[HN Gopher] Apple files emergency motion to become defendant in ...
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Apple files emergency motion to become defendant in US vs. Google
[pdf]
Author : zdw
Score : 365 points
Date : 2025-01-31 16:53 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (storage.courtlistener.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (storage.courtlistener.com)
| chomp wrote:
| Title says Google vs US, but the case is actually US v Google, no
| one is suing the US.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Not to mention which is the defendant that Apple is siding
| with...
| ishtanbul wrote:
| Google is defendant
| achierius wrote:
| What do you mean? The US is not a defendant in this case,
| it's not ambiguous -- defendant just refers to the
| party/parties accused of a crime. You can have multiple
| defendants, but only one 'side' of the trial will contain any
| defendants -- the other side, the US in this case, is the
| plaintiff.
| jonas21 wrote:
| That's why it's important to list the parties in the
| correct order.
| freejazz wrote:
| On appeals, cases are listed based on which is the
| appellant which is the respondent.
| nightpool wrote:
| Right, they're saying that the title is misleading/
| ambiguous because it confuses the order of defendant and
| plaintiff, so if you just read Apple's motion you'd be
| confused about which is which and who Apple is arguing with
| yapyap wrote:
| Yes, they're saying it was not clear who was the defendant
| in the title, it seemed like the US was.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've swapped them in the title above. Thanks!
| jtbayly wrote:
| So what case is this? I'm assuming something app-store related?
| samcat116 wrote:
| I think its the search monopoly one. Likely due to the fact
| that it was ruled illegal for Google to pay Apple $20B for
| default search engine placement.
| perihelions wrote:
| It's the search engine kickbacks, I believe:
|
| - _" This would leave Apple without the ability to defend its
| right to reach other arrangements with Google that could
| benefit millions of users and Apple's entitlement to
| compensation for distributing Google search to its users."_
|
| Also,
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-antitrust-ruling-m...
| ( _" Google antitrust ruling may pose $20 billion risk for
| Apple"_ (2024))
| matt_heimer wrote:
| Google monopoly case. Apple is involved because Google pays
| Apple to set the default search engine in Safari to Google.
| Apple received 20 billion from Google in 2022 (1) and Google
| has floated the idea of loosening of its agreements with Apple
| to make the US government happy (2).
|
| Apple doesn't want to give up that Google money.
| 1. https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-seeks-defend-
| googles-billion-dollar-payments-search-case-2024-12-24/
| 2. https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-says-it-could-loosen-
| search-deals-us-antitrust-case-2024-12-21/
| cyberax wrote:
| It's a part of it, for sure. Apple is apprehensive of monopoly
| findings, because it'll provide more ammo for the future
| lawsuits regarding its AppStore monopoly.
| frereubu wrote:
| This is the case referred to:
|
| "The United States of America, acting under the direction of the
| Attorney General of the United States, and the States of
| Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana,
| Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas, acting
| through their respective Attorneys General, bring this action
| under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. SS 2, to restrain
| Google LLC (Google) from unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the
| markets for general search services, search advertising, and
| general search text advertising in the United States through
| anticompetitive and exclusionary practices, and to remedy the
| effects of this conduct."
|
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18552824/1/united-state...
|
| Edit: NAL, but this seems to be at least partially about Apple
| bundling Google search in MacOS / iOS: (From the emergency
| motion) "Second, Apple will suffer clear and substantial
| irreparable harm if it is unable to participate in the remedies
| phase moving forward. Apple will be unable to participate in
| discovery and develop evidence in the targeted fashion it has
| proposed as this litigation progresses toward a final judgment.
| If Apple's appeal is not resolved until during or after the
| remedies trial, Apple may well be forced to stand mute at trial,
| as a mere spectator, while the government pursues an extreme
| remedy that targets Apple by name and would prohibit any
| commercial arrangement between Apple and Google for a decade.
| This would leave Apple without the ability to defend its right to
| reach other arrangements with Google that could benefit millions
| of users and Apple's entitlement to compensation for distributing
| Google search to its users. Further, Apple will be unable to
| present its own live testimony or cross-examine witnesses who
| opine about Apple's interests and incentives with respect to the
| general search market."
| yogurtboy wrote:
| Thanks for the overview!
|
| Can't help but notice that this is all deep red states. Why
| might that be? From above, this seems pretty bipartisan and
| what Lina Khan (MVP) has been working on for the last four
| years.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Some issues are (largely) bipartisan.
|
| Over time the sentiment towards concentration of power in
| small number of big tech firms has rubbed both the Democrats
| and Republicans the wrong way.
|
| Somewhat for different reasons initially, but the end
| result/agreement converges.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| State AGs from the same party are more likely to work
| together on a suit. Big tech has almost exclusively donated
| to and supported democrats over the years, so AGs from that
| party have more political capital to lose.
| epikorean wrote:
| Makes sense. Judge Mehta blocked Google from paying Apple. Apple
| wants to keep receiving billions of dollars from Google.
| jedberg wrote:
| Can someone with a law degree break this down for us?
| jerjerjer wrote:
| Not a lawyer but looks fairly straightforward.
|
| Google payed Apple billions of $ to be the default iPhone
| search engine.
|
| US says it's an anti-competitive and is currently suing Google.
|
| Part of the suit is that plaintiffs proposed a remedial term
| unique to Apple that would forbid any "contract between Google
| and Apple in which there would be anything exchanged of value."
|
| That means Apple is going to be out of $20 billions per year
| (or whatever Google pays to Apple) for the foreseeable future.
|
| Apple does not like this and tries to inject themselves into
| lawsuit on the side of Google.
| generj wrote:
| It seems the key sticking point is that the DOJ proposed
| forbidding "any contract between Apple and Google in which there
| would be anything exchanged of value."
|
| In other words, give us our $15 -20 Billion a year.
| allcentury wrote:
| > Plaintiffs proposed a remedial term unique to Apple that would
| forbid any "contract between Google and Apple in which there
| would be anything exchanged of value."
|
| Wow
| brookst wrote:
| Yeah that seems a little extreme. Like some person at Apple
| signs up for Google Workspaces and the company's in violation.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Or Google wants to buy/license any Apple products, e.g. for
| developing apps to run on Apple devices.
| lazide wrote:
| Or you know, buy some iPhones or MacBooks.
| talldayo wrote:
| God forbid humanity invents the technology to develop and
| distribute software without a $99/year fee.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Or, for that matter - Apple is a major customer of GCP for
| iCloud storage. A court order requiring that business to
| cease would place an undue burden on Apple.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Ooof. Google gives Apple like a third of its search revenue on
| iOS searches. Apple gets tens of billions of bucks from this.
| Presumably it is so much money in part because Microsoft would
| happily pay half that to be the default instead. But if Google
| isn't allowed to offer anything at all, Microsoft is free to
| offer only a sliver of what it otherwise would have, because
| what's Apple gonna do otherwise, send all of its users to Duck
| Duck Go?
