The whole Bing AI stuff is already a huge money sink for them, how much can they afford to throw into this pit before investors start being worried?

Perhaps ironically it’s because Google’s search tailors it’s results to show me those results that paint MSFT in a positive light.

I can also see Generative AI providing some real amazing features with near OS level integration. Imagine being able to quickly draft business emails from your mobile device?

I don’t think Apple will have anything that amazing anytime soon so us iOS users will be stuck with using 3rd party apps, but I could see Samsung trying to distinguish their handsets with additional software capabilities not found in Android.

If Bing had more users the Microsoft would make more money from it, and vice verse for Google. Their respective sizes are a reason for Microsoft to grow Bing, not a reason to turn Samsung away.

Microsoft are investing $10b in OpenAI partly to make Bing better. That is not a sign they're happy with Bing's market share. They're coming for Google, albeit with an oblique strategy rather than competing directly.

how much can they afford to throw into this pit before investors start being worried

A lot, for a really long time. Microsoft have plenty of money and a history of playing a long game successfully. Have a look at Xbox if you want an example of Microsoft spending a lot of money for a very long time and coming out ahead in the end.

In the past Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, etc. have frequently gotten outbidded by Google for similar deals.

Pure speculation—MSFT probably nailed the demo and impressed Samsung execs.

Personally I use GrapheneOS in order to "de-Google" without switching to the Apple ecosystem. No Google Play (you can install it but I choose not to), FOSS apps only. I don't recommend it for everyone but it made me not hate owning a smart phone for the first time since the "mobile revolution" passed my old grumpy self by.

I bought mine outright and wiped the Pixel version of Android and am pretty happy. To be clear, I wasn't trying to avoid giving Google money ... I just wanted a phone and operating system that I felt like I had control of, without having a ton of bloatware and spyware pre-installed by the vendor etc.

That's correct. It's my understanding that this is for two reasons:

1) google opened api/support for verified boot on the pixels (so you can tell if a border agent hacked your grapheneos phone, for example)

2) it's easier to support fewer phone models (given they are not a large team)

I bought a refurbished pixel 3a last year for a little over $100 and have been thrilled with my grapheneos experience. I don't run google play, but it is my understanding this can be done in a sandbox (allowing for more privacy than usual).

And what value, exactly, does your comment add to the conversation?

> paying Samsung for staying on Android with Google Search

> google still owns android

> Personally I use GrapheneOS in order to "de-Google"

It doesn't matter that Google owns Android if Samsung can make their own fork of Android that doesn't use Google stuff by default. Is there something that would prevent Samsung from creating their own app store?

https://www.economist.com/business/2022/10/25/ren-zhengfei-h...

This is only valid for power users. Normal users would probably never accept a phone without Google Play Services running on it, with Amazon's devices being the exception (and don't ask me why, because I don't get it.)

IMO, narrow use cases and cheapness.

My impression is people buy a Fire Tablet because:

* They want to read/browse the web/use a few basic social media apps

* They want something for their kid

Fire Tablets are never a primary device, so it's okay to have trade-offs.

GrapheneOS only supports Google devices like the Pixel though. It's the only reason I'm considering buying one.

Android is also technically more advanced than anything Apple in pure versatility and user control. Apple execs might get nightmares if someone suggested giving more control to their user. I can stay in the walled garden or play outside with naughty apps and emulators. Android's safety model is not based on restricting what the user can do. Security by obscurity is the least one can do.

I understand everyone has a phone choice and some people prefer their phone less sophisticated or less feature rich or more basic.

But just because you prefer something so reduced in functionality that it's a waste of the incredible silicon powering it does not mean you can belittle something far more capable. Especially in a developer oriented website.

Two things are not likely to happen:

1. Samsung will not give up on licensing Google proprietary package of apps.

2. Google will not yank Samsung's license.

Google will absolutely tighten the screws on their future contracts to discourage these deals, as well as sweeping out crappy "sustomizations."

huh? Samsung OneUI features have been making their way into mainstream AOSP...particularly the tablet-focused stuff

there is no way Google will ever try to "strong arm" Samsung...Samsung is the Android market, the Pixel line is a rounding error and in no way a competitive threat

>40% of Samsung's net revenue is mobile devices.

Only ~56% of Google's revenue is from Search ads - <50% of that comes from Android - and <35% of that comes from Samsung.

<10% of Google's total revenue comes from Samsung devices >40% of Samsung's NET REVENUE comes from selling Android devices.

