, so far as anyone is aware, to remove other search engine choices from any devices or browsers.

And for the record, I'm no fan of Google at all. I use a different search engine on all of my devices (was a huge Neeva evangelist until they got bought and gutted by Snowflake, currently jumping between Bing and SearXNG). But the fact remains that paying to be the default option among a half dozen or more search engines for users to choose from is not "maintaining a monopoly" by any definition.

The obvious answer would be for apple to choose the best search engine for the users needs

And how are they expected to determine each user's needs?

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