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I suspect the biggest concern Apple has is that it's a big
| part of their services revenue, which is what's holding their
| earnings up currently. They want Services to be seen as a big
| interesting business, but it's mostly Google and App Store
| games. It'd be a big problem for them to report a drop in
| services revenue, and they're not going to find anything to
| replace it quickly enough.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| From a legal perspective, Apple's biggest concern, _by far_
| , is that this case could set a precedent for using courts
| to sanction Apple without letting Apple in court. Next to
| that, revenue is meaningless. Because they can take your
| revenue from whatever source via judgement, without giving
| you so much as an opportunity to file a brief in front of
| the court.
|
| This is one time where there is _much_ more on the line
| than money. At least for Apple. Maybe for everyone if the
| Supremes were to say this is OK. (Unlikely in the extreme,
| but still.)
| DanHulton wrote:
| This is an underrated comment and should be WAY higher.
| Like a lot of things Apple does, this isn't about the
| thing itself, but about the next ten to twenty years of
| related things.
| brookst wrote:
| Also consider that a good portion of Apple's services
| revenue is from services running on GCP, which would be
| prohibited. They could go all-in with AWS and Azure, but
| that's a significant tech change and reduces their
| negotiating power with those alternatives.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And how does that help? You're going from the 3rd largest
| cloud provider to the first and second?
|
| Apple already runs some of its workloads on AWS. It was
| an open secret inside AWS before. But they brought an
| Apple person on stage at the last reinvent
| avianlyric wrote:
| I think GP point, is that the proposed remedy: "contract
| between Google and Apple in which there would be anything
| exchanged of value." would force Apple ditch all Google
| services, including GCP. Given paying Google for GCP
| services would require a contract exchanging something of
| value.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I know, I'm saying that it is a dumb remedy to "we don't
| like BigTech colluding so we are going to force Apple to
| leave the third largest cloud provider (an also ran) for
| the first and second largest provider"
| brookst wrote:
| It's a dumb remedy in general, seemingly created without
| any understanding of the industry.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > what's Apple gonna do otherwise, send all of its users to
| Duck Duck Go?
|
| I mean, ye
| computerfriend wrote:
| > what's Apple gonna do otherwise, send all of its users to
| Duck Duck Go?
|
| Now that they're not encumbered by the Google deal: build
| their own search engine.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yup! And the fact that Apple has so far appeared completely
| uninterested in doing this (compare this to how
| aggressively Apple competes against Google Maps!) proves
| that this anticompetitive financial arrangement harms
| competition, which harms consumers (and probably even harms
| advertisers, since having Google Search in such a dominant
| position means Google has much more pricing power to sell
| ads than they would if a large chunk of iPhone users moved
| over to Apple Search).
| voxic11 wrote:
| Apple created maps because Google refused to implement
| turn by turn directions in the ios version of google maps
| (for a few years at least).
| kumarm wrote:
| If I remember correctly apple wanted Turn by Turn
| navigation while also not adding any ads to the app
| (essentially be their maps but no revenue).
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Apple was paying for Google Map data.
| voxic11 wrote:
| They have the google deal specifically because they don't
| want to be in the search engine business.
|
| > In a declaration filed with the U.S. District Court in
| Washington, Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue said
| creating a search engine would require diverting
| significant capital and employees, while recent AI
| developments make such an investment "economically risky."
|
| https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/zgvoalybovd
| /... declaration.pdf
| jkestner wrote:
| Yeah, it would divert the $20 billion in capital that
| Goole currently pays Apple to not be in the search engine
| business.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Now that they 're not encumbered by the Google deal:
| build their own search engine._
|
| "Encumbered"? Apple _wants_ a deal with Google search.
| Apple is 'self-encumbering' themselves: Apple _wants_ the
| deal so they don 't have go through the rigamarole of
| building it themselves.
|
| Building would cost a lot _and_ they 'd also not be getting
| cash from Google: so they're doubly hit.
| deafpiano wrote:
| "You mean I don't have to build a search engine, pay for
| it's upkeep and engineers, AND you'll give me money?" -
| Tom Cook probably circa > 0 AD
|
| Easy for google to measure their IOS mobile Ad revenue to
| justify the billions.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Apple has enough spare cash to buy a small country. They
| can build a search engine if they wanted to.
|
| There's a reason there are only a dozen or so successful
| search engines worldwide, and maybe five successful image
| search engines. The margins are razor thin, it's a constant
| battle against "SEO optimisers" trying to ruin search
| engines for profit, and the moment they get popular
| governments start coming up with very creepy requests and
| demands.
|
| It'll cost them billions and they won't know if they can
| even beat Google before Google drops them as a client for
| trying to compete with them, taking out a lucrative multi
| billion dollar deal for a default setting.
|
| No, I think they'll just contract Microsoft Bing and rid
| themselves of the risks. They're already incorporating
| Microsoft's side OpenAI side project into their service
| stack, so it'd just make sense to couple further. Maybe the
| American government will sue them for that deal as well,
| but before that's final there will be years of not decades
| of lawsuits and appeals.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Or Kagi :D
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Which pays Google...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| How does Kagi pay Google
| scarface_74 wrote:
| They pay Google for search results and are a front end
| for it with.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Lots of sources, including their own indexer [1]
|
| [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-
| sources.htm...
| reginald78 wrote:
| Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world.
| They'd probably just buy an also ran search engine and make
| it the default. I'd say the only reason they didn't do this
| already was Google's money bag was so big and replacing them
| would be so easy if it shrank or disappeared.
|
| Smaller companies are the ones that will really get screwed
| by this ruling, Apple will be fine.
| jayd16 wrote:
| That would possibly recoup the laziest of users but
| wouldn't the bulk simply switch to Google, leaving Apple
| with none of that revenue?
| paxys wrote:
| Exactly. Users have to manually download Chrome yet it
| has a 70% market share. Changing the search engine on
| mobile is already easy enough, far easier than installing
| a browser. Google will get a majority of its share back,
| while Apple will get nothing.
| BryantD wrote:
| Google has a strong position in search, and pushes Chrome
| every time you hit their top level page. Also Chrome is
| the default on Android, yeah? I don't think you can
| extrapolate from that market share to determine how
| likely people are to change browsers.
| creato wrote:
| The parent's market share claim is for desktop OSes,
| where Android is irrelevant.
|
| It's still far easier to _not_ install chrome than it is
| to install it: downloading a thing, running the
| downloaded thing, click through all the dialogs, ignore
| all of Windows 's nags to stick with Edge (which is
| probably a greater abuse of platform control than
| advertising on the search page), ...
| BryantD wrote:
| Ah, my error -- thank you!
| nijave wrote:
| I think a lot of companies switched to pushing Chrome via
| device management during the later IE days and never
| switched back. Presumably that's a decent chunk of market
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Google will get a majority of its share back, while
| Apple will get nothing.
|
| Then you would have to ask, if people would only switch
| back to Google anyway, why is Google paying them
| currently? Depriving Apple of the incentive to develop a
| competing search engine good enough for people to
| willingly use.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Honestly it's the only logical conclusion.
|
| Otherwise the terms of the deal are terrible for Google
| willseth wrote:
| Not on iPhone. Chrome has 30% market share.
| paxys wrote:
| Because Chrome isn't a thing on iPhone. It's Safari
| webview with a very thin layer of Chrome branding around
| it. Users have very little incentive to switch. And
| considering Google search is the default on both, Google
| doesn't have much of an incentive to push users either.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Google doesn't care about Chromium (the engine) being on
| iOS. They care most about getting user data from people
| using Chrome on iOS.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| They might, if Google hadn't enshittified their own
| product over the last few years. At this point, I will at
| least _listen_ to anyone who says they 're willing to
| take search seriously again.
