Jody Godoy (Hacker News, Reddit):
Apple has asked to participate in Google’s upcoming U.S. antitrust trial over online search, saying it cannot rely on Google to defend revenue-sharing agreements that send the iPhone maker billions of dollars each year for making Google the default search engine on its Safari browser.
[…]
Apple received an estimated $20 billion from its agreement with Google in 2022 alone.
Joe Rossignol:
In a declaration filed with a U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C. last week, Cue said Apple is against the idea for the following reasons[…]
[…]
Earlier this year, as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust trial against Google, the court declared that the deal that sees Google set as the default search engine in Apple’s web browser Safari is illegal. In his declaration, Cue asked the court to allow Apple to defend the deal by having its own witnesses testify during the trial.
“Only Apple can speak to what kinds of future collaborations can best serve its users,” wrote Cue. “Apple is relentlessly focused on creating the best user experience possible and explores potential partnerships and arrangements with other companies to make that happen.”
[…]
If the agreement can no longer continue, Cue said “it would hamstring Apple’s ability to continue delivering products that best serve its users’ needs.”
If Apple thinks Google Search is the best for users, it could still offer it as the default. It just wouldn’t get the TAC.
Previously:
Update (2025-01-06): M.G. Siegler:
The real reason Apple is unlikely to go down a web search path is because they believe – as many now do – that web search is yesterday’s technology. Today is all about AI.
[…]
Said another way, if this were ten to fifteen years ago, Apple may indeed be compelled to go after web search on their own with such a remedy. But in 2025, it makes basically no sense and it would be an expensive distraction at best from what Apple needs to be working on.
[…]
But it’s not like Apple can just rip out Google, or any other web search product, from the iPhone. As Cue notes, that would make Apple’s product experience worse. And so they won’t. Which again leads to the notion that little would likely change if the judge were to accept this remedy in the case – except, again, for those $20B+ yearly payments. Money so large that it even matters to Apple.
[…]
It’s a weird position for the government to be in. They want these deals to be over, but killing these deals completely will probably only hurt Google’s search share marginally, if at all. But it will help Google’s bottom line! Money that Google can then plow back into making their search engine better, continuing the cycle.
And it will hurt Chrome’s competitors.
Google:
Today, we filed our own proposal, based on the actual findings in the Court’s decision. This was a decision about our search distribution contracts, so our proposed remedies are directed to that.
Dare Obasanjo:
The DOJ requested that Google to sell Chrome, end default search deals, share its index with rivals, and potentially sell Android to remedy its search monopoly.
Google’s counter-proposed that its search deals with Apple and others don’t need to be exclusive, allowing Apple to partner with Bing. 🙃
Update (2025-01-31): Ryan Christoffel (PDF, Hacker News):
Earlier this week, Apple was denied a motion to present witnesses at the upcoming Google trial.
[…]
Since its motion was just denied, Apple has followed up with another option: requesting a stay on proceedings to “protect its rights pending appeal.”
[…]
Absent a stay, Apple will suffer irreparable harm: the deprivation of its right to participate as a party in the remedial phase of this case moving forward, including possibly at the trial itself, while its undisputed property rights are adjudicated.
AdWords Antitrust Apple Business Department of Justice (DOJ) Eddy Cue Google Google Chrome Google Search Lawsuit Legal Search
The Talk Show (transcript):
Kagi founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac joins the show to talk about the business of web search, the thinking behind Kagi’s own amazing search engine, and their upstart WebKit-based browser Orion.
Here are some highlights from what I thought was a very interesting conversation:
Microsoft tried that with Bing and they spent 20 years, I think 100 billion is what I read and had thousands of the smartest people working on it and we all know what Bing results are like[…] So it’s really impossible for a small startup to compete with that nor I think we should. I think we should instead focus on providing the different business model.
The search index is one of those things that the DOJ suggested in their proposal to be open basically and just to prevent what I just described and also help proliferate startups that will offer different experiences.
[…]
We use five or six major search engines so everything that exists in the world and another advantage of doing that although it costs more money is basically we ensure that if it doesn’t surface on Kagi it probably doesn’t exist anywhere which is what you describe.
[…]
So Google has an offer that is basically a franchise and you have ability to get Google searches out but you also have to get Google ads so it’s one package and we have been trying for years to sort of license Google results in a way that we don’t get the ads so what we currently do is there are services out there that basically resell Google results that we use because we cannot directly retry but Google is not ready to do that and this is what the DOJ trial I think is very important for.
[…]
Safari to me, as far as I know, stands alone amongst popular browsers for not allowing the user to easily add their own, default search engine choices.
[…]
But all of those companies have traffic acquisition cost arrangements with Google. That’s how they get on that list in Safari.
Neither of them thinks that divesting Google of Chrome would solve anything.
Previously:
Update (2025-01-08): Vlad Prelovac:
Somebody posted this on reddit. Night and day difference between Google and Kagi results. Incentives matter.
Advertising Antitrust Artificial Intelligence Bing Business Department of Justice (DOJ) Google Search Interview iOS iOS 18 iOS App Kagi Search Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia Orion Safari Search Web
Adobe (Reddit, 2):
For more than a decade, we’ve brought photographers hundreds of innovative features in Lightroom and Photoshop without changing the price of our photography plans. Today we’re announcing an update to these plans to better reflect the value that the apps deliver. These plan updates come into effect for new subscribers on January 15, 2025, and will become effective for existing members only when your plan next renews.
[…]
Photography Plan (20GB) — The pre-paid annual plan remains unchanged at $119.88/year (equivalent to $9.99/month). Monthly billing remains an option for existing members with an updated price of $14.99/month, with an annual commitment, effective at your next renewal. Existing members who pay monthly can switch to the pre-paid annual plan to maintain the $9.99/month price. We will continue to support this plan for existing customers, however this plan will no longer be available to new customers.
[…]
Lightroom (1TB) — The pre-paid annual plan remains unchanged at $119.88/year (equivalent to $9.99/month). Additionally, this plan is expanding to now include Lightroom Classic. The monthly plan is updating to $11.99/month, with an annual commitment, effective at your next renewal. Existing members who pay monthly can switch to the pre-paid annual plan to maintain the $9.99/month price.
Emphasis added. So there are a few weeks left if you want to sign up for the plan with both Lightroom and Photoshop.
Adobe:
If your Photography plan (20GB) is currently on an annual plan, paid monthly, you can switch your billing to annual plan, prepaid, by visiting your Adobe Account page and following these steps: Select the Manage Plan button, then the Update Subscription button.
That’s the plan I’m on, but there’s no Update Subscription button. I chatted with Adobe’s AI assistant, and then with a person who initially told me that I had to cancel my current plan and that the price would change. After 24 minutes, and re-entering my credit card information even though it was already current, I think they switched me over.
See also: The Lightroom Queen.
Previously:
Update (2025-01-02): Peter N Lewis:
Bloody hell, you would think a multibillion dollar company like Adobe could handle a cancelation without screwing up the dates. I canceled the plan yesterday (Dec 30) which is already paid until Jan 30, which they are very clear about, right up until they email saying my services will end Dec 29 before I canceled it.
Also, because my change in payment frequency had to be implemented as a cancellation and a new sign-up, I got all these e-mails saying that they were sorry to see me go and then welcoming me to using the product, as if I hadn’t already been a customer for 10+ years. None of this is the end of the world, but this whole process wasted my time and showed a lack of care. The one-off Acorn upgrade was so much easier.
Adobe Adobe Creative Cloud Adobe Lightroom Adobe Photoshop App Subscriptions Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia
