Apple Demands $9 Billion From Google For Default Search On iOS (neowin.net) 122
A new report from Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall suggests that Apple may be demanding $9 billion from Google to have its search engine as the default in Safari on iOS. This is a steep increase to last year's estimated $3 billion licensing costs and $1 billion licensing costs in 2014. Hall suggests that Apple may even increase the costs to $12 billion in 2019. Neowin reports: It's unclear if Google's supplanting Microsoft as the default search provider for Siri and Spotlight last year is responsible for the purported price hike from Apple, though it may, at least partially, explain the sudden jump. The other explanation could be that previous estimates of the value of the agreement between the two tech giants were undervalued, given that apart from the $1 billion figure from 2014, we don't really have any hard evidence pertaining to the actual sum of these payments. Hall does indicate that "Apple is one of the biggest channels of traffic acquisition for Google' and despite the high cost, it is quite likely that Google will agree to pay the increased sum."
How many mac users are there? (Score:2)
If anyone knows how many mac users there are we could divide it into 9 Billion and see whether the answer seems like a reasonable amount for Google to make from advertising.
Re: How many mac users are there? (Score:3, Funny)
Safari also runs on iOS. There are like literally a billion of the most highly prized users on earth on that platform.
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Re: Reseller Channel (Score:1)
False premise. You seem to think that Google only had two options for this money - paying Apple to make Google a default, or charity. Google would have spent that $9B on coffee and donuts for employees long before the things you suggest.
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Re: How many mac users are there? (Score:5, Informative)
Total iPhone units sold between 2007 and 2017 worldwide is 216.76 million. So not literally a billion; in fact, the article is specifically about iOS, so we can leave out macs. An iPhone will stay in use for about 5 years so let's assume that half of those 216 million devices is still using Safari and will get the search provider pushed. That's 9 billion for 100 million users, or USD 90 per IOS user. Assume I made a mistake and it would only amount to a third of that per user. I would still be worried if Google would pay my phone manufacturer that for providing me ads.
Total iPhones sold in fiscal year 2017 were 217 million [statista.com]. In February 2017, Apple had 1.3 billion active devices [macrumors.com], so 7 USD/user.
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Also, thought USP for apple was that it cared about your privacy, whatever happened to that?
Apple do care about my privacy. They just care about their profits even more. They're a very caring company and have lots of care to go around.
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active devices =\= iphones.
You're being ridiculous there with the hair splitting. 1.3 Billion devices, more than 96% of which are iPads and iPhones, about 4% of which are Macs, almost all of which are affected by the outcome of the Safari deal with Google --- sure a couple million Chinese devices may be an exception.
So what.... 1.0 billion affected devices versus 1.3 billion.
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Well, all it is the default search engine used for the iOS browser. For that, Apple realizes the only real solution is Google for many reasons - it practically is the only search engine out there. After all look at how many Bing jokes there are everytime search engines are brought up.
So Google pays Apple a huge lump of money every year to be the default search engine - you can choose to have Bing or DuckDuckGo as we
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Right. Lets for the sake of not having this argument go for a figure thats about half of that (I'm being generous to the "devices in china" argument.), we're still at about 750 million. The claim about "only half" uses safari kind of suggests a non iphone user. Everyone uses safari on their phone. Or at least almost everybody. There really isn't much in the way of alternatives.
Now, theres an estimate that google makes about $10 per user in profit per year ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/t... [forbes.com] )
By my reckoning
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I just crunched the numbers and decided that Google has more to gain by letting Apple suicide itself than by paying the extortion.
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Google's paying at most approximately $10 per user for a default setting that most users will probably use for the lifetime of the device.
On the other hand, Frankly: MANY of these users are Google users before they are Apple users, and they WANT and EXPECT the default search to be a Google search for effective search results, not a search on a substandard service such as Excite, Yahoo, Jeeves, InfoSeek, Bing, etc.
Perhaps Google should be charging Apple a licensing fee of about $20 per device for
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You have a point there. I was an Android user before I was an iOS user, and one of the reasons I made the switch is because I could use most of the Google services I was accustomed to on my iOS device.
If Apple starts shooting my search requests over to Bing (and let's face it, Microsoft is the only other company with a search engine would would be willing to write Apple a ten digit check), because of a licensing spat, that's going to become one less reason I'll be willing to get a shiny new iPhone once they
Re: How many mac users are there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you realize how dangerous it is to put ALL your information into Google's hands? All it takes is a simple "request for information" request by the government (U.S. or EU or China), and Google hands-over everything they know about you. Which you conveniently provided them.
I prefer to divide my usage across multiple companies, so no one place has my entire browsing history.
