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> Why not just stop making the anti-competitive payments and terminate the agreements. Money saved. Problem solved.

It’s only solved if nobody does it. If Google stops those payments unilaterally MS would just make a slightly cheaper deal with Apple..

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It's no longer a competitive market. MS can lowball like crazy now

That sounds bad for Google... ?

I think the point is that if Google is not allowed to make such payments, neither is Microsoft (unless they want to risk the same lawsuit against them). Apple will stay with Google since a change would probably be unpopular with users. End result: Default search engines stay the same, but Google doesn't have to pay for it anymore.

I think this ignores Apple could still develop their own search engine, as they did with Maps, and pocket the ad revenue themselves.

They could, and they should, but they definitely won't. Similar to how they use just a ChatGPT anonymized wrapper for their "advanced AI features", they'll just outsource search to some big player as well.

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