No price Microsoft could pay Apple to use Bing: Google antitrust ruling excerpts
theverge.com
theverge.com
Just because they could, doesn't mean they should. But I guess they decided to anyway - it was around that time that adverts shifted from being clearly labelled to being disguised as search results.
This has been a 20 year process with no single step-change. Ads used to be on he right side in colored boxes. Gradually, they started to appear above results and with no background color.
My results might have been thrown off by my searches including "google ads", which is the name of the ad platform itself.
The founders and early investors got the shares with voting rights, plus non voting shares they could sell to cash in, while retaining their control of the company.
> A Summary of Alphabet's Class Structures
Class A: Held by a regular investor with regular voting rights (GOOGL)
Class B: Held by the founders, with 10 times the voting power of Class A shares
Class C: No voting rights, typically held by employees and some Class A stockholders (GOOG)
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
> State codes (including that of Delaware, the preeminent state for corporate law) similarly allow corporations to be formed for "any lawful business or purpose,” and the corporate charters of big public firms typically also define company purpose in these broad terms. And corporate case law describes directors as fiduciaries who owe duties not only to shareholders but also to the corporate entity itself, and instructs directors to use their powers in “the best interests of the company.”
> Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value.
[..]
> More to the point, corporate directors are protected from most interference when it comes to running their business by a doctrine known as the business judgment rule. It says, in brief, that so long as a board of directors is not tainted by personal conflicts of interest and makes a reasonable effort to stay informed, courts will not second-guess the board’s decisions about what is best for the company — even when those decisions predictably reduce profits or share price.
This is the Friedman doctrine:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
It has been popular since the 1970s, but there is plenty of legal precedence that says otherwise:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory
Including recent SCOTUS rulings:
> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits. If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well.
* https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.ht...
* https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-354/case....
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,....
See also:
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-t...
The late Lynn Stout wrote an entire book on the myth:
* https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
* https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
* https://evonomics.com/maximizing-shareholder-value-dumbest-i...
Having to search through more pages to find what you want = more time spent on search = more ad revenue. The word "google" has become so synonymous with searching the web that any competition among non-technical users is near impossible.
Google directly benefits from making their search results worse.
Their Gemini commercial feels like a death knell. They never had to advertise when their products were good.
Speaking of Gemini, I can't really remember the last time Google launched a successful product. Why bother using and depending on it when you know it will be replaced by another product within a year.
Bing as of a handful of years ago wasn't all that bad -- in fact, if you lived in the Microsoft enterprise sphere, it was arguably better than Google. Now that Bing belongs to the ad division, it's no better than Google search. Both platforms are defacto promoted ad engines with SEO gaming for results just beyond the ads.
And I'm aware of Kagi, but it's not for the wide swaths of whatever can be indexed out there... it's tough to stomach paying for a utility that has been free since the 1990s.
Apple has shown in the past that if something is considered a key technology, they would rather own it than hand that power to a key competitor. They made their own CPUs, they made Maps, and they could make search.
Would Apple or their shareholders accept a minimum 20% loss in income, plus whatever the expenses would be to build a Search and Ad platform, plus the continued expenses of maintaining and updating it?
It all comes down to whether or not Apple sees search as a key part of their phones and so far they haven't. FWIW, I think they're right - it's not a key part the same way Maps is, for example.
That is probably not enough though. Products that are just a little better than something that is good enough usually fail. I'm reminded of all the analysises of why plan 9 failed.
Subtle point #2, this is mostly for the general consumer. You can and will piss off professionals or businesses to a point where you shoot yourself in the foot Unity was the most recent high-profile example, and Adobe is slowly losing doting over its issues.
Thus, there needs to be new models for how things work, both for end websites but also for search, models not based on ads.
But I couldn't disagree more about search. AI search is a lot like asking your friend. Your friend who relies on their memory and refuses to look things up online. Searching with AI requires too much brain power because you have to verify everything it gives you.
Of course, that's becoming the case with ads embedded in the search results, too. Kinda bleak, really.
Possibly even personalized agents could do this locally. You'll have to verify exactly as much as you do currently with old-style search, but ideally with much higher quality results and ranking, and no ads. For simpler things likely the answer will be directly trust worthy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40310228 “Leaked deck reveals how OpenAI is pitching publisher partnerships” 303 points by rntn 88 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 281 comments
I would be surprised if paying for the AI agent would stop it from also taking money from advertisers, just like buying a copy of Microsoft Windows doesn’t stop meaningless ads showing in the start menu etc.
Ditto, but I also feel the same way about subscription models.
It's shame though that crypto is to most people now, well, you know - crypto.
I'd really like for Kagi to be a success.
No such thing as a free lunch. I'd rather pay to not have ads splashed in my face than have some corporation sell my data to the highest bidder.
And an open source search engine isn't exactly a feasible endeavor (e.g. one that can be produced in 5-10 years without some reliance on existing tech). But I'd happily donate if anyone wants to take a gander at such an initiative.
I’m glad it benefits others but for me it was not much different from Google (with ad block).
