
Google Paid Apple $1B to Keep Search Bar on iPhone - aaronkrolik
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/google-paid-apple-1-billion-to-keep-search-bar-on-iphone
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such_a_casual
Title is misleading. Google didn't pay up front to keep the search bar, but
rather agreed to share a percentage of the revenue generated, which ended up
being $1B.

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acchow
The title should be changed to reflect this

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akvadrako
why? It's effectively the same thing, except the risk profile is different.
The resulting revenue wasn't a complete mystery so they probably knew the deal
equaled about 1 billion.

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mbreese
But the deal wasn't Google giving Apple $1B to be the default search on iOS.
It was Google giving Apple a 34% share (perhaps - it's still a bit unclear in
the article) of iOS search revenue. It is still a deal _worth_ ~ $1B, but not
a deal for $1B.

The context is important. If the number is 34%, then Google's iOS revenue
would be around $3B, of which Apple got a cut.

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anfroid555
Oracle is really letting out Google secrets. First Android earnings, now this.
Both said not to be public knowledge. Google going to go after oracle now?

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Consultant32452
How are they not being found in contempt?

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will_brown
There are two types of contempt (civil and criminal) and as a general rule
contempt is triggered by violating a Court's Order(s). What Court Order has
been violated?

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Consultant32452
None, because I didn't read the article before asking (shocker, right?). I
think it's bad form for the judge to publicly release Google's financial
information like that. I have a hard time believing that's normal.

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Animats
Google also used to pay Mozilla to be the search engine there, until Yahoo
outbid them.

It's amazing that Google search, which is quite useful, has negative market
value as content. In the cable TV world, there are channels cable systems pay
to carry, such as ESPN, and channels that pay to be carried, such as the
Jewelry Channel. How did Google end up in the latter category?

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notatoad
Cable TV is a fundamentally wrong analogy here, because there is only one
search bar and only one default search provider, not a near-infinite number of
channels to be filled.

Being the default search engine on iPhone means you can generate a lot of
revenue, and so it is a valuable position to sell. As you say, Google got
outbid by Yahoo a couple years ago for Firefox. If Google weren't paying,
apple would sell the search bar to somebody else.

~~~
ck425
I don't use an iPhone so have to ask, can users not select the search engine
they want to use? Oneplus tried to change the default search on their phones
to Bing and the first thing I did was switch back to Google.

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zem
yes, but a vast number of users tend to stick with the defaults.

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Ntrails
Until the default changes and those of us who don't like change will learn to
make the effort to revert back.

I have no idea if google is actually a better search engine, just that it's a
familiar one.

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caskance
For most searches the average person does - aka I want to go to the wikipedia
page or official site for X - the results are indistinguishable.

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petra
That's not a good measuring stick. Probably even before Google existed search
engines we're good at those kinds of searches. But people use search for much
more than that.

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danielhughes
Therefore the iPhone share of total search ad spend is about $3B. This link
puts the overall market (inclusive of Android) at roughly $9B in 2014. That
makes sense if you assume iOS to represent roughly 1/3 of devices.

[http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Account-More-than-
Ha...](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Account-More-than-Half-of-
Digital-Ad-Spending-2015/1012930)

~~~
simonh
Isn't the $9B for all mobile advertising, not just mobile search advertising?
According to a Glodman Sachs report for 2014, back then they estimated that
iOS advertising accounted for 75% of Google's revenue on mobile. That would
make the Android search ad space worth about $1B.

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ck425
Do you have a link to that report? I'd be curious to see if that's just the US
or worldwide.

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simonh
It's not available online. The story originally came from the NY Times, but I
think Business Insider has the best info as they directly quoted a section
from it.

[http://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-walked-away-from-
iad...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-walked-away-from-iad-to-
starve-googles-core-business-into-irrelevance-2016-1)

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partiallypro
Bing powers Siri, and I assume now powers all of the internet search functions
(unsure about Safari.) So I wonder if Microsoft paid this amount, or if Apple
decided that less money made more sense so they could harm their competitor?

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evanriley
I thought Siri only used Bing because Google doesn't allow services like Siri
to use google.com?

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melted
Pretty much. And Apple had to roll its own maps because Google would not allow
Siri to use maps. Apple Maps are pretty darn good by now, so I think it's safe
to assume that Apple started building their own search engine for Siri well
before it made a deal with Microsoft, and Bing is a stop-gap measure. Apple
likes to own its core technologies.

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ascagnel_
Not really -- the Apple Maps vs Google Maps trouble started when Google
refused to allow turn-by-turn directions until Apple started turning over more
user data. If I remember right, Apple Maps launched "early" (before the deal
with Google expired) in an effort to put Apple into a more powerful
negotiating position.

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tianlins
In a world so abundant of information, i think user attention is indeed a
significant resource every major player should fight for. I guess the
distribution of attention follows power law, that a few entrances take up most
of the mobile use cases. For example, I use Uber, Wechat, GMaps much more
often than the other apps. Search bar definitely is one of the most critical
entrances.

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SatoshiRoberts
I wonder how much Google got charged for the opportunity in 2015

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SatoshiRoberts
That's about 5% of what Google has made in profit from Android since ~2008.

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SatoshiRoberts
I wonder how much Apple would pay for
[https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/) just to screw over Google.

