[keeda]

What is missing in this discussion is the fact -- explicitly called out by the court in the opinion, see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45109999 -- that Google Search is so good because it gets so much search traffic and, critically, user interaction data such as clicks, dwell time and even hovers on search results, which it mines to figure out better rankings.

Unless competitors get that kind of traffic AND user behavior insights, their results will always be worse.

And as long as their results are worse, 1) their revenues will always be worse, which will 2) make it prohibitively expensive to even try to bid for such placements, which in any case 3) would be shot down by Apple because their results are not "good enough".

It's a Catch-22 from which the only escape is making a risky 20-billion-per-year traffic acquisition bet (on top of the billions already being invested) that they can get all that traffic and user behavior data and improve their search engine quickly enough to make the results good enough to drive enough revenue, all the while fighting the tendency of people to use Google anyway simply out of habit.

I don't think it's much of a choice.

The proposed remedies do talk about sharing search and user interaction data though, so if that survives appeals, it might help level the field a bit.

[crazygringo]

> that Google Search is so good because it gets so much search traffic and, critically, user interaction data

If Bing's market share is 4%, then Bing still gets tons of user interaction data.

Bing gets something like 100M queries per day. That's more than enough data.

Microsoft has all the choice. They have the money. They can invest, like Google has invested and continues to invest. You don't get these things for free.

So yes, it is absolutely a choice. A small startup may be disadvantaged. But not Microsoft with over 15 years of user data from Bing.

[keeda]

> That's more than enough data.

Is it? I'm no expert, but while it may seem enough in absolute numbers, I can imagine more nuanced criteria like diversity of queries, results and users may matter more than just volume, and that kind of signal only comes from truly ubiquitious data collection (like say being default on the most popular browser AND on the duopoly of mobile platforms -- which, by the way, also collect tons of location data about the users that is not available to anybody else.)

But as I'm no expert, all I can do is look at the circumstantial evidence:

1. Google paid about 54.9 BILLION in 2024 -- "traffic acquisition costs" or "TAC": https://abc.xyz/assets/77/51/9841ad5c4fbe85b4440c47a4df8d/go... -- to hold on to that traffic and data. The 20 billion going to Apple gets a lot of airtime but it does not tell the whole story.

2. As somebody else said in this thread, MSFT did burn billions on their attempt at smartphones and other markets, so it's not like they're afraid to pour money into big, risky bets.

That really tells us a lot about the realities about the search market.

[crazygringo]

I don't know what your point is.

Maybe it's not enough data to make search results 100% as good as Google's, but enough to make them 95% as good? And everyone on HN complains about the quality of Google results, so surely there are algorithmic opportunities for MS to do better, right?

All we know is that Microsoft has decided not to compete seriously in search, but compete at a minimal level. There are a hundred different strategic reasons why they might have chosen this. But this in no way indicates it would be somehow impossible for Microsoft to compete there if they wanted. They could spend the tens of billions in traffic acquisition just like Google does. The fact that they aren't doesn't mean they couldn't.

There are no "realities about the search market" that mean Microsoft could never become a serious competitor. Your unfunded startup can't, but Microsoft could. Microsoft has all the data and money required.

They've just chosen not to, the same way Apple has chosen not to enter AAA gaming, Google hasn't entered general-purpose desktop operating systems, and Amazon hasn't entered VR headsets.

[keeda]

My point is they did choose to compete, and still are. Bing is literally the only real competitor to Google Search. Your point seems to be they didn't spend enough money to be competitive. My point is, it simply did not make business sense to do so. Let's put some simplified numbers out there to illustrate.

MSFT has spent 100 billion over the years on Bing.

And Google spent more than half of that amount in 2024 alone on traffic acquisition costs. Which it can afford to do because it has a monopoly. Which it has because it produces better results. Which it does because they have all the data. Which they ensure only they can get because they pay for it (and the cycle repeats.)

For comparison, Microsoft's cash reserves are 96 billion. So their choice really was to spend more than half of their cash reserves in one year just to compete only on traffic acquisition costs in the distant hope of getting enough data to break that cycle. Which is likely still not enough data because they don't have the browser monopoly or mobile presence to harvest user data on an industrial scale.

So, no: Microsoft does not have all the money or data required.

I would say the more realistic story is that Microsoft knew, as proven by the trial, that the deck was anti-competitively stacked against them (and who would know better than Microsoft?) and simply did the best they could to compete to the point of positive ROI.

[crazygringo]

You're missing the part where the money Google spends comes back to it in even more ad revenue. Google doesn't pay Apple for access to data. They pay it for traffic that makes them ad money.

If Microsoft spent those billions, it would be receiving ad revenue too.

It's not money thrown down the drain. And it's not for "data".

There's nothing anticompetitive here when it comes to Microsoft choosing whether or not to enter the market.

It's not about acquiring some magic level of data. A startup doesn't have data. Microsoft does. It's not an issue.

[keeda]

At this point we are just re-litigating all the things that came out in the trial. Yes, traffic comes with ad revenue, but it also comes with user interaction data which helps it improve its results and maintain its monopoly. Without this data, a competitor cannot offer competitive search results and hence will not be able to command the same ad revenues and hence cannot sustain the level of traffic acquisition costs that Google's monopoly profits can. Google has built an amazing self-reinforcing money-generating flywheel which is effectively a chicken-and-egg problem for everybody else.

Again, the court specifically called this out as a key pillar underpinning Google's monopoly, and this is why the proposed remedies, such as they may be, are all around sharing search and user interaction data.

I'm not sure on what empirical basis you keep asserting that Microsoft has the necessary money and data, but the court's findings, based on tons of evidence, indicate otherwise.