In two ways it was an inconvenience compared to Google — location search (Kagi respects privacy so it doesn’t do location, and its default maps are not as good — though google maps are one click away, it was an extra click each time.) searching for where to watch movies on streaming platforms was also missing so I had to do !g.
I wish Kagi well — it’s by no means bad, in fact it’s an admirable product. But it wasn’t for me.
Do you mean you don't want the search engine to correlate your query with what you clicked on? or any other feedback from user interactions to update its ranking?
Good luck with that.
Or do you want a free search engine without any ads ? You might as well wait for a company to send you money every week.
An Operating System should be a tool, not a marketing destination. Get rid of all the useless telemetry that caused you to colossally ruin Windows 8 by removing the start menu button that "nobody used" and then "how do I turn off my computer" became the most looked up search term that year.
Microsoft has great products, all ruined by marketing departments.
Most if not all big companies without tasteful people would eventually turn into monstrosities like this. Everyone were telling 'stories' around 'stories' that fold into a tangled web of everyone else, but sooner or later one day the bubble's going to pop, and down the stocks be gone.
People with bad tastes aren't the worst to deal with. They have taste, it's just that it's different from others'. Tasteless people will do anything in their power to keep the wheels turning, and that means to let tasteful people surrounding them surrender their tastes, so everyone can and will become tasteless people who would do anything to keep the wheels turning.
It was incredible to see how important they thought they were, and how every single aspect of the entire company had to be about Marketing. Even when it very clearly made the product shitter and pissed off customers and was a total disaster, they would increase the number of ads, increase the BS customers had to listen to when calling in and make the website a nightmare to navigate.
Even when external experts hired specifically to re-design the website for millions of dollars said point blank their decisions were horrific and were driving customers away, marketing said "We are Marketing, do as we say".
Everyday working with them made me think of that Steve Jobs video where he talks about a company being doomed when the marketing folks take over.
(Incidentally, the VP of Marketing is now the CEO, so yeah)
But, if Bing (especially circa 2016) were that search provider, it would lead to confusion all the way down. It's bad enough not to receive an answer from your first attempt, but it's much worse not to be able to receive an answer at all.
The payments were certainly a sweetener to discourage exploring (or incubating) alternatives, but I agree with the article that I don't think they could have dumped or replaced Google at that time, even without the payments.
Given a broader shift from search engines to "knowledge engines" or however they're branded these days (which, in fairness, probably drew some inspiration from Google's Knowledge Graph), I think that Apple's options are wider these days.
Taking money out of the equation (or making the offer equal between Microsoft and Google), could Bing have improved to meet the quality of Google if it had all iOS users using it and providing usage data to improve the experience? How long would that take?
I would assume the answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second question is too long for Apple's liking.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41164240
Is that line item the justification for people to imagine, whole cloth, that Apple has an advertising incentive, and therefore is no better than Google?
Wouldn't it be ironic for folks trying to equivocate Apple and Google's advertising agenda to find out that the only reason Apple has revenue from "advertising" is because Google pays them to?
> The big DOJ antitrust trial over Google Search revealed last week that Big G pays Apple $20 billion a year to be the default search on iOS. That’s over 20 percent of the “services” revenue Tim Cook loves to talk about on earnings calls, but hey, where is all that money on the balance sheet?
> BI’s Peter Kafka found out: Apple categorizes it as “advertising.”
-- https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/6/24150326/well-thats-an-int...
No it isn't.
First, that's not what a balance sheet is. A balance sheet is the list of assets and liabilities. How those assets were gained isn't tracked. What you're thinking of is the income statement. Not understanding the difference is fine, but understanding the difference would have made it clear that your source is trash
Second, there is no "advertising" line item in Apple's financials. Not in the balance sheet (where it would make no sense) nor in the income statement (it is under services, but not broken out further).
The rest of your post is basically fanfic, since it is based on this invalid claim.
yeah, balance sheet is the incorrect technical term.
And yes, obviously they haven't broken it out beyond "services" income on an income statement -- otherwise it would have been news prior to the court fact findings becoming public record.
> But each year, in Apple's annual report, when it breaks down each of its business lines, Apple does say: "The Company's advertising services include third-party licensing arrangements."
-- https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-advertising-google-sea...
> Apple does have a traditional advertising business...$5.4 billion last year.
That being said, what's fanfic about posing a question and proposing a hypothetical?
My primary point is that there are so many adtech apologists looking to drag Apple's claims of privacy, user-focused into the same realm as the ad-surveillance business: wouldn't it be deeply ironic if the vast majority of that "advertising" business (roughly 80% of it) was just payments from the biggest adtech giant of all?
Which is a conditional statement: IF(advertising=google money) -> ironic situation.
IF we can trust the business insider reporter's reading of income statements:
> "The Company's advertising services include third-party licensing arrangements." Like renting out its search exclusivity to Google.
Then it would be ironic indeed for people trying to paint them as no better than google. But my guess is that most people would just shrug and suggest that taking money for default search engine placement is the same as monetizing the entire web.