|
| It was Google's game to lose, and they seem to be trying
| their hardest to do just that, without any help from
| competitors or the government.
| Someone wrote:
| If so, why is Google paying Apple billions? Insurance
| against the risk that that isn't true? Seems like an
| expensive insurance...
| sbarre wrote:
| If the revenue is worth the cost, why leave it to chance?
|
| Internet Explorer seemed impossible to beat when it was
| packed in with Windows, and yet Chrome is now the
| dominant browser.
|
| I'm sure that isn't lost on Google. The change might not
| happen overnight but why even let it start if you can
| afford not to.
| jayd16 wrote:
| The payoff disincentivizes Apple from competing and
| ensures Google does not need to compete. I would assume
| there's also some kind of exclusivity such that Apple is
| also incentivized to promote Google search over others.
|
| Google would likely win the melee but not without unknown
| effort. Loss of users + risk + higher maintenance cost is
| all part of the equation.
| jayd16 wrote:
| > Microsoft is free to offer only a sliver of what it
| otherwise would have
|
| Would Apple even be able to make a deal with anyone at that
| point?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| I seriously doubt Apple would move to Bing by default, even
| if there were some short term monetary gain. Using a
| subpar/cluttered search interface is so far off from their
| brand image.
|
| I find it 10x more likely Apple would suddenly find the
| motivation to make their own search engine if forced to end
| their deal with Google.
|
| (They say they wouldn't under any circumstance, but seems to
| be posturing to me)
|
| Regardless, it's clear getting paid Billions to give people
| the default they'd choose anyway is a good deal for them.
|
| I wonder who at Google negotiated this, because the terms
| seem very bad for them. They only make sense if the premise
| was to prevent Apple from starting a competitor
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > I find it 10x more likely Apple would suddenly find the
| motivation to make their own search engine if forced to end
| their deal with Google.
|
| I think that could only work if someone successfully makes
| the case internally that an Apple search engine built in to
| Safari (not as a first-class web app) would boost the Apple
| brand and/or Safari market share enough to justify it.
| Maybe even offer it as a subscription.
|
| To monetize it with ads would go completely against their
| DNA -- ad revenue incentivizes companies to violate users'
| privacy and build a sub-optimal UX. So it would have to be
| either a subscription or a platform feature.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| How does Apple make money on Apple Maps without ads?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It doesn't need to. It's a part of the platform. It's a
| necessity.
|
| But I'm sure they make some money off of the Uber/Lyft
| integration
| FateOfNations wrote:
| The $1199 I paid for my iPhone is how they make money on
| Apple Maps.
| ksec wrote:
| >To monetize it with ads would go completely against
| their DNA
|
| They already do Ads on Apps Store.
| SoKamil wrote:
| > I seriously doubt Apple would move to Bing by default,
| even if there were some short term monetary gain. Using a
| subpar/cluttered search interface is so far off from their
| brand image.
|
| > I find it 10x more likely Apple would suddenly find the
| motivation to make their own search engine if forced to end
| their deal with Google.
|
| I find it 10x more likely that in such case they would use
| white label Bing and do front-end on their own.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Why would Apple be allowed to partner with Microsoft,
| which is even larger than Google?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Or just don't use a default at all and have users select a
| search provider when they get their phones. Would mean they
| don't get any kickbacks though. They could also, and probably
| should, route most requests through Siri first, that is, when
| they finally get Siri up to the level of modern LLMs.
| frereubu wrote:
| As far as I understand it, this is specifically to do with the
| bundling of Google search in Apple devices. Still big but not a
| ban on any contracts between them.
| btown wrote:
| From https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/UNI
| TEDS... the proposed restriction seems to be:
|
| > "Google must not offer or provide anything of value to
| Apple--or offer any commercial terms--that in any way creates
| an economic disincentive to compete in or enter the GSE or
| Search Text Ad markets,"
|
| That's a _very_ broad statement that could easily be
| interpreted to cover more than just the default-search-
| provider agreement.
| frereubu wrote:
| True - hadn't spotted the bit about the Search Text Ad bit
| either.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's pretty consistent with what the law actually says.
| Here's the Sherman Act:
|
| > Every contract, combination in the form of trust or
| otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce
| among the several States, or with foreign nations, is
| hereby declared to be illegal.
|
| > Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to
| monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other per- son
| or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce
| among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be
| deemed guilty of a felony
|
| It's _very_ under-enforced, but that 's what it says.
| mimsee wrote:
| So all Google services would disappear from the App Store
| because it could be argued that it provides tremendous value
| for Google to have their services there? The $100 USD /year
| fee, even if withdrawn, would trigger it, since it's a
| contract, right?
| tivert wrote:
| >> Plaintiffs proposed a remedial term unique to Apple that
| would forbid any "contract between Google and Apple in which
| there would be anything exchanged of value."
|
| > Wow
|
| That seems a little broad. Wouldn't it forbid Google from
| buying Macbooks for employees, for instance?
| CDRdude wrote:
| There's a joke in there about the value of Macbooks.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No, because there's no contract necessary to purchase
| Macbooks.
| tivert wrote:
| > No, because there's no contract necessary to purchase
| Macbooks.
|
| You don't have to sign a paper in a big room with lawyers
| to have a contract. Whenever you buy something, you're
| entering into a contract. It's got all the elements.
| madars wrote:
| Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18552824/united-
| states-...
|
| The case is about prohibiting Google to enter search deals with
| distributors (both phone makers like Apple, carriers, and browser
| developers like Mozilla), see Bloomberg reporting:
| https://archive.is/sneIB . The original complaint is the first
| PDF in the docket.
| granzymes wrote:
| I've been following this case, and explained the history here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42889763.
|
| The tile would be more accurate if it said "Apple requests a
| pause in US vs. Google while it attempts to intervene".
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Yes, vastly better. The title as it now stands makes no sense
| at all.
| jopsen wrote:
| If enforced wouldn't it make life hard for Mozilla?
|
| They can get other search deals, but their negotiation position
| would be a lot worse.
|
| disclaimer: opinions are my own.
| vessenes wrote:
| Interesting; I wonder if DOJ approaches on this stuff will
| continue (Vance has been clear he's a big tech skeptic), or if
| things will chill out a little.
|
| In this case, the big complaint Apple has is that there was a
| really long trial, US v. Google, and one of the proposed remedies
| is a ban on a "contract between Google and Apple in which there
| would be anything exchanged of value."
|
| Apple is like "hold on a minute here, we weren't party to this
| trial."
|
| When they asked to file some briefs, they were denied. Hence
| these motions, and also the PR push, I imagine.