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I don't agree that Bing is a "substandard service." Bing gives me far more relevant results than Google on many topics, including computing, DevOps, audio/video, and current events.
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Total iPhone units sold between 2007 and 2017 worldwide is 216.76 million. So not literally a billion; in fact, the article is specifically about iOS, so we can leave out macs. An iPhone will stay in use for about 5 years so let's assume that half of those 216 million devices is still using Safari and will get the search provider pushed. That's 9 billion for 100 million users, or USD 90 per IOS user. Assume I made a mistake and it would only amount to a third of that per user. I would still be worried if Google would pay my phone manufacturer that for providing me ads.
So we then have to multiply the number of active iOS users by the number of web searches they do on average, since each search give Google another "impression" of their advertising, not to mention another bolus of user data to mine. So, if those 100 million (your estimate) active iOS users do an average of 1,000 Google searches per year (which is only about 3 searches per user per day), that's a cool 100 BILLION searches per year. So, that works out to $.09 per ad impression/data mining opportunity.
Sounds q
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Since the title of the summary literally say "[...]On iOS", I don't see the relevance of your argument.
Or have we come so far on ./ that we not only no longer read the article, nor the summary but not even the title? Wow, I wonder what the next step will be, not visiting ./ before posting? /s
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He wanted to be first post, he only had time to read half of the headline.
Re:How many mac users are there? (Score:4, Funny)
Fair point. I use "mac users" as it's a lot quicker to type than "pretentious hipster pansies".
Re: How many mac users are there? (Score:4, Funny)
Username checks out
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I use a Mac and an iPhone, even though I hate Apple. Why? Because I hate Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows) even more.
Yes, there's a lot of hipsters that use Apple stuff as fashion accessories, but not all of us. It's just the least bad alternative for our use cases.
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What is it really worth not letting another search service get that bounce?
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Who would they go to anyway? Bing?
Let then try. See how that goes down with the users. Wait for the flood of "charge your search engine to Google" apps.
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Not just one ad company offering their deranked search product to move more ads.
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Thats what is so neat about capitalism and allowing free market competition. Another really great search service can grow.
Yah, no. Not in this universe. Google owns that monopoly and it isn't going to change any time soon. Nothing short of massive government intervention can change it, and such is nowhere on the horizon. Not that it would be a bad thing, but let's be real.
PageRank patent; Googlebot whitelisting (Score:2)
Thats what is so neat about capitalism and allowing free market competition. Another really great search service can grow.
Not until the PageRank patent expires at the very least. In addition, I've seen a lot of sites whitelist Googlebot in /robots.txt and in Flexible Sampling (inclusion of paywalled sites in Search), and these sites might not be so willing to do the work to extend the whitelist to cover a competitor.
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PageRank patent expired last year.
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What's "free market" about providing a platform that allows for 3rd party apps - except browsers and certain other apps that Apple doesn't want you to provide - apparently because they can use their iOS browser monopoly to extort billions from Google? I believe the default search engine and browser on Windows are still Bing and IE (or Edge). But at least they allow you to install Chrome there - which, for the typical user, is probably easier than figuring out how to change the default search engine.
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If anyone knows how many mac users there are
uh... it's Safari on iOS, meaning Apple mobile devices.
Re: How many mac users are there? (Score:2)
There were about 1B Apple OS devices active in 2016 and that has only exploded in places like China and India.
That's less than $9/year per user. Given Google sells clicks at an average of $1-2 (up to $50 for the most expensive keywords) that's a pretty good deal.
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Was $1 billion a couple years ago. Could also be that Apple doesn't care switching to Bing. This huge $9b amount is not only to have users go through Google, it's also to prevent the same users from going through Bing.
I will cry dry tears over Bing (or any other search engine) gaining market share and Google getting some competition, Google is in urgent need of some serious competition.
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the default should not be influenced by money
uh... so how is the default chosen? Google has better results, sure, but the difference is not consequent enough that Apple cannot make some (good) money out of it.
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uh... so how is the default chosen? Google has better results, sure, but the difference is not consequent enough that Apple cannot make some (good) money out of it.
Why do you have to choose a default? Apple already asks setup questions when you first turn on a device. Of course then it would just shift to charging companies to show up in the list of options. You could do a blank box and let the user type in the url but that is hard on the semiliterate users.
Whatever solution, it makes my skin crawls when one monopoly is giving billions of dollars to a different monopoly in order to maintain those monopolies. Anyone who isn't disturbed by this isn't paying attentio
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Apple has like a paltry 1% share.
iOS still has a 14% market share on smartphones. Source. [blogs.com]
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Have you not read the paper? Apple has like a paltry 1% share. They are barely hanging on.
