Google’s money was “key” factor in Apple rejecting Bing purchase

Re:Google’s money was “key” factor in Apple rejecting Bing p... by mrkramer on Saturday September 30, 2023 @01:50PM (#37717925)

But I don't understand it; if Google's search engine is superior to the other search engines why are they even paying $9bn each year to Apple to be the default search engine on iOS devices? Wouldn't otherwise, iOS users switch to Google immediately, if they like Google so much. And why Google instead of paying billions of dollars to Apple is not investing that $9bn each year in improving the quality of Google Search?

It seems most likely to me that Google is a house of cards composed of Google Search, Google Chrome and Android and if you would pull one card out, the whole structure would collapse.

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Re:Google’s money was “key” factor in Apple rejecting Bing p... by davidmargolin on Saturday September 30, 2023 @04:43PM (#37719600)

for the same reason that advertisers bid for their own keyword searches even though Google would place their result at the top of the page anyways - because other companies will bid their way to the top otherwise.

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Re:Google’s money was “key” factor in Apple rejecting Bing p... by simfree on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:43PM (#37721755)

Because Google knows it's search engine has degraded in quality over the years, and though Google Search might be better than alternatives that Apple could switch to, last time they had this fight (where Apple Maps became default) Google permanently lost 60% of their userbase on the platform to a lower quality competitor, a folly which they don't want to repeat.

Maps is not profitable for Google or Apple, which is why they are willing to play games with it. Their experiences with Maps definitely inform future decisions though!

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