SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A Google Witness Let Slip Just How Much It Pays Apple For Safari Search
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Google gives Apple a 36 percent cut of all search ad revenue that comes from Safari, according to University of Chicago professor Kevin Murphy. Google had fought to keep the number confidential, but Bloomberg reports that Murphy shared the figure while testifying in Google’s defense today at the Google antitrust trial.
Google has long paid to be the default search engine in Safari and other browsers like Firefox, spending $26.3 billion in 2021 alone for the privilege. $18 billion of that went to Apple, but the specifics of where the number came from remained secret until now. Google has been trying to keep such details under wraps as the trial goes on, but bits and pieces have seeped out anyway. According to Bloomberg, Google lawyer John Schmidtlein “visibly cringed when Murphy said the number.” Google declined to comment in an email to The Verge; Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apple’s Eddy Cue defended the deal in September, saying Apple actually wanted a bigger cut of the money Google makes from Safari traffic, but the companies settled on the lower number Murphy revealed today. While specific numbers were discussed that day, they were only talked about in closed sessions, away from the ears of press.
The US Justice Department filed its antitrust charges alleging its search monopoly following an investigation by 50 US attorneys general that began in 2019. The trial started on September 12th.
Google Paid Samsung $8 Billion Over 4 Years For Play Store Monopoly
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The ongoing Google vs. Epic trial has brought out another interesting piece of information. As per testimony presented by Epic Games (via Bloomberg), Google paid Samsung $8 billion over a period of four years to keep Search, Assistant, and Play Store as default services on Samsung phones.
When questioned by Epic’s lawyers on Monday, James Kolotouros, Vice President for Partnerships at Google, said that Google struck deals with Android phone makers to ensure their devices were pre-loaded with the Google Play Store. Kolotouros testimony further revealed that Samsung’s phones and other devices account for half or more of the entire Google Play Store revenue.
In 2019, Google reportedly ran an initiative called “Project Banyan.” Under it, the company invested funds so the Google Play Store could remain on Samsung devices alongside the Galaxy Store. The company even offered to pay $200 million over four years to Samsung to make the Galaxy Store available within the Play Store, complete with its billing system. However, those plans were later scrapped, and Google reportedly signed three deals worth $8 billion with Samsung.
[...] Epic is trying to show that Google discouraged third-party app stores on Android devices by paying device makers to pre-install and make the Google Play Store the default app downloading destination. Google has been striking such deals for a long time, and they are also under scrutiny in a separate anti-trust suit brought on by the Department of Justice.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2023, @09:55AM (8 children)
After all Edge is the default on Windows and plenty of people were using it to download and install Chrome (assuming they were allowed to - not their organization's computer).
Only when Edge got better did more people start saying it's good enough.
Same goes for Google search. I suspect if some other search engine was better AND stayed better, within a few years it would beat Google search in market share (I remember Infoseek, Altavista and so on). Nowadays I do use Yandex search (image and web) for some stuff (better for certain image and web searches, and better for getting more hits from site:xyz.com keyword searches but you end up needing to keep doing captchas if you use that a lot). But Google search results are still better in general. DDG and Bing generally aren't worth bothering with if the results matter more to you.
Maybe Apple users are less likely to change their search?
As for Samsung, AFAIK they still have their Galaxy store so what monopoly? And seems to me that Samsung users complain more about Samsung's apps and bloat than about Google's stuff. For a while even the Samsung flagship stuff was showing ads. Pay flagship premiums and still get ads ( https://9to5google.com/2021/08/18/samsung-ads-removal-report/ [9to5google.com] ). 🤣
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 16 2023, @11:32AM (6 children)
Yes, it's really that bad. The issue is monopolistic power, not how good or how bad the browser is. With monopolistic power, you can prevent any competitor gaining traction in the market. Can you say with certainty that Google's monopoly hasn't quashed some other browser that had far superior security? Or, one that used a tiny fraction of the resources? Or one that was faster by orders of magnitude? What has Google prevented from entering the market? Without that monopoly, we may have seen half a dozen new browsers spring into existence, two to four of them proven utter failures, maybe one or two gaining a following, and maybe another actually competing with Chrome head to head.
Monopolies DO NOT encourage innovation.
The newest thing around is Arc browser. https://thebrowser.company/ [thebrowser.company] I have little interest in it. (I've downloaded and installed it on the MacBook, but don't really use it.) But, it does have it's following. How many others have we been deprived of?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nuke on Thursday November 16 2023, @12:42PM (5 children)
How does Google "quash" other browsers and search engines (the latter being the thread subject)? I have just done a search on Google* for "Search Engines" and funnily enough the top hit is 21 Great Search Engines You Can Use Instead Of Google. Most of the other first page hits are also about using something superior to Google.
* Just for this experiment. I usually use DDG.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 16 2023, @12:59PM (2 children)
Search engines are easy. That is the subject of TFA, as you point out. If Google weren't paying billions to be the default search on computers around the world, perhaps Duck would become ubiquitous. Or Searx, or Quant, or who knows what. Suppose that new computers simply didn't come with a default, instead you opened your browser for the first time, and it ASKED YOU which search engine you want to be default. You want Bing, you get Bing. You want Baidu, you get Baidu. Think about it: being the default search engine is literally worth billions of dollars. Deprive Google of that monopolistic power, and Google is quite likely to sink from top spot to third, or sixth, or even twelfth place. It wouldn't take long for the effect of those billions of dollars of income to help boost other search engines closer to the top.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 16 2023, @07:59PM (1 child)
>If Google weren't paying billions to be the default search on computers around the world, perhaps Duck would become ubiquitous. Or Searx, or Quant, or who knows what.
This is the reality of the "free" market. It is anything but free. There are advantageous placements, and those placements cost more than a startup can ever hope to pay.
It's not just browsers, or search engines, or mobile apps... this is true of chips and soda (and everything else) in your grocery store, snacks in your gas station, clothes in the shopping malls, retail outlets in urban areas, utility providers... most everything (in urban areas) has limited access and therefore a price to pay for the best placement. Construction permits, taxes, restaurant leases... this is capitalism as it really is, it's nothing about free markets, everything about stability for the big players.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 17 2023, @12:37AM
This year. In a few years, that can be very different.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2023, @02:29PM (1 child)
We found the google employee.
(Score: 2, Troll) by DannyB on Thursday November 16 2023, @02:57PM
During a trial, Google needs to be more careful about who they put in their witless list to give testiphony.
The amount of rust code in Linux has grown.
The amount of rust code in Linux has groan.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Thursday November 16 2023, @01:44PM
I use DDG by default. In the beginning, I compared a few searches with google and found results to be very similar. Could you point out some (specific) weaknesses?