Google antitrust trial

wco81 · Oct 14, 2023

I'm not really following it other than hearing The Vergecast discuss it every week these days.

There have also been some headlines, like Google may be paying Apple as much as $19 billion a year to make Google the default search engine on iOS.

Or that MS offered to sell Bing to Apple which declined because of that Google money.

Or MS said the Google-Apple deal is why they got out of search.

Or some contention that if not for the deal, there would be a much more competitive search market.

Yeah I question that contention. Before the first iPhone, Google was already dominant in search. MS poured resources into Bing but got little traction.

Doubtful that the search market would be much different now without the iOS deal. Easy enough for iOS users to set Google as the default search in mobile Safari or bookmark Google's home page.

I really don't believe iOS users would have switched en masse to Bing or DuckDuckGo or any other search engine, unless maybe one of them cut a deal with iOS to be the default.

But nobody else was willing to pay anywhere close to Google.

I would also contend that even if MS did make a deal to get Bing as default on iOS, users would have switched back to Google.

I don't understand how this is an anticompetitive practice. MS still owns the desktop, so no Google search advantage there. Google owns Android. So iOS is a minority share of search client devices. The Google-Apple deal didn't create Google search market share dominance nor consolidate it.

Is it illegal for two companies to enter into a contract? Well supposedly if one has a dominant position, they can't leverage it for another market.

But it seems now the strategy for antitrust prosecution is to redefine markets by segmenting it. So desktop and mobile searches are distinct markets or Apple has monopoly in the iOS ecosystem, which is like saying BMW has monopoly in the market for OEM parts for BMW cars.

Nevarre · Oct 15, 2023

wco81 said:
I don't understand how this is an anticompetitive practice. MS still owns the desktop, so no Google search advantage there. Google owns Android. So iOS is a minority share of search client devices. The Google-Apple deal didn't create Google search market share dominance nor consolidate it.

It's not just iOS/iPadOS. The contention is the default search on iOS and inclusion in Safari on MacOS. Obviously Chrome on MacOS is a Google market and Google independently cuts deals with other desktop browsers (on MacOS and everywhere else.)

It's also a fallacy to equate user count with value. Search drives revenue by selling ads (and making sales.) Advertisers want to advertise to their laser-targeted customer (something Google is good at) and that laser-targeted customer needs to be rich enough to potentially buy what you're selling. By raw count, Android devices include lots of $100 phones intended for developing countries. Those are extremely low value customers. Of course Android users include people who buy $1,000+ smartphones, but they're not all customers of equal value. If you're an Apple user, unless you're a kid/teen (which is valuable in a different way) then you're at least not dirt poor.

The contracting issues all includes indications of deals made in bad faith, leading various search engines on to get a better deal from Google and I'm sure Google wants to get a better deal from Apple. I don't think Apple has any strong motivation right now to move away from Google. The sweet sweet Google money is too good.

wco81 · Oct 15, 2023

Do search engines get paid on ad impressions or ads actually leading to transactions?

Because I would assume far more ad impressions are delivered to non iOS/iPadOS devices.

Shavano · Oct 15, 2023

wco81 said:
Do search engines get paid on ad impressions or ads actually leading to transactions?

Because I would assume far more ad impressions are delivered to non iOS/iPadOS devices.

Why do you say that? The pages on my wife's iPad look just like the pages on my Android tablet.

poochyena · Oct 16, 2023

wco81 said:
Easy enough for iOS users to set Google as the default search in mobile Safari or bookmark Google's home page.

would they though? iOS users don't seem like the type to make any changes to settings. For basic searches, bing is perfectly fine. There is no real reason to change.

wco81 said:
I would also contend that even if MS did make a deal to get Bing as default on iOS, users would have switched back to Google.

Well obviously google doesn't think so, if they paid $19b to make it default.

I'm not sure if paying to be the default is really anti-competition. Certainly, paying to be the exclusive search option would be.

analogika · Oct 17, 2023

People. Do. Not. Touch. Defaults. (as a rule)

…unless they are experiencing problems, or somebody explicitly directs them to.

A decade in Apple support speaking.

