Google pays Apple 36% of the revenue it earns from search advertising made through the Safari browser, the main economics expert for the Alphabet subsidiary testified in court Monday.
Leah Nylen for Bloomberg News:
Kevin Murphy, a University of Chicago professor, disclosed the number during his testimony in Google’s defense at the Justice Department’s antitrust trial in Washington.
John Schmidtlein, Google’s main litigator, visibly cringed when Murphy said the number, which was supposed to remain confidential.
MacDailyNews Take: Tough shite and cringe some more, thieving bastards. (Excellent job, Kevin!)
The companies have had a partnership since 2002 that makes Google the default search engine in Apple’s Safari. Today that deal is the most important of Google’s default deals, since it sets the search engine for the iPhone, the most used smartphone in the US.
The Justice Department is targeting that agreement as evident Google is illegally maintaining its dominance over the search engine and search advertising markets.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, at least some of our old, long-forgotten profits that went the way of the dodo when Google monopolized the internet are going to Apple.
Again, Google monopolized both the search and online advertising markets years ago when they bought politicians via myriad campaign contributions (monetary and services provided) who then pushed through approval of Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007 that never should have been rubber stamped.
Unless Apple is somehow forced to divorce itself from Alphabets no-work-required billion of dollars annually to make Google the default search engine across Apple devices, Apple isn’t going to do it.
While we wish Apple wouldn’t take Google’s money because the monopolized online Search Engine + Digital Ad Network that exists today (and has for years) is bad for everyone not named Alphabet Inc., Apple certainly has the right to monetize Safari’s default search engine – until they don’t. With both companies so large, it may be — in fact, is very likely — that the deal stifles competition in the search engine field. Antitrust remedies are called for in such cases. – MacDailyNews, September 11, 2023
Google is a massive problem that simply must be addressed. There is one “Big Tech” company that is really stifling competition and for which antitrust remedies are in order: Alphabet (Google). — MacDailyNews, October 20, 2020
When one search engine has 86% [91.53% – Oct. 2023] share of the worldwide market (and Google basically isn’t even used in China), there is far, far, far too much power concentrated in one company. The whole concept of the World Wide Web is destroyed when a sole gatekeeper basically controls what gets seen, read, and heard. It’s not open, it’s completely closed and controlled.
Publishers who want to be read, for example, spend an inordinate amount of time making sure they follow Google’s dictates, nebulously sussed from Google’s secret algorithm, formatting their sites, even writing their articles a certain way, including certain words they might not choose if allowed to write freely, simply to please Google’s algorithm…
Hopefully, lawmakers can come together to figure out a way to do something to remedy the horribly uncompetitive situation in internet search. Google is, and has been for years, a perfect example of why antitrust laws exist. — MacDailyNews, July 29, 2020
With this unprecedented power, platforms have the ability to redirect into their pockets the advertising dollars that once went to newspapers and magazines. No one company should have the power to pick and choose which content reaches consumers and which doesn’t. — MacDailyNews, November 9, 2017
Imagine if your livelihood depended on one company that had not only monopolized web search (and, thereby, basically controlled how new customers find you), but also controlled the bulk of online advertising dollars which funded your business and which they could pull, simply threaten to pull, or reduce rates at any time? Now also imagine if you believe this monopolist basically stole the product of another company that is the very subject of your business? How much would you criticize the monopolist thief’s business practices?
You might guess that it would be a tough road to walk. (We’re only imagining, of course!)
That would be a good example of why monopolies are bad for everyone.
The U.S. government has utterly failed to police Google. Because the people with the power to do so currently are corrupt. Follow the money. Hopefully, the European Union will help to correct the situation.
In the meantime, stop using Google search and Google products wherever possible. Monopolies are bad for everyone. — MacDailyNews, July 14, 2016
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“If our visitors each contributed $2 a month, this site would have no advertising (and we’d be free of Google’s SEO and other shackles). Thank you so much to everyone who contributes to keep MacDailyNews running!”
So MDN is asking for donations to remove the ‘shackles’ of Google’s SEO? How does a donation do anything to change that? MDN voluntarily is using Ads by Google instead of helping any competing 3rd party further increasing Google’s power over MDN. SEO is basically an open source way to maximize your appearance on search engines, only one of which is Google. Google is simply more useful to users and removing their ‘default’ position will most likely be of minimal impact (except to Apple’s bottom line). As soon as average users realize they’re not using Google they’ll find the setting to change it to Google.
We have a certain revenue figure required to operate the site. We’ve been running below it for years now. If every visitor contributed $2, we’d simply turn off all ads. MacDailyNews would be a user-supported, instead of ad-supported, site. Right now revenue is a mix: 80% ads, 20% contributions. There are no, for all intents and purposes, any serious competitors to Google in online advertising (even if the names are different, they use Google in some form); it’s an antitrust issue that will take years to rectify, if it ever is.
I recognize the difficult position you are in. However if you continue to make use of Google Ads as you ask for donations, you are sending mixed messages. Also mentioning that the Google SEO is part of the shackles when SEO is a method for all search engines to discover and rank your site makes me question if you understand what it is. I will admit Google Search may use different methods to determine ranking, have you considered optimizing your Search terms for search engines other than Googles?
Google should be regulated as a public utility, since I have no control whether to enrich them or not.
Apple has to let me control my own device, and that’s coming.