It's almost as if Samsung is a lot more dependent on Google than the other way around.

At the end of the day - the majority of people you default to Bing search are going to switch back to Google. Samsung will be lucky to get a meaningful amount of money.

MSFT can't outbid Google because they can't make as much money from the searches as Google.

in a pinch, Samsung could just fork the AOSP project and continue forward without Google, it would be trivial for app makers to re-publish their apps in a Samsung app store (and many already do)

They've been strong-arming every Android OEM since the start (Google Mobile Services agreement). ("Strong arming" being closer to Apple exerting control vs. the wild west of pre-2007 cellphones.)

It's finally starting to bear fruit with things like Project Mainline and Project Treble, but the political winds have changed and I expect various Gov'ts to claw back the control Google has on OEMs over the next decade. Whether Google can continue their efforts to ensure a stable Android platform is an open question after that.

I can't point to anything specific since I'm rushing this comment, but it should be fairly obvious that Google lets OEMs do things their own way until the dust settles and Google synthesizes the different approaches into the "official" AOSP way.

I'm not sure any actual code from OneUI has made it into Android, that would surprise me. Google really likes doing things "their way" in Android. The Android team takes UI inspiration from everyone, but most of their eyeball time is on Apple.

Yes, we all hate their support structure (it goes through SADA), but the price is right. At my last company with 4 engineers we were paying AWS ~$1000/month for support. At my current company back when we had a cloud service on GCP, we got weekly calls with support for $0/month. Folks at Google also seemed to approve my weird resource requests (tons of GPUs in the midst of a GPU shortage, etc.) without me going through any back channels. I didn't find it terrible to work with at all, and it was much cheaper than AWS.

Did Amazon have the same constraints?

In my experience, GCP and AWS are within a tiny % of each other.

Then the reliability of GCP is a good bit higher. gp3 has 99.8% durability. I've seen several EBS volumes just disappear. Not deleted, just become permanently gone due to hardware failures. Compare that to 99.999% durability on GCP. You're spending several times for extra redundancy and complexity per gig on AWS just to come close to the durability to GCP.

If I have a choice between AWS and GCP, and unless I've got some specific product need for AWS, I'd probably go with GCP every time. It's such a better product IMO.

SADA (and their competitor DoIT) are just resellers. Support doesn't inherently go through them. That's a decision your company makes. It's generally not a great decision either, in my opinion, as those resellers add a lot of opacity between you and your cloud provider. Google recommends them because it's easier for them.

But why is Google paying Apple to be the default search engine on iOS devices?

It seems a waste of money as Apple would be stupid to default to any other search engine given the lower search quality results. End users would notice if there was a result degradation and likely switch their default. Google seems to be playing the "Intel Inside" part without reaping the marketing benefits and only paying the traffic acquisition costs.

What does this even mean?

They can absolutely build a solid search engine with enough money and time, but what would be gained? It's better to just collect Google's checks.

> but what would be gained?

People needing to buy an Apple device to reap the benefits of the internet, as Google continues to sink into their SEO-optimized malware swamp.

They'd do that, Intel would offer them a discount, and that'd be the last we'd hear of it for a year or so, until that discount would be expiring.

External forces of economic and technical nature are not in their favor. Internal forces from politics, leadership and management issues are surfacing.

This does not sound good for Google. Almost like it will implode.

True, but Samsung isn't known for user-friendly phones, and they often come with a lot of bloat. At some point, it drives more and more users to Pixel.

Not including google's version doesn't equate to bloat. In fact, the opposite is true.

I'm still using Samsung hardware and I like it, but it's got a little bloat goin on

(Personally, I disagree, but this seems to be almost unanimous. Even for people that don't buy their phones.)

I don’t like the Samsung inference either, but millions and millions of people don’t just like it, they prefer it. They buy the phones specifically because they know how to use it. They aren’t loyal to Android, they are loyal to the Galaxy line.

I was recently in the market for a basic VPS, and Azure is absolutely awful for this use. The most bloated complicated signup and setup process I have experienced in a long time. Google was tolerable. Of the three amazon lightsail was the best, but even that loses to something like digital ocean

Azure focuses on Microsoft's large enterprise customers. They want guard rails, separation of responsibilities, policy, compliance controls, etc...

Nothing to do with the process required to get 1 VM up and running from scratch, including signing up. Their bread & butter customers have enterprise agreements in place already for Office and Windows licensing!