If you present them with a dialog box requiring them to choose the default, many will just click "OK", so whatever is listed first will be the setting. Change the order and put Google second, and a non-trivial number will not choose Google as the default.

LordDaMan · Oct 18, 2023

Shavano said:
Why do you say that? The pages on my wife's iPad look just like the pages on my Android tablet.

It used to be different under android a few years back. Looked like "cards" for each result. Nowadays they all look the same on mobile

wco81 · Oct 20, 2023

DOJ called its final witness and now Google can start calling witnesses.

DOJ's contention is that the deal with Apple to be default search engine on iPhone prevented innovation in the search engine market.

Witnesses introduced by the DOJ helped build its case against Google, alleging that Google pays billions for default contracts with browsers and mobile phone makers to block out rivals from gathering enough data to compete for users and market share. This, DOJ alleged, harms consumers by preventing innovation in search.

Likely the testimony that interested Mehta most came from witnesses highlighting alleged anticompetitive effects of Google's default contracts with Apple. Testimony introduced by the DOJ revealed that Apple was initially hesitant to set a default search engine, and at one point considered creating its own search engine, but only if an appealing revenue-sharing deal couldn't be struck with Google. The DOJ argued that Apple's deal with Google prevented one of its biggest rivals in the mobile phone industry from competing against Google in search.

Google’s 21-year deal with Apple is the “heart” of monopoly case, judge says

"Toughest hurdle" for Google? Defending high cost of default deals, expert says.

arstechnica.com

My recollection is that Google already had a huge marketshare on search just before iPhone came out.

MS spent a lot on TV ads for Bing but did they even break double-digits in search engine market share?

Also, I've never heard before this trial that Apple had any interest in getting into search. Before iPhone started multiplying Apple's revenues, which would have been around 2009 at the earliest, Apple wasn't so flush with cash to take on that kind of endeavor.

They had money from iPods and Macs and they rolled that into iPhones.

Obviously they made the right choice.

AFAIK, nobody, not even MS, had the infrastructure to make a competitive search engine.

Horatio · Oct 20, 2023

wco81 said:
AFAIK, nobody, not even MS, had the infrastructure to make a competitive search engine.

It's not infrastructure - MS has that. It's queries. Queries are (a big part of) how you grow search. Now imagine the dominant force in search is paying a major source of queries to direct queries their way instead of yours, thereby improving their service and not allowing yours to improve at the same rate.

A plausible outcome of the trial would be that Google would be forbidden for paying to be the default on iOS (amongst other remedies), but we can focus on just this small aspect. So Apple's most profitable business in terms of RoI would vanish in an instant, but would they do anything about it? Like, if MS were to offer $20B/yr to make Bing the default, would Apple take the money? Would they invest in their own search business? Or would they just take the L, and nothing would change because Google is still the best search.

wco81 · Oct 20, 2023

I doubt Google was paying $20 billion back in 2007 or even in say 2023-14.

I think Android, once they switched to multitouch instead of the original paradigm of a Blackberry clone with HW keyboard, their market share quickly shot out in front of Apple.

It's only in the last 5-8 years that iPhone has gained some market share, especially in the US.

So I question that iOS has been the dominant source of queries since the advent of the iPhone. In fact, are they still? There are a lot of devices still being used regularly but the desktop had a huge installed base before iPhone and while desktop sales growth has flattened or even been negative in some years.

The judge or the jury would have to accept the contention that this deal alone made Google dominant in search. But obviously they were dominant well before the iPhone, or else they wouldn't have been able to pay billions to Apple for this deal.

So how do they nullify a business contract unless they can show consumer harm, since they're litigating this case based on anti-trust laws?

The DOJ seems to be hinting at consumer harm by claiming that the deal reduced innovation in the search engine market but that's a counterfactual.

More relevant, can they quantify the higher cost to consumers because of this lower innovation than there would have been if not for this deal?

They had an economist as one of their witnesses but it's not clear all the things he testified to, because reporters are still trying to get some trial information unsealed.

Searches don't cost consumers anything, at least directly. Maybe economists can determine that Google search ads led to some increase in prices for the products and services sold by the advertisers.