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like any party named in an order
| should at least be allowed to show up and say some things. We'll
| see.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, if what Google was doing was against the law, then Apple
| really doesn't get a say. Google just has to stop, whether
| Apple likes it or not.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| This is incorrect. First, some laws only carry fines which
| corporations can choose to pay instead of abiding. Second, in
| the US, you have the right to challenge laws, which is what's
| happening here. Third, my understanding is there is no "law"
| preventing this deal, only a pending lawsuit to cease the
| deal.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The law allegedly being broken is:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act which
| prohibits the types of behavior Google is accused of.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| That's not what this is about. When a court finds that there
| was a violation of law, they can impose remedies that go far
| beyond what the law normally requires, and Apple says in the
| filing that they're concerned about "an extreme remedy that
| targets Apple by name and would prohibit any commercial
| arrangement between Apple and Google for a decade". I don't
| know this case in enough detail to say whether that statement
| is fair, but if it is there's clearly no general law against
| making commercial arrangements with Apple.
| xp84 wrote:
| I wonder how many people agree with me that two unrepentant
| monopolists (and the two halves of a completely-
| indisputable duopoly) such as these justifiably _shouldn
| 't_ be allowed to make any financial deals with one another
| by default, in a fair and sane world.
|
| Or at minimum, any such deal should be illegal unless
| explicitly approved by a regulator as not harming
| competition.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| It is funny and a bit sad that many root for
| anticompetitive behavior by these companies out of what
| appears to be largely simply due to fanboyism.
|
| Making markets highly competitive and open to new
| entrants/innovation is far better for society in the long
| run.
|
| Is society better off if Visa can take 5% of every
| Transaction? Apple/Google 30%? Clearly not.
|
| In a competitive market, margins will trend towards
| marginal value add of the player. Margins well in excess
| of the add are signs a market is not competitive.
|
| Open protocols for payments, storefronts, Identity/Auth,
| messaging etc can solve most of these inefficiencies.
|
| Eventually government will get smarter on technology.
| (Maybe on the cusp?)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store
| revenue comes from pay to win games and loot boxes. Most
| of the other popular apps on either store are clients to
| services where Apple doesn't get a cut at all.
|
| You'll have to forgive me if I don't feel sorry for those
| types of apps - the 90%.
|
| The small Indy developers are mostly paying 15%
| adam_arthur wrote:
| And how much of Apple's services revenue comes from
| Google?
|
| When's the last time you paid Microsoft 15% to download
| an exe?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Well, seeing that I don't buy pay to win in app purchases
| of games and none of my subscription services - Prime,
| various streaming services, Office365. etc - were
| purchased through the App Store, the other 10% don't
| apply to me.
|
| People pay Microsoft all of the time to buy games for
| XBox
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It is funny and a bit sad that many root for
| anticompetitive behavior by these companies out of what
| appears to be largely simply due to fanboyism.
|
| Is anyone doing that here? Why did you reply where you
| replied? This accusation is not relevant to the parent
| comments.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| It is entirely relevant to the parent comment.
|
| As to the second part, it requires a bit of reading
| comprehension and contextual awareness, unfortunately.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not relevant. You're looking for something to
| complain about and latching on where it doesn't fit.
|
| Even full approval of Apple's motion would not be rooting
| for anticompetitive behavior. It makes sense for Apple to
| be involved in this rulemaking. And it does seem like too
| much if the rule blocks _any_ dealing between the two
| companies in _any_ market.
|
| But the above comment was far weaker than that. It was
| just saying a restriction that strong would prevent
| things that are not already illegal. That is a basic
| fact.
| borski wrote:
| If the remedy the court and defendants/prosecution agreed to
| affects _my_ ability to compete or contract, then I have a
| claim to that being an illegal remedy, as I was not a party
| to the suit and therefore did not have say in something that
| now binds me.
|
| IANAL, but that's my understanding.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If what I'm doing is illegal, and the court rules that it
| is illegal, then I don't have right to do it with _you_ (or
| anyone else), whether or not you like it.
|
| Now, it may not be that black and white. If the ruling
| comes down to a negotiated settlement rather than a court
| judgment, then Apple very well may want some say in what
| that looks like.
| borski wrote:
| It's rarely that black and white; moreover, what defines
| whether is it legal or not is the lawsuit itself. If
| Apple believes it was not defended appropriately, it
| would make sense to join suit.
| brookst wrote:
| Apple did not expect to be prohibited from using GCP as
| part of a remedy, since that wasn't a topic of the trial.
| brookst wrote:
| You're taking reductionism too far.
|
| If what you're doing is illegal, and the court orders you
| to stop it _and also stop lots of other things not found
| to be illegal_ , and _also to refuse to allow a
| counterparty to work with you in even more unrelated
| fields_ , then it's fair for the counterparty to insist
| on having a say.
|
| In this case, the proposed remedy would prohibit Apple
| from using GCP. Or even buying a Chromebook. Merits of
| that remedy notwithstanding, I don't see how anyone could
| have a problem with Apple objecting.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The Trump administration right now is allowing Oracle and
| Akamai to illegally run TikTok infrastructure.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| This has always been a weird case because the propose remedies
| have more to do with Apple than Google, and impact Apple
| negatively just as much (or more!) than Google.
| echelon wrote:
| There would be so much opportunity in breaking up Apple and
| Google. And Amazon and Meta.
|
| Just think of all the new startups and money to be made by
| breaking up big tech.
|
| I think the valuation of a broken-up Google and Apple would
| exceed the monolithic conglomerates that they have become. So
| many of their business units and products don't even monetize
| because they're going for an intangible "platform value" that
| is only achievable at obscene scale. In this hulking form,
| they can reach into new markets and charge nothing, killing
| off all the incumbents, just so that they can grow their
| empires larger and tighten their grips on your attentions and
| wallets.
|
| Amazon gives away Hollywood movies for free because it keeps
| your eyeballs glued to them. And they're also a grocery
| store, for god's sake.
|
| A big tech breakup would provide much needed oxygen to the
| ecosystem, lift a bunch of impossible to beat barriers, and
| result in far more competition and money making.
|
| Imagine a web that isn't dominated by Google or a phone
| market that isn't controlled by a duopoly. Imagine if we
| could suddenly launch iPhone and Gmail and YouTube
| competitors. The energy barriers are too high today because
| the big players have consolidated every angle of attack.
|
| No wonder Peter Thiel and Vance want it. This would turn the
| big tech money siphons over to venture capital,
| entrepreneurs, and engineering ICs again.
|
| We should all be 100% for this.
| tedd4u wrote:
| >And they're also a grocery store, for god's sake.
|
| They're also your primary care doctor! Amazon OneMedical!
|
| https://health.amazon.com/onemedical
|
| Scroll down the page a bit.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Counter point: Would breaking up Meta, Google, Apple,
| Microsoft decrease the progress in AI since those major
| companies are forking over hundreds of billions to build
| out mega AI infraustructure?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Maybe, but why should we care? So far those billions
| haven't actually given us anything useful, it's all just
| toys. I'm not against research, but when the research
| hasn't yet produced a useful outcome then I don't feel
| like there is a strong societal good in keeping it going.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I don't think that's a fair assessment. I'm not anywhere
| near as high on LLMs as many, but Google and Meta's
| moonshot side projects and insane investments into
| infrastructure have given us Waymo, TensorFlow, PyTorch,
| Kubernetes, React, MapReduce, http2, the entire Go
| programming language, V8, all of Facebook's investments
| into improving PHP and OCaml.
|
| We can quibble over how valuable each of these things
| individually is, but it's not just toys. It's
| foundational tooling used all over the place that the
| larger community pretty just got for free. They've also
| been some of the biggest contributors to the Linux
| kernel.
|
| To be fair, I don't know that we needed Google et al for
| this. We used to get this kind of thing from DARPA and
| university researchers, but Google and Facebook and
| friends made so much money from ads that they hired away
| all the best researchers so they no longer work at
| universities, at the same time government was hollowing
| out funding for basic research.
