Google To Pay Apple $15 Billion To Remain Default Safari Search Engine In 2021 (9to5mac.com) 74
It's long been known that Google pays Apple a hefty sum every year to ensure that it remains the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Now, a new report from analysts at Bernstein suggests that the payment from Google to Apple may reach $15 billion in 2021, up from $10 billion in 2020. 9to5Mac reports: In the investor note, seen by Ped30, Bernstein analysts are estimating that Google's payment to Apple will increase to $15 billion in 2021, and to between $18 billion and $20 billion in 2022. The data is based on "disclosures in Apple's public filings as well as a bottom-up analysis of Google's TAC (traffic acquisition costs) payments." Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi says that Google is likely "paying to ensure Microsoft doesn't outbid it." The analysts outline two potential risks for the Google payment to Apple, including regulatory risk and Google simply deciding the deal is no longer worth it:
In an interview earlier this year, Apple's senior director of global privacy Jane Horvath offered reasoning for the deal, despite privacy concerns: "Right now, Google is the most popular search engine. We do support Google but we also have built-in support for DuckDuckGo, and we recently also rolled out support for Ecosia."
In an interview earlier this year, Apple's senior director of global privacy Jane Horvath offered reasoning for the deal, despite privacy concerns: "Right now, Google is the most popular search engine. We do support Google but we also have built-in support for DuckDuckGo, and we recently also rolled out support for Ecosia."
Now if they would pay ... (Score:2, Insightful)
... Microsoft to stop producing ever shittier versions of Windows !
Re: Now if they would pay ... (Score:3)
Do something about your privacy. It should not be for sale where you do not collect the revenue.
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Everyone switch to Bing so that MS have more money with which to hire developers to fix Windows! :)
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I know that you are joking but I have been using Bing for years and it is a superior experience than Google.
I often will cross check on Google and the results are no more relevant.
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If only I didn't feel so dirty when I use it.
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Then don't buy that version of Windows.
Switch to Linux or a Mac, stay on a older version of Windows....
Windows 10 (I haven't tried windows 11 beta yet) is much better than Windows 8, As well after a set of patches it has grown on me to be preferred over Windows 7. Being that I haven't been seeing BSOD, or crashes or slowness in the OS Over time, I would say Microsoft is actually getting better.
Yea there is a lot of the cloud crap I don't like, but the core OS for Windows has gotten to a point where it per
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At first I agreed, in that Windows 10 seems to be a huge improvement over Windows 7 or 8. The past year or so has me on the fence. Besides performance penalties being introduced, ginormous biannual feature updates, etc. the security flaws seem to coming at a pace rivalling Windows 95 or 98. You look at the recent PrintNightmare, SAM export, etc. security holes and it's really adding up. The most mind-boggling Windows 10 fix not too long ago involved a heap memory leak in File Explorer. Really? What year is
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"At first I agreed, in that Windows 10 seems to be a huge improvement over Windows 7 or 8. "
Are you serious? Whereas Win7/NT actually worked, and allowed users control of processes, anything past that required too much time and effort. Window10 is a bloated, resource and metric stealing pig.
I mean tell me you're not trolling!
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I mean at first blush, when I compared Windows 10 to 8. But agreed over time, the more I was exposed to Windows 10 I too came to realize it became more and more bloated. When I am troubleshooting sporadic Win10 performance issues I look at all of the running processes. Damn if I didn't think that a half dozen of them weren't some sort of malware. But nope, all new additions to the underlying OS support family. My admin workstation has 16 GB RAM and an Intel i7. Even then when I first log into Windows I migh
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Even then when I first log into Windows I might as well go to the bathroom while it comes up.
I had this problem on my workstation with similar specs. But the problem turned out to be my old 5400 rpm hard drive. I upgraded to a decent SSD and the problem was gone. Cold boot to desktop in less than 30 seconds now.
Crazy amount (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a crazy amount. I mean, I don't doubt Google make more by controlling Apple users' internet access (it's not just searching when you start there and continue to the entire ecosystem, including ads, AMP and google analytics), but still $15 billion is quite a lot of money for just the fear of "Bing". I mean, no other search engine could afford paying nearly as much, so it's just the threat of MS that gets it that high. And I seriously doubt that MS would offer that much, as they can't make it back like Google does, while "Bing" is quite uncool for Apple to choose it unless there was a lot more money involved.
To me it seems like great negotiation tactics by Apple. Mozilla only managed to get $450 mil / year from Google.