But that would be the case regardless of which search engine was dominant, because it's the same business model, ads generated by searches, with the search engine company paid directly by advertisers, not consumers.

(Maybe DuckDuckGo and some smaller search engines don't have search ads, not sure).

Will the judge or jury require the DOJ to demonstrate harm or higher prices as a result of this deal? They have testimony that the deal was very important to Google and Apple and competitors like Microsoft. But they don't have proof that the deal reduced innovation or that it caused consumer harm, in the form of higher prices or reduced competition, however they define that.

Horatio · Oct 20, 2023

wco81 said:
So I question that iOS has been the dominant source of queries since the advent of the iPhone. In fact, are they still?

The dominant source? No. A large source, certainly. They get the Android ones for free anyways, and most browsers as well since they pay Firefox and produce Chrome. I think Safari defaults to Google too. Only Edge doesn't default to Google.

wco81 said:
The judge or the jury would have to accept the contention that this deal alone made Google dominant in search. But obviously they were dominant well before the iPhone, or else they wouldn't have been able to pay billions to Apple for this deal.

This isn't the only point of contention in the trial though. Still, if Google were so good that people would use it anyways (arguably true), why are they paying Apple billions per year to make it the default when they could (plausibly) get that for free by paying Apple $0?

wco81 said:
Maybe economists can determine that Google search ads led to some increase in prices for the products and services sold by the advertisers.

It's probably arguable - Google ad prices have increased, but they are super-effective, and weren't killed by ATT like Facebook ads were, so yeah, advertisers are paying more now and those prices are being passed down. It's one of the things that's hurting small business right now with FB ads, which used to be really effective and now are just not.

wco81 said:
They have testimony that the deal was very important to Google and Apple and competitors like Microsoft.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the deal actually isn't important to Apple - yeah, the money is nice, but it won't make or break literally any product or service at Apple. For Google it's probably a big deal since it's a pipeline into a lot of moneyed wallets. I think Apple had to contractually support the deal but is actually ambivalent.

wco81 said:
But they don't have proof that the deal reduced innovation or that it caused consumer harm, in the form of higher prices or reduced competition, however they define that.

I don't think we know any of this anymore, since so much of the trial is now behind closed doors. I think we'll have to wait for more public disclosures, or even the final outcome.

Nevarre · Oct 21, 2023

Horatio said:
This isn't the only point of contention in the trial though. Still, if Google were so good that people would use it anyways (arguably true), why are they paying Apple billions per year to make it the default when they could (plausibly) get that for free by paying Apple $0?

I mean besides the "people use defaults" and "Apple endorses this as good so Apple fans get warm and fuzzy feelinga about Google Search" effects, Google is paying for a non-compete also. As long as the contract is ongoing, Apple won't compete directly against Google Search. Maybe Apple have never had any intention to ever compete with a search engine, but all they had to do is make Google think they might and the free money keeps rolling in-- or Google subsidizes iPhones if you prefer to look at it that way.

wco81 · Oct 21, 2023

I mean Apple tried to get into advertising with iAd, introduced by Jobs himself.

That never went anywhere. Also remember Ping.

Why would they attempt something which is out of their core competency, where the incumbent has a huge, entrenched market position?

Or look at more recent attempts like Siri. And it's still not clear they will have an answer for AI, if and when it becomes the next big thing.

One reason for Apple's success, they haven't fallen into money pits. They for instance haven't made huge acquisitions, as Wall Street has urged them to do from time to time.

That is why I don't think they ever seriously considered search. Now Jobs might have been on the warpath against Android, which he considered a stolen product, but he didn't go scorched earth vs. Google or at least maybe he was talked out of it.

If DOJ is really saying that the deal prevented Apple from jumping into search, maybe it was a reason but there were other reasons why Apple probably chose not to do it, if they ever seriously considered it.

analogika · Oct 21, 2023

wco81 said:
I mean Apple tried to get into advertising with iAd, introduced by Jobs himself.

That never went anywhere. Also remember Ping.

Ping started out as a cooperative effort with Facebook, who pulled out of the deal. Apple were too far along to just not release it, so they did — as Ping.

Which then withered and died.