|
| We _could_ get this thing from real public sources if we
| made the public investments, but I don 't know that the
| political will or taxpayer willingness exists to do that
| now. We need to get it from somewhere.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Do you really think the government funding this would
| lead to better outcomes? We see the censorship that China
| is doing with DeepSeek and we just saw the dictator in
| chief freezing all spending unilaterally even though that
| wasn't in his power
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Google Translate (and all the new competing products)
| alone should be reason enough to demonstrate outstanding
| societal good.
|
| You can now travel anywhere in the world and communicate
| in the local language. Using _offline_ models that
| translate between any two languages. That's almost
| literally biblical magic levels of social good.
|
| (Plus we got amazing image recognition tech, LLMs, voice
| and NLU stuff, AlphaFold for protein analysis, etc)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If Google Translate was to disappear, I wonder if say
| Duolingo could create translation software with all of
| the linguistic data they've accumulated.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| what data have they accumulated?
|
| I'm a happy DuoLingo user, but educational software with
| an owl-with-a-BBL mascot is not going to be a trove of
| translation capabilities.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I'm not sure, but I thought their business model involved
| applying machine learning on user answers, like their
| translations of excerpts of written text / handwriting
| samples.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they just gamified mediocre language
| learning techniques to make it palatable for more people
| to consume.
|
| I don't think they have any significant data collected,
| nor do they do any handwritten anything.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think what I was recalling is the crowdsourcing
| translations mechanic, which is far more low tech:
|
| > But wait - how could a beginner-level student translate
| advanced sentences? The solution that Duolingo employs
| uses the power of crowdsourcing, which involves many
| students offering their attempts at translating
| individual sentences. As each student submits a sentence,
| they can rate others' translations, and the most highly
| rated translations "rise to the top."
|
| Over time, entire documents are translated and students
| gain many skill points for their language practice. It's
| easy to see how the data collected from users could be
| useful to improve the algorithms that underly computer
| translation[...]
|
| https://lile.duke.edu/blog/2012/11/duolingo-learning-a-
| new-l...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Wouldn't this point have had greater resonance a week or
| two ago before recent news about entrants in the AI
| space?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| DeepSeek is only thing because they used OpenAI for
| refinement.
| talldayo wrote:
| "Apple only exists because they used Motorola IP" type
| comment
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It wasn't just IP though. DeepSeek actually used OpenAIs
| API and resources. I'm not saying it was unethical.
| snake42 wrote:
| Almost all innovation is derivative or incremental in
| some way.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The difference is that DeepSeek couldn't actually be
| created as cheaply as it was without using OpenAIs
| resources - not just IP.
|
| It did refinement by using OpenAI to create synthetic
| data.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I don't want to comment on if a breakup is a "good" thing
| for society, because I vaguely agree, but I'm not sure I
| agree with you on many points here.
|
| > I think the valuation of a broken-up Google and Apple
| would exceed the monolithic conglomerates that they have
| become. So many of their business units and products don't
| even monetize because they're going for an intangible
| "platform value".
|
| I think a lot of these products aren't monetized because
| they're actually bad businesses or failed ventures and
| companies have the free cash to support them. A lot more of
| Google's (for example) random side projects seem to be
| getting subscriptions or collapses into existing ones. I
| also think that vertical integration creates unique value
| _sometimes_. I think spinning off these random side
| businesses could destroy the side businesses, but that this
| may still raise stock prices as the companies get better
| margins. I think a lot of these products are bad businesses
| _because big tech salaries are high_ and that makes labor
| costs hard to account for.
|
| I think the breakups obviously rectify consolidated power.
| 100%. But I don't see more mobile phone operating systems
| coming from a breakup of Apple, for example. Gmail isn't
| going to be replaced by a new email provider. Nor would we
| see a new YouTube, or other dominant businesses. Disrupting
| these massive aggregators won't come from direct
| competition, but rather new product and service
| experiences. TikTok has shown that tech is already not
| impenetrable.
|
| Finally, I totally agree that this would be a feeding
| frenzy for VCs, but VCs learned in the last decade how to
| rip off ICs even more through delaying IPOs and more
| aggressive dilution. So I wouldn't be holding my breath as
| an IC that breaking up Google (or others) will make jobs
| better.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I think the breakups obviously rectify consolidated
| power. 100%. But I don't see more mobile phone operating
| systems coming from a breakup of Apple, for example.
| Gmail isn't going to be replaced by a new email provider.
| Nor would we see a new YouTube, or other dominant
| businesses. Disrupting these massive aggregators won't
| come from direct competition, but rather new product and
| service experiences._
|
| Perhaps you're right. Perhaps breaking these products up
| would not create more competition.
|
| But it would mean that these products _must_ determine
| how to make money on their own merits. That might mean a
| better product overall. Or it might mean that the product
| really doesn 't deserve to exist as a consumer product.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Or it might mean that the product really doesn't
| deserve to exist as a consumer product.
|
| Why?
|
| If a product or experience is used by people, and
| enjoyed, and could not be monetized directly, why should
| it not exist?
|
| I think of Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri as representative
| examples. Some set of execs decided to fund these voice
| assistants - now used by millions - and they obviously
| don't make money. Would customers be better off if they
| were jettisoned to drown on their own?
|
| I just don't see why it's wrong that businesses have
| these silly side projects. We seem to have competition
| even amongst the subsidized vanity projects.
|
| Again, I think a breakup wouldn't be bad overall, but I
| don't think this is the thing missing in the industry.
| worik wrote:
| > ....Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri... and they obviously
| don't make money.
|
| If you take a very narrow view of "make money"
|
| They are immensely valuable to the owners and an
| important part of the systematic maintenance of people as
| "consumers" rather than "citizens".
|
| We would be better off, over all, without the whole
| thing.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > If you take a very narrow view of "make money"
|
| > They are immensely valuable to the owners
|
| This is, of course, the entire point of this entire
| thread.
|
| Its not a particularly "narrow" view, FWIW, because most
| businesses have a P&L sheet that will list expenses and
| revenues, and entire business units have big "costs" and
| not so big "revenue". Which is what "don't make money"
| means.
| ksec wrote:
| Agree. It is the exact same question again and again with
| bundling [1] and unbundling. I guess I will have to
| submit it again.
|
| [1] https://www.ben-
| evans.com/benedictevans/2020/12/21/google-bu...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Apple would never have invested in Mx chips that are only
| 14% of Apple's revenue - Macs + iPads. If it weren't for
| the R&D from iPhone Ax chips and the volume.
|
| So exactly who want Chrome? How would they monetize it
| and you can already get Chromium for free. Could Android
| not come with a browser? Chromebooks?
|
| Who would fund Chromium development?
| crmd wrote:
| > I think a lot of these products aren't monetized
| because they're actually bad businesses or failed venture
|
| Gmail, for example, would be a fabulous standalone
| business with a normal (subscription) business model like
| other premium email services. I would love to run that
| spinoff.
|
| YouTube: fabulous standalone company. Would love to be
| working there when they IPO. I'm sure there are more.
|
| The business units that _can't_ survive except for
| "platform charity" should shutdown, go open source, sell
| their assets, etc. and the developers should move on to
| found new startups.
|
| These big mega-platforms have sucked most of the oxygen
| out of the tech industry and it's in the best interest of
| everyone except their major shareholders to break them
| up.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The examples you've provided aren't "platform-charities".
| They're already massive businesses with healthy revenue
| streams that are aggressively monetized.
|
| Look at Google Assistant or Alexa and their speakers.