Re:Crazy amount (Score:5, Interesting)
Thing is - whenever I accidentally end up using Bing, it *sucks*. And I don't just mean a little bit. It's truly awful. It's a waste of Google's money to pay *anyone* not to use Bing because users will just switch back to Google.
Re:Crazy amount (Score:4, Insightful)
They're practically interchangeable at this point. Google stopped giving me accurate results many years ago. You search for something like hackrf gnuradio example and by the third or fourth result the word hackrf isn't even in your result. They discard my terms constantly and even using quotes is no guarantee that it finds that word. Especially if you're searching for obscure things like really old software. One time I was searching for a Linux equivalent or some piece of software (can't recall) and the first fucking link returned made no mention of Linux.
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You search for something like hackrf gnuradio example and by the third or fourth result the word hackrf isn't even in your result
No, you search for "hackrf gnuradio example" and have problems. When I do it, literally all ten first page results include (again, literally) all three search terms.
Google learns what kind of links you follow. If you are getting shit search results it's because you're not logging in, or because you've been clicking on shit links.
yay slashdot (Score:2)
Useful information is overrated, people only want to cry about google
What a shit show
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It is not helpful.
Google is helping you find the kind of content you've clicked on in the past. If you don't want to keep finding a certain kind of content, stop clicking on it. It's literally that simple.
Will Google occasionally give you shitty results? Sure, it's not perfect. But try the same searches on some other engines and guess what? They're not better. At least, that's been my experience, maybe I'm not using those other search engines enough for them to learn about me. But then, that merely illustrates my point, rath
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I think there's a pretty strong argument for consistency in search results. In an ideal world, URLs are the usable addresses for some particular item on the WWW, but we've sort of reached a point where that does not work as often as it should. So, "search for _searchterm_ and go to the third result" is an alternative. When _searchterm_ for user X brings up completely different results than for user Y on the same search engine in the same timeframe, it can be problematic. It seems like in just about everythi
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I think there's a pretty strong argument for consistency in search results.
Too many users, too many desired results. Sometimes you want some commonality, sometimes you want none. I block google around the web using noscript so they're not sniffing up my ass every website I visit, but I log in so that my search results and youtube history and so on all work. So far google seems to be content with that state of affairs, and I find it an acceptable tradeoff.
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This seems to suggest that the earlier reply remarking that Bing "sucks" is due to the fact that it's just not being used often enough by the user.
That is conceivable. I haven't used Bing enough to know. But then, why would I? Trading being spied upon by Google for being spied upon by Microsoft is definitely not an upgrade.
Re: Crazy amount (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s exactly the problem with Google.
I want a search engine to give the most relevant results based on my current search query, not a best guesstimate of what it can find based on previous search queries or the contents of my Emails and browsing history.
Since I cannot stop Google from following whatever I do online and creating a personal echo chamber for me, it is going downhill as a service.
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You search for something like hackrf gnuradio example and by the third or fourth result the word hackrf isn't even in your result
No, you search for "hackrf gnuradio example" and have problems. When I do it, literally all ten first page results include (again, literally) all three search terms.
Google learns what kind of links you follow. If you are getting shit search results it's because you're not logging in, or because you've been clicking on shit links.
I'm failing to understand why anything remotely intelligent would need a profile or any context on a person requesting something very specific like hackerf gnuradio.
This is about what a human would do. Are those typos? Schamybe, the second one highly unlikely, does not match profile of a typo. Dig through your index real quick and check, ah, gnuradio and hackerf are things, obscure things, but enough results to be considered A Thing. Return pages with said things, learn a little bit about gnuradio and h
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If I'm clicking shit links it's because google is returning them.
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Nothing is perfect. Remember what search engines were like before google? Hotbot and altavista were groundbreaking in their time[s], but then the size of the web exploded and they were fundamentally unable to scale sufficiently to keep up.
Google used to be able to return useful search results to everyone without personalization, but the web is much larger now and it has a lot of people speaking a lot of different languages, and coming up with a lot of new and difficult-to-reconcile misspellings.
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Just found a perfect example of google's shittyness. Did a search for itunes flac and the first result is apple.com where it talks about lossless compression and flac is not mentioned once! The second result is apple.com and doesn't mention flac. The third result https://kirkville.com/how-to-p... [kirkville.com] finally has both terms itunes and flac.
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Just found a perfect example of google's shittyness.
Okay...