ZnU · Oct 21, 2023

The elephant in the room is that Google-style search is slowly breaking, having sown the seeds of its own destruction. The Internet has bifurcated into, on the one hand, mostly self-contained, centralized content ecosystems like Netflix or X, which are accessed more through mobile apps than browsers these days, and, on the other hand, a sprawling open web that's increasingly deliberately engineered Google-bait. It's either shallow articles on ad-supported sites written by people who couldn't care less about the topic and chose it only because they thought it would "perform well," or content marketing that exists entirely to present a sales pitch within some marginally useful information.

Into this we're now dropping LLMs, which will both make the open web worse by lowing the cost of generating Google-bait to near-zero, and which provide a fundamentally different paradigm for information discovery and consumption, not centered on finding and accessing discrete documents. You just ask an AI agent. It can cite documents on request, but more often you'll have it directly answer your questions. Increasingly, information ecosystems will reorient themselves around this, with the probable eventual emergence of networks of specialized AI models that talk to each other, and discoverable, AI-friendly APIs that agents use to access structured information and things that inherently exist in document form such as articles or books.

Some of the technical capability behind Google search may still be relevant in this new world, as a tool used by AI agents behind the scenes. The search product, the web site that humans directly interact with and that Google can sell ads on, increasingly won't be. This will be especially true with mobile, VR, AR, ambient computing, which make it more awkward or in some cases impossible (no screen) to click through a bunch of search results and scan web pages for the information you want.

So, as usual, the government is late to the game. Regardless of what the legal fallout is here, the answer to who's going to compete with Google in web search is… it doesn't matter. The browser + search engine are going to lose their central importance to consumer computing. Perhaps someday Apple will swap Google search out for some half-hearted first-party thing precisely because web search has become so unimportant that it no longer makes sense to involve a third party (and send them lots of data) just to get a slightly better version of it, but the whole point is that nobody will much care by then.

Horatio · Oct 21, 2023

ZnU said:
Perhaps someday Apple will swap Google search out for some half-hearted first-party thing precisely because web search has become so unimportant that it no longer makes sense to involve a third party (and send them lots of data) just to get a slightly better version of it, but the whole point is that nobody will much care by then.

Would they though (presuming the deal continues)? Google isn't going to stay still and just be doing web search while LLMs take over. For Apple to take control back over the search box would mean giving up the Google payment which means it would need to deliver ~$30B/yr in value. I don't think they could half ass that.

Imagine this crazy hypothetical:
Microsoft just straight gives Bing to Apple (including a reasonable interpretation of the OpenAI relationship) and will cover all reasonable capex and opex for say 5 years. But Apple has to stop taking Google's payment - they can keep google as default or do whatever they want. Should Apple take the deal?

I'd argue no. Apple could not extract enough value from the deal.

Crazier hypothetical - same thing except Apple gets a straight clone of Google search including the index and software so the search quality would be just as good for user and Apple could do great marketing about privacy. Should Apple take the deal?

Probably still no. The revenue hit is just too much.

Now run the numbers without Google being able to pay for being default. Even the half assed in house LLM looks pretty good.

Shavano · Oct 21, 2023

wco81 said:
DOJ called its final witness and now Google can start calling witnesses.

DOJ's contention is that the deal with Apple to be default search engine on iPhone prevented innovation in the search engine market.

Google’s 21-year deal with Apple is the “heart” of monopoly case, judge says

"Toughest hurdle" for Google? Defending high cost of default deals, expert says.

arstechnica.com

My recollection is that Google already had a huge marketshare on search just before iPhone came out.

Huge, but not as dominant as they became later. Remember Yahoo? and Ask?

U.S. Search Engine Rankings, April 2007 - Search Engine Watch

Top Search engines and verticals by share in the U.S. for April 2007.

www.searchenginewatch.com

ZnU · Oct 21, 2023

Horatio said:
Would they though (presuming the deal continues)? Google isn't going to stay still and just be doing web search while LLMs take over. For Apple to take control back over the search box would mean giving up the Google payment which means it would need to deliver ~$30B/yr in value. I don't think they could half ass that.