| Losing Billions a year.
|
| Look at smaller products like Google Fi or Fiber. Google
| Podcasts. Google Translate. Google Voice. WhatsApp.
| Quest/Oculus. Amazon Go stores. Apple HomeKit.
|
| It's the long-tail of small-use products that would be
| hurt. No one doubts that an ad-supported product with
| multiple billions of users would be a great standalone
| business.
| ksec wrote:
| Thank You. It is somewhat a lot of these are pointing out
| the obvious. But have to be written out.
| dieortin wrote:
| 99% of Gmail users would not pay for the service, and
| would just move to other provider. I don't know how you
| can think they can operate as a subscription service and
| act like nothing changes.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Not OP, but Gmail is and could continue to be ad
| supported. Gmail also is a subscription service offered
| to enterprises, and it is a very lucrative service for
| Google.
| ncruces wrote:
| Worse. A small but significant percentage would actually
| pay ransom for it, just because moving is a pain. No one
| new would join, though.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| How much would YouTube Inc make without having its
| infrastructure subsidized by Google corporate and taking
| advantage of Google's ad network
|
| And you speak of "platform charity". But not thinking
| about VC charity?
| Kye wrote:
| Going from the breakup of AT&T to the reconstitution of
| AT&T took about 40 years. Standard Oil probably did the
| same, though I haven't seen any fancy charts showing it on
| a timeline like with AT&T. There's probably some useful
| lessons to pick up from that time if they go the breakup
| route.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It's weird because we're currently trying to use the existing
| regulatory regime, which was created god knows how many
| decades ago, to wrangle with new companies that clearly don't
| fit into the existing definitions. Now we're in this
| embarrassing situation that people are trying to extricate
| themselves from because they know if this makes it to the
| Supremes the whole thing will be called out for the legally
| laughable farce that it is.
|
| This is easy to solve though, just change the laws. Why are
| we putzing around with courts when we can just change the
| law? I'll never understand that?
|
| Maybe the politicians see court cases as being able to be
| _seen_ to be doing something, while at the same time having
| the comfort of knowing nothing will actually be done? Because
| they could easily just change the laws. The strategy they 're
| pursuing doesn't make sense right now.
| BryantD wrote:
| It's fairly hard to pass substantial bills these days
| thanks to polarization -- when a significant portion of
| your base sees cooperation as a betrayal, the incentives
| get wonky. (Not pointing that comment at either the left or
| the right to the exclusion of the other.) The days of Ted
| Kennedy finding ways to work across the aisle are gone, at
| least for now.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > This is easy to solve though, just change the laws.
|
| When a large subset of people only care about culture war,
| this isn't easy.
| mgfist wrote:
| > This is easy to solve though, just change the laws.
|
| Changing the law for highly politicized situations is damn
| near impossible today.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Are there examples of any other outcomes that prohibited two
| specific companies from exchanging anything of value?
|
| This seems like a strange outcome.
|
| Why not just prohibit payment for default search?
|
| Doesn't Apple use Google's servers to pre-train it's AI
| models?
|
| So that gets banned to?
|
| Why?
|
| How and why is any better for Apple to pay Amazon or MSFT for
| that than Google?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's not exactly this, but there is an interesting thing
| going on right now with the San Diego Padres in American
| Major League Baseball. The owner died last year and control
| of the team initially passed to his younger brothers. His
| wife wasn't happy about that and sued them and the team has
| ended up with an injunction pending resolution of who gets
| to actually control it going forward, and they've gone from
| being one of the most active franchises in the league of
| the past decade to making literally no new deals this
| offseason and watching all of their free agents leave. They
| basically can't buy anything until the court decides who of
| the surviving family gets to decide what to buy, which
| effects their own employees who can't get new contracts and
| any other franchises that otherwise might have traded with
| them.
| bell-cot wrote:
| It would be lovely if the 6th Amendment ("speedy and
| public trial") also applied to non-criminal proceedings.
| plagiarist wrote:
| But then wealthy people might have to pay the entities
| they would rather defraud indefinitely with eternally
| delayed judgements.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I always thought the right to a 'speedy' trial was more
| about latency than throughput. I.e., the accused
| shouldn't have to wait 10 years before the trial begins,
| but no guarantees about the duration of the trial.
| bell-cot wrote:
| It's easy to screw defendants over either way - say,
| "start" your trial ASAP...but then pause it for a few
| months for some quibble, then a few more months for some
| detail, then a few more months for ...
| lesuorac wrote:
| How speedy is speedy anyways? IIRC, the big reason plea
| bargains get accepted is because the offer is "time
| served" as-in the time you spent in jail awaiting trail
| will be what you agree as a punishment and you'll be
| immediately released.
| wbl wrote:
| Jarandice v Jarandice redux.
| masfuerte wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarndyce_and_Jarndyce
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| It sounds like the court, like King Solomon, decided to
| cut the baby in half.
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| Isn't the "ban the Apple-Google iOS search deal" just one of
| several proposed remedies, with the most significant one
| being a Google breakup? Certainly seems like that one would
| affect Google more than Apple. Or am I confused and the
| Google breakup thing is a proposed remedy in a separate case?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Specifically only selling off Chrome
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/27/24302415/doj-google-
| sear...
|
| DoJ asserts that owning a browser gave Google an unfair
| advantage in building a search engine to the degree that it
| prevented meaningful competition.
|
| I don't think Google losing Chrome is _too_ harmful to
| Google. I would say it 's probably equal to Apple losing
| billions from the default search deal.
| jonas21 wrote:
| The lawsuit was initiated by the first Trump administration at
| the request of the attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida,
| Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri,
| Montana, South Carolina, and Texas.
|
| So presumably, it will continue.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Depends on if he's figured out an angle on how to enrich
| himself or his cronies off of it by now. See: TikTok ban
| suddenly becoming negotiable after an act of Congress.
| xp84 wrote:
| Don't forget non-monetary 'enrichment,' too. I'm pretty
| convinced that the reason Trump switched sides on TikTok,
| after being one of the first to cast (justifiable imho)
| suspicion on it, simply because he looked around and saw
| that popular opinion was against the ban, especially among
| the influential Gen-Z demographic.
|
| (Obviously a President caring about popular opinion is a
| feature and not strictly a bug, but I think it's reasonable
| that a President should also care whether said popular
| opinion is ill-informed and wrong when it comes to national
| security.)
| moshun wrote:
| Don't forget that TikTok praised him _personally_ to
| every single user and then donated $50K to his
| inauguration as well as hosting a huge party that cost
| well over $100k. ByteDance knows better than most how to
| deal with corrupt governments.
| j2kun wrote:
| Trump is nothing if not a flip-flopper when he can get a deal
| out of it.
| nostromo wrote:
| It's literally how negotiation works.
| myko wrote:
| This is corruption, not negotiation
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So was the TikTok ban....
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| We need a name for this tactic. I see it from right-leaning
| folk all the time.
|
| 1. Alter the rules so the thing is under threat
|
| 2. Intervene to protect it from the harm you initiated
|
| 3. Now you're encumbered by one fewer rule, and you're a
| known protector of the thing
|
| Executive Heist? Tyrant's Gambit? The Ol' Feudal
| Switcheroo?
|
| My local school district did it with school days just this
| year. On the books they're now "online learning days" but
| thanks to the largesse of the very people who took them
| away, we can have them still... as a gift.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| When the Mob does it, it's a protection racket.
|
| "Nice little monopoly you have there. Oops, look at that
| one over there, which burned down with no survivors. Be a
| shame if anything like that happened to you."
