A historical parallel is when tobacco advertising was banned, and cigarette companies because more profitable. Advertising greatly affected which cigarettes people smoked but had a smaller (though still real) impact on whether they smoked. So the companies kept most of the revenue with none of the advertising cost.
why would anti-trust rules prevent _anyone_ from bidding? Apple can sell their browser search, just like mozilla can sell firefox search. And anyone with a browser could do the same. Unless the anti-trust rules somehow become so overarching that the selling of space for advertising becomes illegal?
Context is important.
The engine is also used in several other web browsers, many of which do not have the clout to survive solely on ads. Yet another reason Google claiming this is absurd.
If the rules were targeted at Google only then Google's lawyers would argue this is unequal application of the law. Even if the courts rejected Google's argument there'd be a real risk end up with exactly the same situation but with Bing in a couple of years time as they become the default search on every device / browser.
If "pay for default" deals were banned altogether then Firefox might be seriously hurt, which isn't exactly good for the competitive tech ecosystem.
After the FCC agreed that the fairness doctrine applied here every station was required to run one PSA for every 10 tobacco ads. The industry, realizing that nobody would stop advertising without being forced to, actually lobbied Congress for the passage of the law banning it. One reason total revenue went up was that stations were no longer required to run anti-smoking PSAs.
If the default search were randomly assigned and Google investors were nefarious the investors (not Alphabet) could simply help launch 30 different subpar search engines. Then if a user landed on one of those as a default search engine: the user would switch to Google.
If google actually went about organizing the worlds information, that would be wonderful.