If LLM adoption looked like Google replacing its current search results page with a Q&A bot like the current version of Bard or Bing Chat, and dropping the user into a session with it when they performed a search, things could carry on pretty much as they are, with the search box still serving as an entry point, Apple still accepting payment from Google, etc.

But I don't think narrow Q&A bots have much of a future. I think we're going to see a move to more generally capable AI agents/assistants, that handle Q&A incidentally and often in service of larger multi-step tasks. That's not something you'll surface through a search box in a browser. It'll be a core component of platform UX, that will ultimately touch every part of the OS, every app, all user data. Apple will do a high-effort first-party version of that, and its existence will make the search box in the browser (and to a large extent the browser itself) much less important, and therefore much less valuable.

I expect the disruption of search as a discrete, monetizable consumer product to be so thorough over the next decade that I'd probably be predicting doom for Google if they didn't have their own widely-used OS into which to embed their own AI agent. As it is they may well take a hit by effectively losing a lot of the access they presently have to iOS users, but the net effect on the company is hard to predict, as agent/assistant AI may offer such potential for monetization in its own right that they make up all their loses, and more, on Android and elsewhere.

Shavano · Oct 22, 2023

ZnU said:
It'll be a core component of platform UX, that will ultimately touch every part of the OS, every app, all user data. Apple will do a high-effort first-party version of that, and its existence will make the search box in the browser (and to a large extent the browser itself) much less important, and therefore much less valuable.

Honestly, that sounds pretty dystopian.

ZnU · Oct 22, 2023

Shavano said:
Honestly, that sounds pretty dystopian.

Apple's version of this will probably attempt to be privacy-preserving to the limits the tech allows. These are admittedly unclear at present, but progress on local inference has moved faster than I think many people expected, and Apple, controlling the entire hardware stack, is in a good position to lean into it.

Nevarre · Oct 23, 2023

ZnU said:
Apple's version of this will probably attempt to be privacy-preserving to the limits the tech allows. These are admittedly unclear at present, but progress on local inference has moved faster than I think many people expected, and Apple, controlling the entire hardware stack, is in a good position to lean into it.

Among the many problems with that proposition, LLM's are extremely computationally expensive and power hungry. Some queries require or invite a meaningful interaction (recommend me the best Sushi place between my home and work) but others are served extremely well with current tech for a fraction of the cost (link me to the menu for Sushi Palace).

Local Inference is a pipe dream at present, especially on an already power- and heat-constrained phone. Most heavy queries will have to backhaul to a datacenter anyway.

Besides, search (broadly defined as traditional search or generative AI) doesn't make anyone money. Search + advertising/marketing data does.

wco81 · Oct 23, 2023

I know everyone is going to try to rush into generative AI or some chatty agent thing, just like many rushed into crypto a few years ago.

Mark Gurman has a short article about how Apple was caught flat-footed by how ChatGPT and gAI exploded last year. They are supposedly rushing to integrate AI features into iOS18 and certain apps and services like Apple Music as well as a "better" Siri -- we've been waiting for that one.

But an AI query or prompt has to link to some kind of content right? Either the data set used to train the LLM or a search engine front end?

Doesn't the MS efforts for instance still hook into Bing?

There are unresolved issues about copyright, with newspapers and other sources of content explicitly banning AI from training on their content. So they're shutting the door closed now so that they can get paid later when they cut deals with MS or Google or whoever else to have LLMs access and use their content.

As far as this case, yes govt as usual may be chasing the tail of the dragon while the head is turning in an entirely different direction. Google will be challenged to develop a new business model if AI does make traditional search obsolete or vastly reduce its revenue-generation potential.

DOJ is saying that there would be better search engines than Google if only Google didn't defeat the competition through supposedly anticompetitive actions and deals.

It sounds though like Google's legal strategy is going to be that they have the best search engine and that is why they dominate. Will they mention that the nature of search or their main business could be completely different in a few years because of this potential shift in paradigm? That their search engine dominance may become moot in a few years?

ZnU · Oct 23, 2023

Nevarre said:
Some queries require or invite a meaningful interaction (recommend me the best Sushi place between my home and work) but others are served extremely well with current tech for a fraction of the cost (link me to the menu for Sushi Palace).

