But my main point stands— the lawsuit is against google. If Google is not allowed to pay Apple because of their monopoly status, does that mean MSFT still could pay Apple? Is the goal of this lawsuit just to give Bing a better rate? It just seems weird to focus on Google here when Apple seems to be the more actionable company to sue, since Apple actually controls the market of “default search engine on iOS”.
Even in the absence of payments, Apple would still be entirely within its rights to set Google as the default search provider, which is why the lawsuit isn’t about Apple. It’s about the set of things that Google has done to inhibit search competition, only one of which is paying Apple for default placement.
That doesn’t mean that they weren’t guilty of being a coercive monopolist.
It’s quite possible this means that the Apple/Google deal is not allowed but only if Google is deemed to be abusing their market position.
But in 2023, are there any operating systems that don't ship with a built-in browser? Is there any reality in which the browser isn't an integral part of the operating system?
And then there's also the fact, which people forget, that IExplorer was a technically superior browser to Netscape's Navigator. It took a revamping of the organization, and of the product, to come up with a Firefox that could compete.