Apple says 'there's no price Microsoft could pay' to make it ditch Google: "They offered to give us Bing for free

[Windows Central]

While Google has been deemed a monopolist, Apple will retain its exclusive deal with the company citing Bing's search quality issues.

Apple says 'there's no price Microsoft could pay' to make it ditch Google: "They offered to give us Bing for free : Read more

 

[fjtorres5591]

At least not as long as they get 20Billion a year in kickbacks.

Things will change as soon as the kickbacks go away.
(In fact, they are no doubt cooking up an LLM search engine of their own for when Google's bounty goes away.)

 

[TheFerrango]

What do they mean "they offered Bing for free", shouldn't Microsoft be paying to get Bing set as the default?

 

[coffeecat]

What do they mean "they offered Bing for free", shouldn't Microsoft be paying to get Bing set as the default?

What they meant is even if Microsoft give Bing, the actual product itself, the whole "company" for free. They won't want it. Because the revenue it generates is worse than the exclusive deal from Google, plus other reputational concerns.

 

[TheFerrango]

What they meant is even if Microsoft give Bing, the actual product itself, the whole "company" for free. They won't want it. Because the revenue it generates is worse than the exclusive deal from Google, plus other reputational concerns.

Ah, ok. Fair enough, thanks

 

[fjtorres5591]

What they meant is even if Microsoft give Bing, the actual product itself, the whole "company" for free. They won't want it. Because the revenue it generates is worse than the exclusive deal from Google, plus other reputational concerns.

Exactly.
Bing "only" generates $8B a year net whereas google pays them $20-26B a year in kickbacks.

 

[ad47uk]

i don;lt use either directly, I use Duck Duck go on my phone, Mac and PC and Alexa i think use Bing, but I don't ask it stuff that often as it is not very good, I blame Bing.

 

[naddy69]

I swear I don't understand all the hoopla around searching. I have never used Google. I have been using Yahoo since before Google existed.

I never have problems finding anything. The few times I have used Bing it worked just fine too. AltaVista worked fine years ago. DuckDuckGo works fine.

If Google wants to pay boatloads of cash to Apple to make Google the default search engine, then that is fine. Both companies are happy.

Besides, it's not like it's hard to change the default.

And always remember this. U.S. anti-trust laws exist to protect consumers, not competitors. Bing and Yahoo can whine all they want about Google. It does not matter. Consumers are not being harmed by this deal, because most people want to use Google. Win-Win-Win.

Giving consumers what they want is what business is all about. It's up to Bing/Yahoo/whoever to make their products more attractive if they want Apple to change their default.

 

[fjtorres5591]

I swear I don't understand all the hoopla around searching. I have never used Google. I have been using Yahoo since before Google existed.

I never have problems finding anything. The few times I have used Bing it worked just fine too. AltaVista worked fine years ago. DuckDuckGo works fine.

If Google wants to pay boatloads of cash to Apple to make Google the default search engine, then that is fine. Both companies are happy.

Besides, it's not like it's hard to change the default.

And always remember this. U.S. anti-trust laws exist to protect consumers, not competitors. Bing and Yahoo can whine all they want about Google. It does not matter. Consumers are not being harmed by this deal, because most people want to use Google. Win-Win-Win.

Giving consumers what they want is what business is all about. It's up to Bing/Yahoo/whoever to make their products more attractive if they want Apple to change their default.

Depends on how you measure *customer* harm.
And who the customer is. (Not you and not me.)
Users are not the customer.

Haven't you wondered why a business that generates a hundred billion-plus a year only has three measurable players and no specialty/focused services?

Apple doesn't bother, Amazon tried and quit.
No european engine has a measurable share.
Businesses won't even try to get in if they don't see a path to profit.
Users can't go to a service that doesn't exist. And without users, the search engines can't sell enough ads to survive.

Individual users aren't the customers of Google search: companies buying online ads are their real customers and their choice is limited by google's monopoly. That is who is being hurt by Google's kickbacks. And who the judge is looking to protect.

Remember that on the internet, if you're not paying you're not the customer but the product.

*That* is why google pays to crowd out alternatives: to keep control of the user eyeballs they sell to the ad companies. And to make it even more questionable, google also controls the sale of online ads on the search page and their browser.

It is the digital equivalent of the oil trusts of old.