The goal is to be sitting down for lunch at a sushi place, right? A query just is a low-level operation performed in service of that. In a world of capable AI agents, there's a good chance there is no query explicitly performed by a human who directly consumes the results. The user will tell their AI agent they want sushi, because interacting with the agent is just the default starting point for almost any task. The agent will run one or more queries. It may present some results to the human, but filtered and formatted to best address their request, within a presentation layer it controls.

Or, especially as trust in such systems increases, the agent may be instructed to not even bother presenting options, but to just pick the best and make a reservation. Possibly the human doesn't even make specific requests most days, but just lets the AI manage their menu based on its knowledge of their preferences, as in a rich household with a private chef.

So, how do you monetize a query via advertising if you can't control how the results are presented to a human, or even if they're presented to a human at all? I think most versions of bribing the AI agent to promote specific products or services run into regulatory issues. There may well be solutions here, but they're not trivially obvious.

Nevarre said:
Local Inference is a pipe dream at present, especially on an already power- and heat-constrained phone. Most heavy queries will have to backhaul to a datacenter anyway.

You can run a quantized 7B model on an iPhone right now. Nothing that fits on an iPhone is smart enough to operate as an agent that can solve multi-step tasks (even GPT-4 isn't quite up to it, honestly), but it's so early that I don't think we can say yet whether that will continue to be true. Even if it is, a properly tuned local model may be smart enough to identify what information a larger cloud-based model would need to process a given query, so that it could be disclosed to that model only selectively and on a temporary basis. Hypothetically, you could also have the option to run a large model on a Mac, or some more specialized non-mobile hardware, that your phone could talk to.

I don't want to try to predict exactly what form things will take, but there are a lot of degrees of freedom here that can be exploited to get something less dystopian than your entire life being an open book to your AI provider. (Not that the average user would really blink at that; people already commonly sync all their stuff to non-E2E cloud storage.)

Horatio · Nov 13, 2023

Google may actually be losing money on the Apple deal in order to keep being the default

Chinmay Karande (@chinmay.karande) on Threads

Google's operating profit margin announced in Q3'23 earnings was 28%. On that backdrop, 36% is such a large number, that a simplistic (not accurate) hypothesis can be stated that the Apple deal is significantly lower margin, and perhaps even net-negative for Google, and that it's only purpose is...

www.threads.net

This also highlights where Apple thinks the human right of privacy ends since they tailored ATT to not affect the Google deal.

Echohead2 · Nov 14, 2023

I don't think Bing is nearly as bad as people make it out to be. I switched over a decade ago. I switched because I was searching for something specific for my boss and did all kinds of searches and hunting with Google. Spent like 4 hours with no luck. The next day I thought "why not give Bing a try". First search it was right there. They I saw Google starting to copy Bing when Bing added daily photos and other "upgrades". I figured if Google was copying Bing, then it must be onto something. Then there are the microsoft rewards...I've made a few hundred dollars over the years just from searching. Not enough to endure lower quality, but a nice bonus for equal results. One of the things that I liked about Bing (which seems to be a little less good now actually) is that it would pull the answer from the webpage for you. So if you typed "speed test"...it delivered a widget to test results right there. Or what is the capital of xyz...it just posted the answer, while Google you had to then visit a site to get answer. (this has changed over the years for both but Bing was definitely ahead at one point).

Now....that said...there are absolutely areas where Google is leaps and bounds ahead. Google Scholar for one.

Horatio · Dec 11, 2023

Not the same Google antitrust trial, but in the Google v Epic one, Google has been found to have had an illegal monopoly

Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

Victory Royale.

www.theverge.com

This is quite different than the Epic v Apple case because here, Google seems to have been running a bunch of backroom deals with OEMs and Game devs versus Apple playing it straight.

Chris FOM · Dec 12, 2023

Google’s backroom deals may have been there, but they were in service of protecting a market position that Apple has already prevailed in defending (although with two key distinctions: first and potentially legally important, Apple makes the OS AND the hardware while Google is OS only, and second which is both practical and probably the deciding factor, Apple prevailed in a bench trial while Google lost to a jury). Those distinctions aside, these two decisions are well-nigh impossible to reconcile into a legally coherent outcome to guide future decisions. That Apple has already won both at the district level and on appeal (a fact that was apparently forbidden to be mentioned during Google’s trial) makes me think this one is likely to be overturned.