Did a search for itunes flac and the first result is apple.com where it talks about lossless compression and flac is not mentioned once!
Right, it talks about ALAC, Apple's proprietary lossless audio codec (because standards are great! as long as they're proprietary! fucking Apple) and Google ostensibly knows that Apple users are often looking for their Apple-approved lossless codec when they search for FLAC. The second hit is also about ALAC in my results. Results 3-10 are all about FLAC, and results 3 and 4 in particular both tell you that iTunes does not support FLAC (enjoying being an Apple user yet?) and also tell you how to conv
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Not representative.
It sound like your search queries are likely really esoteric and
super advanced compared to the average person who will search for a common word or phrase, and don't even know about the significance of quotation marks.
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What do you expect when Google search thinks everyone is a moron-child and keeps telling everyone "You didn't really want to search for wordA wordB wordC, but instead you wanted to search for wordA wordK and wordX, right"?
Google's decline in search result precision can be quite apparent, and how far off their results sometimes can border on absurdity. An esoteric search phrase isn't required to show how far down the drain google search has gone in recent years. Just looking up something specific to Macos
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How hard is it to add an extra .com to that "Firefox" and save yourself the trouble?
Re:Crazy amount (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the part that makes the least sense to me. Apple is all about controlling the user experience, and I don't see any scenario in which they'd be willing to accept the damage to their brand by pushing a worse search engine on their users just because someone threw some additional money at them. I could see Google paying Apple 15 billion to keep Apple from developing an alternative search solution, but if the only motivation is to keep Bing out, Bing is doing a fine job on that front entirely on its own. Now if Bing actually spent comparable money on providing a better user experience, improving accuracy, etc. instead of trying to pay people to use it, it would be a different matter.
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I could see Google paying Apple 15 billion to keep Apple from developing an alternative search solution
It's definitely this. It would be terrible, but Apple Maps still exists...
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That's a crazy amount. I mean, I don't doubt Google make more by controlling Apple users' internet access (it's not just searching when you start there and continue to the entire ecosystem, including ads, AMP and google analytics), .
How is is controlling Apple users internet access? I don't use Google's search engine, I block all google scripts, and eliminate every Google-esque thing I find trying to invade my Mac.
It's remarkably the same stuff I do to keep them out of my Windows machines as well.
And if blocking google on individual sites breaks them, I just move on.
Point is, they might not be getting their money's worth.
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That's a crazy amount.
Yes, it is. Even crazier is that it's apparently worth it.
I don't doubt Google make more by controlling Apple users' internet access
wat
it's not just searching when you start there and continue to the entire ecosystem, including ads, AMP and google analytics)
Apple is a willfully contributing party to all of that, because they don't let you run your own browser engine.
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It just goes to show you how much Google makes by monetizing all of that personal information it can gather as a result of this deal. Even though advertising is almost universally reviled by consumers, big business is still willing to make those kinds of investments in technology that annoys YOU and makes Google incredible amounts of money.
Best,
Re:Crazy amount (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple would just as likely invest literally billions in building their own rather than use Bing. $15 billion to keep your competitor from creating yet another competing product might be the bargain they want.
That said, they're paying the equivalent of $2 for every person on the planet just to set a preference. How much do they make per person globally per year?
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Apple would just as likely invest literally billions in building their own rather than use Bing. $15 billion to keep your competitor from creating yet another competing product might be the bargain they want.
That said, they're paying the equivalent of $2 for every person on the planet just to set a preference. How much do they make per person globally per year?
Apple apparently gets about half of its revenue from iPhones. [investopedia.com] Google competes with Apple in their most profitable line (phones OS/hardware) and Google also competes with MS in their most profitable line (cloud services). Apple and Microsoft don't seem to really be impacting each other's bottom line much these days.
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That's a crazy amount.
To Google?
That amount can be found behind the couch. They've got to do something with the taxes they aren't paying after all... with another company that isn't paying tax.
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I wouldn't be surprised if a huge portion of that amount is revenue share. Google is obviously paying up a bit to get in front of the customers, but at the end of the day that huge $$ amount is mostly driven by the huge $$ amount of advertising Apple users see and click on while using their phones, tablets, etc.
If you call it 200 million new devices a year, then you could estimate 600mm - 1b total devices, so ~15 bucks each? Not terrible. That's about 5 cents a day per device.
Re:Mozilla (Score:2)
Mozilla is kept alive as a PR gesture. There are far more Apple users.