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's mafia logic but honestly way more ingrained into
| large-brained mammal culture than that. "I'll protect you
| but the main thing I'm protecting you from is myself" is
| a tactic employed by everything from actual mafias to
| entirely legal police and military organizations to the
| dominant male chimp in a troop. It's easy to see from a
| detached view how stupid it is, but how do we combat
| something so fundamental to our animal drives that it
| predates the existence of our own species?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'm after something a bit more specific than that though.
| Threats feed into changes in the status quo in myriad
| ways and not all of them involve this kind of flip flop
| where you time the switching of sides such that you get
| to be seen as the one saving the day (nevermind that it's
| from yourself several years ago).
| matwood wrote:
| They were not showering him with money during his first
| administration. It's pretty clear this will go away assuming
| they pay Trump enough.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _Arkansas, Florida..._
|
| All red states.
|
| > _So presumably, it will continue._
|
| You might be missing the lede here. It's not about the power,
| but who wields it. Twitter was an enemy, until it became X.
| TikTok was an enemy, until it showed fealty.
|
| The idea that such a billionaire-friendly administration has
| an issue with Big Tech or any other monopoly is a ruse. When
| these entities are brought to heel and their power duly co-
| opted, they'll be treated with favor. In fact, these lawsuits
| are but one more tactic to ensure that outcome.
| safety1st wrote:
| It is pretty wild (in the dumbest, lowest information way)
| that the entirety of Hacker News seems convinced that Trump
| will drop a lawsuit that Trump initiated in his first term.
| Matt Stoller is probably the most recognizable name in anti-
| trust journalism, he is certainly no Trump fan, but he is not
| this negative. The Trump admin just opened up its first new
| antitrust lawsuit yesterday. I'm sure Trump will do some
| stupid and selfish things, but it just looks like a lot of
| low information takes here.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It's pretty chilling to think about the political weaponisation
| potential of a court case continuing or not at the whims of the
| current regime.
|
| Fall into line or be litigated out of existence...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Or "settle my personal civil suit against you and if the
| award is high enough I'll let your proposed merger go
| through". I know corrupt politicians aren't rare. But trying
| to hide it at least affirms to people that the rule of law
| _should_ be a thing.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yeah, there's an important difference between consistent
| and principled use of court cases to uphold actual laws-
| even bad laws--versus using them to extort for private gain
| or unofficial favors.
|
| It's kind of like the D&D alignment chart: Sure, Lawful-
| Evil might still be feeding orphans to the doomlord, but at
| least they are constrained by their own dang rules instead
| of a playing Calvinball.
| borski wrote:
| This has always been the case though. Not every court case
| gets pursued to completion. And some that do shouldn't.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I can't help but feel democracy needs a huge amount of
| separation between the legal and political systems to
| remain functional.
|
| As in attorney generals, judges etc. should be appointed by
| a non political process. I think any rebuttals of the form
| 'the other side did it too' just add weight to this
| viewpoint.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I think I probably agree on general principle, but
| everything's a tradeoff. Do this and you end up with what
| gets perceived (and potentially actually is) a "deep
| state" of entrenched bureaucrats that are not accountable
| to voters, even though they pursue real policy goals that
| are separate from partisan campaign considerations.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You mean like having a spouse of a Supreme Court justice
| supporting overthrowing an election?
| error_logic wrote:
| The entire government was intended to have 3 competing
| branches keeping each other's desire for power balanced
| against one another.
|
| Unfortunately, Duverger's Law (splitting votes results in
| your least favorite candidate winning) made it so that
| there were only two competing parties, each able to most
| effectively campaign by sabotaging the other. This kept
| going until one secured control over every branch, and
| their masters strong-armed enough support from the other
| party to finish the job against the protests of a few
| holdouts.
|
| The founding fathers didn't have the math to understand
| game theory, nash equilibria, and the tragedy of the
| commons. They didn't know that plurality voting applied
| to the prisoner's dilemma would result in the worst
| suffering outcome for both/all participants.
|
| If instead of voting for one candidate ({+1, 0, 0, ...})
| we had used partial votes ({+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, ...}
| without repeating candidates or scores) with limited
| expressiveness (to preserve partisanship rather than
| creating a purity test like China's approval system
| creates) we could vote for the _output_ of the decision
| matrix rather than just the blind, selfish inputs. This
| would prevent the states from being carved up into two
| parties, instead having 3-4 local parties available to
| represent each state more accurately and intelligently.
|
| The benefits to representation, cooperation,
| constructiveness, and intelligence (creating win-win
| outcomes) would have been enormous. It would've meant far
| more proactive handling of long-term issues rather than
| short-term gains. Yet here we are.
|
| What made America great was open, honest, constructive
| competition made possible by opportunity. What we face
| now is the destruction of competition itself, driving
| what remains underground, set to emerge in
| catastrophically destructive form.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > The founding fathers didn't have the math to understand
| game theory, nash equilibria, and the tragedy of the
| commons.
|
| I mean they had something even better. They added a
| process to amend the constitution so that as issue arose
| it could be fixed.
|
| However there's no amount of game theory that will get
| around the fact politicians won't fix a system they see
| as working; they got correctly elected after all!
| scarface_74 wrote:
| If you haven't noticed, Vance has no power in the
| administration. It's completely a Trump/Musk show and Tim Cook
| kisses the ring as well as any CEO.
|
| My bet is that Trump will have this whole thing dropped now
| that Apple is involved. You notice that during the first
| administration that Apple was never affected by the Chinese
| tarriffs
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| And google seems to have fallen in line with the current
| regime completely too.
| mistercheph wrote:
| and before they were... fiercely independent? Ll0l
| Terr_ wrote:
| Regardless of the subject's personality, these are
| fundamentally different _kinds_ of relationship:
|
| 1. Try to look like you're following the law so that
| nothing happens.
|
| 2. Give personal favors and praise to a corrupt cop so
| that nothing happens.
| nostromo wrote:
| There's plenty of evidence now that all of big tech was
| working with the Biden administration to censor their
| political opponents.
|
| We need a law or a court decision that says that the
| government isn't allowed to restrict citizens speech by
| proxy by pressuring private organizations. Because this
| is going to keep getting worse if not.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > plenty of evidence now
|
| What's the best concrete example?
| nostromo wrote:
| It's probably not worth bothering to reply. (Political
| arguments on the internet are dumb and I doubt you're
| actually curious to learn more.)
|
| But if you actually want to know, look at what Zuckerberg
| has said since the election, read reporting on the
| Twitter Files, and look into who was responsible for
| lobbying tech to ban Trump from all platforms after he
| lost in 2020.
|
| The Republicans I'm sure will now use all these tactics
| to their own ends, and the previous four years will be
| forgotten.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Hold up, _you 're_ the one who chose to introduce the
| topic of censorship just moments ago, why are you
| suddenly making excuses and running away from answering
| the easiest[0] question about the thing you wanted to
| share?
|
| I'll level with you: I'm getting the same vibes as the
| "2020 election was stolen" folks, where they also kept
| insisting there was "plenty of evidence" but refused to
| ever show it. It was literally an article of _faith_ that
| something incontrovertible was always just +1 hop away
| and someone else had it somewhere, trust me go ask them
| instead.