Horatio · Dec 12, 2023

Google's actions were different though - they did anticompetitive things with their deals to shut out alternate app stores, by paying OEMs, and devs not to install them and put their games on them respectively, which Apple did not do. They also deleted evidence, which allowed the jury to draw negative inference, which is another thing Apple did not do. So while there are similar issues here, the circumstances and bad acts are quite different.

wco81 · Dec 12, 2023

The larger question is, why is a digital marketplace different than other types of markets?

You wouldn't expect the govt to intervene and set prices or rules for how landlords run shopping centers or say very desirable business districts, like Fifth Avenue in NYC.

But you see, Apple and Google are filthy rich so we must have antitrust and "gatekeeper" rules imposed specifically on them.

Like there aren't cartels for physical marketplaces?

This is a civil case where a contract that Epic signed with Apple and Google is now abrogated, because Epic no longer liked the terms that it agreed to.

So they were free to walk away from those agreements. Yet they believe they have an inherent right to these platforms and at terms that they prefer.

At least it's not naked protectionism from the EU with their DSA/DMA "gatekeeper" malarkey, crafted after the fact to cape for EU companies.

lithven · Dec 12, 2023

Horatio said:
Google's actions were different though - they did anticompetitive things with their deals to shut out alternate app stores, by paying OEMs, and devs not to install them and put their games on them respectively, which Apple did not do. They also deleted evidence, which allowed the jury to draw negative inference, which is another thing Apple did not do. So while there are similar issues here, the circumstances and bad acts are quite different.

My heartburn with most of this line of reasoning is you are effectively saying if one party does something (i.e. locking out third party stores) with technology / software it's legal but another party doing it to a lesser extent with a contract is "anticompetitive".

Also, I don't think we can say definitively Apple wouldn't have done the same in a similar position. They tried to do very similar actions, albeit not identical due to the nature of the existing differences in the stores and amount of control they each had, when Netflix removed the ability to signup for an account through the app. They tried to do sweetheart deals to get Netflix to "stay" but Netflix rejected it.

Horatio · Dec 19, 2023

The details of Google's antitrust settlement with several states just came out - a $700M also on the wrist, but with some promises to change how they operate

https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-pay-700-mln-us-consumers-states-play-store-settlement-2023-12-19/

Apparently the details were known for some time but were kept under wraps as to not taint the Epic v. Google trial

I think Google will have to rethink how it wants to do app distribution, especially if Epic is upheld. They should also clean house and maybe act more ethically

Nevarre · Dec 19, 2023

I'm not a fan of the current 'store' pricing structure and wheeling and dealing from any of the big players, but Tim Sweeney's increasingly aggressive pursuit of Google is not a good look combined with his aggressive anti-Steam stance. He sells products on lots of other platforms and buyers don't exist solely within one platform/ecosystem. I think he thinks he's a White Knight swooping in to save all the Android users, but I don't think the feeling is mutual. Tencent owning 40% of his company is a huge hit to his credibility.

In happier news, when do I get my money? (imagine image of guy pointing to outstretched palm)

Horatio · Dec 19, 2023

If I'm reading it right you get $2. Don't spend it all in once place.

wco81 · Dec 19, 2023

Vergecast said Sweeney acknowledged that if the case win is sustained on appeals, he or Epic would make billions more from Google Play distribution.

But he also claimed to be doing it for other developers too.

Is Epic developing anything else or they plan to ride Fortnite forever?

Shavano · Dec 19, 2023

wco81 said:
Vergecast said Sweeney acknowledged that if the case win is sustained on appeals, he or Epic would make billions more from Google Play distribution.

But he also claimed to be doing it for other developers too.

Is Epic developing anything else or they plan to ride Fortnite forever?

Who cares? The judgment is not about whether Sweeney is a white knight or if Epic is still developing awesome new games.

wco81 · May 2, 2024

So closing arguments in the DOJ antitrust case vs. Google, Judge Amit Mehta asked the DOJ lawyer what should Google have done to avoid getting prosecuted by the DOJ.

