[stefan_]

Well, actually, Google paying other companies to make Google the default is stopping Bing from getting traffic. That's why we are having this whole case, among other things.

In general, making contracts with 3rd parties that negatively impact your competitors is sort of looked down upon.

[cherrycherry98]

I'm no fan of Google, but them bidding to be the default search engine on Apple devices seemed reasonable to me. If paying a third party to be the default is a crime they're both guilty of it. Microsoft and Google both made offers to Apple, Apple went with the one that paid them the most and also arguably offers the superior product. It's not like Bing is outright blocked on Apple devices, it's very easy to change. Satya crying about how Google outbid him seemed pretty disingenuous.

"Do you think Google would continue to pay Apple if there was no search competition? Why would they do that?"

Of course not and the reasons should be obvious. Microsoft being a competent competitor costs Google a lot of money. Lose the search dominance and the place basically shuts down, so they're willing to pay a lot to maintain it.

“I would love an opportunity to sort of not have them pay — maybe on behalf of the Google shareholders.”

Shut down Bing then and save Google shareholders a bunch of money, at the expense of Apple shareholders. He clearly doesn't want to spend what Google does for the same privilege. Google must perceives that the deal is worth it to do for their shareholders.

I imagine his ideal outcome would be something like Microsoft was forced to do with browsers, having a screen during the setup process asking the user what browser (or in this case search engine) they want as the default. I honestly don't think it would move the needle at all unless Bing was demonstrably better than Google.

[lotsofpulp]

>Well, actually, Google paying other companies to make Google the default is stopping Bing from getting traffic.

I cannot see how this is true.

Microsoft, with its tens of billions in annual profits, can invest in all the advertising in the world, literally, to let people know how to change the default browser on their iOS or Android device.

It is a trivial setting to change.

What is not trivial, for Microsoft, is creating a competitive search engine and advertising business.

[rickdeckard]

If the search-engine is a tool which creates ad-impressions which company#A can charge to advertisers (creating profit company#A can then spend for making the search-engine the default, perpetually driving even more attention), I don't think breaking this cycle by company#B "just spending more money than company#A earns" is a system of fair competition.

[ffgjgf1]

> It is a trivial setting to change.

Most/many people won’t it undeniably gives a massive advantage to google.

[makomk]

Enough people are willing to change it that just paying to be the default wasn't all that effective for Bing or Yahoo. Microsoft's previous strategy was to pay to make Bing the default and remove people's ability to change it. In particular, they took advantage of the mobile phone provider oligopoly in the US and other countries to pay off all the major providers to do this, so that consumers didn't really have a choice to not have their devices send searches to Bing. Google ruined that strategy by outbidding them without even imposing the same kind of lock-in that Microsoft did, and so Microsoft are trying to get the US government to ban them from bidding.

[lotsofpulp]

Sure, let’s change it to “it is trivial for Microsoft to spend its greater than Google’s profit to buy the default search position on Apple devices.”

So they can other have a just as good as Google’s product that they do not want to spend enough on to make default, or they do not offer enough of a value proposition for people to go to settings -> Safari -> default search -> bing.

[CPLX]

It's not just looked down upon it's called market splitting and it's patently illegal.

This case exists because it's the opinion of the United States Department of Justice that this law was broken by Google.