[ylere]

There were 4.9b internet users in 2021 [0]. Assuming a search market share of 90%, that's $5.9 per user and year - which seems a lot of considering it includes the developing world, but then of course Google's total ad revenue in 2021 was $209b ($47.3/user/yr) [1] globally and $61.2b in the US alone ($198.6/user/yr!!!) [0,2].

No other player has the ad revenue and market power to even attempt competing with Google:

* Microsoft's search ads + LinkedIn revenue was only $18.7b [3] in 2021 (9% of Googles) and they are the only big global (i.e. not Chinese) player with ad revenues over $10b and a competing search engine.

* Meta is the only company that comes closer in terms of ad revenue at $112b in 2021 (53% of Google) [4], but it's hard to imagine how they would fit search into their ecosystem.

* Apple has the resources and controls the valuable (=mostly iOS users) Safari market, but even for them, they would have to forego $18b/year (as per the article) in pure profits from their deal with Google and manage to actually create a competing product and advertise it heavily, which would costs them 10s of billions a year more. It makes sense that they'd rather keep taking the cash instead.

This also makes you realize just how valuable dominating the browser market with Google Chrome and having significant influence on the mobile market with Android must be for Google (and also why Apple doesn't allow third party browser engines on their platform).

[0] https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/facts-figures-2... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/469821/google-annual-ad-... [3] https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/271258/facebooks-adverti...

[voisin]

> This also makes you realize just how valuable dominating the browser market with Google Chrome and having significant influence on the mobile market with Android must be for Google (and also why Apple doesn't allow third party browser engines on their platform).

And manipulate the AdWords auction market that they control.

[nabakin]

I don't think Google has 90% of the world's search market share. In the west, I'd say that's about correct, but not in China. Baidu takes a big chunk of that and China has a large population. Unless a really small fraction of China uses search engines, I don't see how Google can be at 90% globally.

Edit: Apparently 840 million Chinese use search engines[0] and at least 70% use Baidu[1] which would be 588 million so something like 12% out of those 4.9 billion people. Not sure why the stats aren't reflecting the Chinese population when they claim to be global.

[0] https://www.statista.com/topics/1337/search-engines-in-china...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/253340/market-share-of-s...

[arp242]

You're probably right, and this underscores the point even more as it means it pays even more than $5.90/user/year, and gets even more ad revenue than $47.30/user/year.

[ylere]

It's probably challenging to get good data on actual search engine market share in China. A bit surprising that this is not properly taken into account for the global stats.

[nabakin]

Statistica lists their source as https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/deskto...

I guess however statcounter is getting their data is heavily biased toward the west.

[kyle-rb]

Apple doesn't allow 3rd party engines on iOS because if they let web apps get too capable then people will stop paying a 30% premium for App Store apps.

[badwolf]

Apple is quite fine with people making web apps, and have been expanding Safari's capabilities to support them. In the latest major iOS, PWAs can now even send push notifications to the user.

[sccxy]

But there are specific PWA bugs where Apple refuses to release fixes.

New wake lock api works in safari but when it is added to home screen. Then it fails silently…

Webkit team said that they fixed it 6months ago but Safari team does not accept fix.

[pests]

Wow.

[vasdae]

That hasn't happened with Android, why would it happen with iOS?

[kyle-rb]

Partly because for a long time Android allowed apps to do their own billing for subscriptions and other IAP, as long as the content you purchased could be accessed on other platforms (with a big carveout for games, which always had to use Play Store billing for IAP). That's why Spotify railed against Apple for years but didn't mention Google.

They changed their rules a couple years ago to make it pretty much consistent with Apple's policies, but I think some of the bigger players got exceptions.