Apple has a 43% market share in the USA and if you only talk about "high end" phones or "contract phones" then it's likely
considerably higher. Android has a larger market share only because it also sells a bunch of low end devices and between
the two of them (google and apple), they control virtually 100% of the smartphone market.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017... [macrumors.com]
https://www.pcmag.com/news/358... [pcmag.com]
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Could also be that Apple doesn't care switching to Bing.
I really really really want Apple to switch to Bing. Sitting back with popcorn, waiting for that one.
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No ta, apple? (Score:1)
Jacking the price up like that, just because, is taking the p*ss surely.
It's really a balance on whether or not google needs that traffic anymore, or apple wants to make up with the lacklustre services of microsoft search on their flagship products.
One is a search engine that works really well with a decent open phone OS to boot that lets modders do what they want. The other is a bag of shit and repeated
failures and failed product relaunches.
Who do you want to associate with, apple?
duckduckgo (Score:1)
btw,
rather than donating your history and ad money to google, why not use duckduckgo.
I switched years ago, and feel dirty when I use google.
duckduckgo context !bangs are very convenient.
!amazon blue shirt
!youtube blue cat
!w linux
or even
!g duckduckgo
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I switched years ago, and feel dirty when I use google
DDG does not perform as well as Google. Better use Bing, still!
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Isn't DDG using Bing as the real engine anyway?
The proper way to do it would be a distributed search engine, let users work together to do searches and compensate by removing ads or something. Of course that way lies communism /s.
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As opposed to a closing one?
Me too (Score:2)
I wrote a small search engine in 1996 - it's still alive, but counts only about 120 visitors a day.
I would have a lot more visitors (and earnings through advertising), if it was the default SE on Android phones.
Thus I also demand 9 billion US$ from Google - where can I collect?
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Exactly: I fear being slasdotted. All I seek is revenue, not downtime.
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Why do you think every word is trademarked?
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Would you care to share a link to your search engine? I would genuinely like to try it out a bit.
Don't pay it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, Apple crunched their numbers and they know that default search engine is worth more than $9 billion to Google. But if Apple is forced to go to Bing, or worse, implement its own search engine complete with data centers, it will instantly become the laughingstock of the entire internet. After all, crawling back to Microsoft after Bill Gates made Steve Jobs grovel on TV for a $200 million investment. It just doesn't get funnier than that.
If Apple doesn't offer Google by default, it will end up losing way more than $9 billion in sales from customer defections. Go ahead Google, you can easily afford the downside risk. Let Apple learn by doing.
Re:Don't pay it! (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple and Microsoft have many business relationships, and the $200M lawsuit settlement and licensing deal is (really) old news. Bing is not as good as Google, but not bad... most users won't notice. The ones who care will just change the default. Google will lose out on billions in revenue. No one will switch any of their products. It's not that big a deal-- Apple is just asking what their platform is worth. It's ok whether this deal happens or not. Google's probably got the most to lose, but I'm sure they'll do just fine.
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the $200M lawsuit settlement and licensing deal is (really) old news
You have your news confused. Actually, it was only $150 million. It was a direct investment in Apple by Microsoft. Here is Bill Gates making Steve Jobs grovel to get the money. [businessinsider.com]
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I know a lot of people in tech who use DuckDuckGo. (Which is powered by Bing.) So if smart, tech-savvy people are fine with not using Google, I'm not sure there would be as much of an outcry as you'd think. The real danger to Google is that Apple demonstrates another search engine could be a viable alter
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The real danger to Google is that Apple demonstrates another search engine could be a viable alternative.
Google should take that bet. And I will be, as I said, sitting back with popcorn enjoying the ensuing hilarity.
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IMO they are trying to avoid getting anti-trust lawsuits aimed at them, if they take everything in house they are painting a bullseye on themselves.
Gotta leave some crumbs.
I've installed (Score:2)
browsers with google as the default search engine on people's computers, maybe google should pay me, too.
'May be', 'estimated' (Score:3)
The title is stated as fact what the summary clearly states is just a guestimate. Amazing how pretty much every thread here so far has missed that and is discussing this like the title is 100% fact.
BecIt'sNotGoogle (Score:2)
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Late Stage Capitalism (Score:2)
Product, not customer. (Score:2)
It seems like Apple has decided that people who use their phones are a product, to be sold to Google, not a customer.
Well isn't that conveeeeeeniet (Score:2)
Makes a big dent in that payment they have to make to Irish tax authorities.
Who else would they use? (Score:2)
It's not like Yahoo is a candidate... or Bing.
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Google should be charging Apple (Score:1)