It should be user choice (Score:1)
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No, profit is essential to a free market. It's the incentive for any seller to participate. The counterpart of profit, consumer surplus, provides the incentive for buyers to choose between competing products.
In the imaginary situation of perfect competition, the achievable profit teens towards zero -- but real world markets never achieve the theoretical conditions for perfect competition.
Similarly, only some situations lead to natural monopolies. It's not an inherent consequence of a free market.
Your ass
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profit is the opposite of a free market
wat
That's complete bollocks.
There's no markets without profit.
And monopolism is the natural conclusion of profit
Also completely false. Monopolism is the natural conclusion of a market without controls, which ironically cannot be a free market since you need controls to promote freedom. For example, you can't let one party dominate the market, or it impinges on everyone else's freedom.
If you lived in a democracy, you, the people, would hold the biggest club in the jungle.
Clubs don't work like that. If you have a club that big, nobody can swing it. Everyone has their own club and they've been tricked into beating one another with them instead o
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Apple is not forcing anyone here, only providing a default setting. How many preferences do you want to set before using you device? Search engine, voice assistant, local weather information, cloud backup of device settings, map application? How many more cases like those involve sending user- or device-specific information to a service provider? Should other important settings also be part of device setup?
We probably agree that those things should have user-selectable alternatives. However, there's ro
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Apple is not forcing anyone here, only providing a default setting. How many preferences do you want to set before using you device?
The issue is I purchase hardware from Apple - as their customer, they SHOULD be honest as a supplier and provide as the preset solution an honest choice for the options that is the most suitable and reasonable; Not cheating and handing me a default they've been bribed to provide, which may be substandard.
If they want to give me a Sponsored default, Then they should be requi
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When a grocery store moves a brand you don't like to a preferred spot on the shelves because they received special pricing for that product, do you get similarly upset?
Hellooo monopolism! (Score:1, Insightful)
Imagine if Microsoft did that.
I think Google should get the same treatment.
It's blatant, open monopolism.
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Imagine if Microsoft did that.
I'm trying to imagine literally any brand accepting that offer.
As far as default browser preference, Microsoft doesn't have to pay. They just set up their OS so that the OEM can't change the default browser and say good luck finding a different OS to bundle.
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Now Apple can afford to include a phone charger! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Of course they can afford to include a charger in the box. But they shouldn't because it's a frigging e-waste nightmare. You shouldn't be asking for a charger, you should be asking for a $35 discount.
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Of course they can afford to include a charger in the box. But they shouldn't because it's a frigging e-waste nightmare. You shouldn't be asking for a charger, you should be asking for a $35 discount.
Apple would say you're already getting the discount, so that's a waste of breath. I do think it's the time not to include chargers or power supplies where the user is likely to already have them. In contrast to the lameness of excluding the headphone jack, excluding the charger makes sense.
Cheaper for Google to pay each iOS user $50... (Score:3)
$15 billion? (Score:2)
You sure? (Score:3)
You sure about that? Google's annual revenue is ~$150-200bn. It's a pretty big deal if they're handing Apple 5-10% of it.
Would love to be enlightened if I'm falling victim to some clever accounting trick.
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Makes you wonder, though, just how google intends to monetize Apple users.
By showing ads in the search results. They've been doing it for over 20 years and it's wildly lucrative.
nt (Score:2)
Why does this remind me of payola in the radio market?
It sounds more like apple is extracting a bribe from google and they're trying to keep it hushy from the end users.
Thats still a lot (Score:1)
It makes me wonder if the progress made by other search engines and the general drop in Google's user trust has actually made this more of a competitive move? I'm probably overestimating how much ground Google has lost recently but this just seems extreme.
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It will make a dent, actually. Google's cash on hand is ~$135bn. They're handing Apple over 10% of it.
Their market cap is nearly $2tn. Maybe that's a more meaningful number to compare to. I don't know. Not my field of expertise.
Bing, really? (Score:2)
I actually left iPhones for Android after having been a faithful customer for over six years simply because they replaced google with Bing in Siri and made it impossible to get Google maps, over Apple maps, via Siri.
I mean, Apple has loyal followers, but even that has its limits. Doesn't it?
Re: Apple loyalty limits (Score:2)
Your extreme niche case doesn't represent the Apple base most of whom are not techies in any respect.
Apple didn't get rich by not knowing its market.
$$$ Privacy (Score:1)
Guess we know what's really important to Apple after all. It's all a front. They couldn't care less.