"What should Google have done to remain outside the crosshairs of the DOJ?" Mehta asked plaintiffs halfway through the first of two full days of closing arguments.

According to the DOJ and state attorneys general suing, Google has diminished search quality everywhere online, primarily by locking rivals out of default positions on devices and in browsers. By paying billions for default placements that the government has argued allowed Google to hoard traffic and profits, Google allegedly made it nearly impossible for rivals to secure enough traffic to compete, ultimately decreasing competition and innovation in search by limiting the number of viable search engines in the market.

The DOJ's lead litigator, Kenneth Dintzer, told Mehta that what Google should have done was acknowledge that the search giant had an enormous market share and consider its duties more carefully under antitrust law. Instead, Dintzer alleged, Google chose the route of "hiding" and "destroying documents" because it was aware of conflicts with antitrust law.

"What should Google have done?" Dintzer told Mehta. "They should have recognized that by demanding locking down every default that they were opening themselves up to a challenge on the conduct."

The most controversial default agreement that Google has made is a 21-year deal with Apple that Mehta has described as the "heart" of the government's case against Google. During the trial, a witness accidentally blurted out Google's carefully guarded secret of just how highly it values the Apple deal, revealing that Google pays 36 percent of its search advertising revenue from Safari just to remain the default search tool in Apple's browser. In 2022 alone, trial documents revealed that Google paid Apple $20 billion for the deal, Bloomberg reported.

That's in stark contrast to the 12 percent of revenue that Android manufacturers get from their default deals with Google. The government wants the court to consider all these default deals to be anti-competitive, with Dintzer suggesting during closing arguments that they are the "centerpiece" of "a lot" of Google's exclusionary behavior that ultimately allowed Google to become the best search engine today—by "capturing the default and preventing rivals from getting access to those defaults."

Apple deal could have been “suicide” for Google, company lawyer says

Judge: What should Google have done to avoid the DOJ’s crosshairs?

arstechnica.com

Interesting thing is that DOJ is arguing that Google allowed or deliberately made it's search engine worse because it had such a dominant market share.

That's similar to what they're claiming that Apple did, make the user experience on iPhone worse that users couldn't switch to Android.

Horatio · May 2, 2024

wco81 said:
Interesting thing is that DOJ is arguing that Google allowed or deliberately made it's search engine worse because it had such a dominant market share.

"Worse" depends on who you are. It's definitely become more and more user-hostile over the years, and hostile to websites, but definitely been great for Google's revenues. You can do that when you have little meaningful competition, and control the way a competitor could grow.

Echohead2 · May 3, 2024

Horatio said:
"Worse" depends on who you are. It's definitely become more and more user-hostile over the years, and hostile to websites, but definitely been great for Google's revenues. You can do that when you have little meaningful competition, and control the way a competitor could grow.

It's funny. I switched to Bing probably a decade ago. I find it gives better results. At least half the time it just shows the answer for what I am looking for. Google always seems to provide a link and I can go there and find it, but Bing is right there.

LordDaMan · May 3, 2024

Echohead2 said:
It's funny. I switched to Bing probably a decade ago. I find it gives better results. At least half the time it just shows the answer for what I am looking for. Google always seems to provide a link and I can go there and find it, but Bing is right there.

For most things, I find Bing to be better. Google works better if you need to put in a part number. For an image search, Bing wins no contest

wco81 · May 3, 2024

Front page story, on the second day of arguments, federal litigators said they learned late that Google personnel had conducted internal chats with logging off. They're asking Judge Mehta for sanctions against the company because they think the company discussed anti-competitive issues on those chats.

Google lawyers basically said prove it.

I don't know if there's a specific law on document retention.

In tech, people often will not discuss certain things in writing -- no emails, no chats, not even leaving voice mails. They will have phone call or in-person convo but they're not leaving a paper trail if they suspect it would hurt them or the company. They learned that from the MS antitrust trial when details of internal emails were exhaustively discussed not only in court but in reporting of the case.

Google antitrust trial

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