|
| Eventually, when dozens of court cases across the nation
| finally forces them to "put up or shut up"... they
| couldn't! It was all fluff like "some guy said a friend
| of his heard a story that", or "poll workers _packed up a
| box_ and I don 't know what was in it but it must have
| been uncounted ballots", and "I saw one worker hand
| something to another and I didn't see it clearly but it
| _must_ have been a USB stick for some kind of evil. "
|
| [0] OK, maybe not the _easiest_ if two items are a close
| comparison, but FFS nobody 's insisting on that kind of
| accuracy.
| worik wrote:
| > read reporting on the Twitter Files
|
| Really?
|
| I get the impression there is much less freedom of speech
| on X than there was on Twitter.
|
| I actually do not care myself how people run their
| platforms, I do not use that one. But from where I sit,
| and what I see, Musk is very controlling on what is said
| on his (privatly owned) platform
|
| Good on him. He is taking advantage of the tools
| available to him
| llm_nerd wrote:
| >look at what Zuckerberg has said since the election
|
| Zuckerberg has become such an obsequious "lickspittle"
| (as Gruber would say), that his words are worse than
| useless. He has become a Trump mouthpiece, and it's
| embarrassing. I cannot fathom how discouraging it must be
| to work at Meta now, knowing that your grovelling bro is
| putting on such a disgraceful act.
|
| The most incredible example was when him and Rogan were
| talking about the Hunter laptop thing, trying to frame
| this against Biden. But it was _Trump 's_ administration
| that said go slow on that (not to mention that as hacked
| materials every service already barred content like that,
| and it didn't even need government input). Similarly,
| most of the laughable dud "Twitter files" happened during
| the, again, Trump's admin.
|
| There is nothing wrong with government trying to work
| with big businesses to get messaging right or to go slow
| on possible if not probable disinformation. But there was
| literally nothing in any of these cases that crossed a
| line. Trump getting a bunch of oligarchs to line up and
| pay into his extortion fund, however, not only crosses
| the line, it is so cravenly corrupt that at this point
| the United States is a banana republic. Every other
| nation needs to start seriously reconsidering ties to US
| tech as there is absolutely zero safeguards anymore.
|
| Which I think is why all the China fear-mongering about
| DeepSeek and stuff isn't landing. To most of the world,
| including half of the US, China is by far the more
| mature, responsible player on the world stage. The US is
| some rogue nation where a felon rapist halfwit threatens
| various nations with military conquest with every passing
| day. Oh look, some random trade war contrived on made up
| reasons begins tomorrow: Good luck everybody!
| Terr_ wrote:
| > To most of the world, including half of the US, China
| is by far the more mature, responsible player on the
| world stage. The US is some rogue nation where a felon
| rapist halfwit threatens various nations with military
| conquest with every passing day.
|
| No, China's "value" comes from being _an alternative_ to
| to create competition, not for being inherently
| trustworthy.
|
| Speaking as an American and former Hong Kong resident,
| they will still break international agreements when they
| want to.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Surely _orange_ felon rapist halfwit?
| myko wrote:
| Biden wasn't president when they make takedown requests
| on the revenge porn of Hunter Biden. The trump
| administration however was shown to use the government to
| force twitter to do their bidding and the Twitter files
| showed that, but it wasn't talked about as much.
|
| It is really embarrassing how people contort themselves
| into pretending Biden was anywhere near as bad as trump
| on this, especially given how trump performed in the past
| and present as a politician.
| ImJamal wrote:
| If Musk had a lot of power, why did Trump invite Sam Altman
| to speak and spoke positively of him? Musk and Altman hate
| each other.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Musk is literally an appointed government official of a
| made up department
| ImJamal wrote:
| DOGE is not a government department and as such any
| members of it are not government officials
|
| Regardless, what does that have to do with Musk having
| one of his enemies given a spot light by Trump?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/01/esta...
| ImJamal wrote:
| There were so many Executive Orders I completely missed
| that. Regardless, the news articles I just checked seems
| to indicate that Musk has not actually joined the
| government agency at this point.
|
| Even if he has, it is irrelevant to my actual argument.
| If Musk wields power with Trump then why was Altman given
| a platform? Musk and Altman aren't fans of each other.
| Trump even said Elon hates Altman.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| https://fortune.com/2025/01/30/elon-musk-return-to-
| office-ex...
|
| > _Musk, heading said operations, says he is working out
| of DOGE's headquarters in the Eisenhower Executive Office
| Building_
| ImJamal wrote:
| Again, I don't care about any of this. Please address my
| actual argument. Going off on this tangent makes me
| suspect you have no response to my argument.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You've been wrong twice already. Do you really want to
| keep this line of questioning?
|
| None of them "like" each other. Do you really think Tim
| Cook - a gay man from Alabama - wants to be in the same
| room with Trump and Christian conservatives? It's all
| about access
| ImJamal wrote:
| I've been on wrong on things that are completely
| irrelevant and you failed to address the actual point
| over multiple posts.
|
| > None of them "like" each other.
|
| Perhaps, but not all of them are suing each other like
| Musk is doing with Altman.
|
| > Do you really think Tim Cook - a gay man from Alabama -
| wants to be in the same room with Trump and Christian
| conservatives? It's all about access
|
| Believe it or not, but people can be friendly and enjoy
| other people's company even if they have political
| disagreements. I'm not saying that is the case here, but
| some people aren't as obsessed with politics as you seem
| to be.
|
| Trump was the first president to come into office
| supporting legal gay marriage so I doubt Cook being gay
| is an issue with Trump...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Really? You have seen how he is having the federal
| government scrub literally any mention of gay from any
| website?
|
| And you were wrong about DOGE being an official
| government department and Musk being in charge of it. How
| much more influence could Musk have? He is literally
| running the same playbook with the federal government as
| he did with Twitter.
|
| Altman is just a trophy piece to be brought out for
| pictures like Cook
| myko wrote:
| Not exactly. DOGE is what trump renamed the government
| "Digital Service Office" before giving Musk control:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270893/doge-united-
| sta...
|
| Vivek wanted an outside group, Musk wanted an inside
| group - Musk won so trump gave him this
| danans wrote:
| If you think any of them (or any of the administration's
| assembly of billionaires) don't hate each other, you might
| be misunderstanding how the wealthy and powerful think.
| Every interaction is transactional and artificial, based on
| leverage, whether personal or financial, not on
| "friendship" or "shared values".
| rcpt wrote:
| He has enough power to take over the office of personnel
| management and access personal information about every Fed
| employee.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-
| government-...
| epolanski wrote:
| Why does the president has anything to say about this.
|
| It's crazy to me how many things a single person can do in
| US, and you call that a democracy.
| Jaepa wrote:
| Maybe; They should have still been able to file amicus curiae
| but likely they would have to appeal the remedy instead of
| attempting to become a co-defendant.
|
| The case was Google illegally using it monopoly power. The
| Remedy was to prevent some of the anti-compitive actions. If
| the agreement was to split up Google, or for it to sell off
| chrome it wouldn't make sense for Apple to be a co-defendent.
| wbl wrote:
| IANAL but AFAIK amicus curiae is not for "my interests will
| be impacted in this case because I have a claim that's
| involved". It's more for things like "hey, we do a lot in
| this area of law and here's something neither party has
| thought of that your decision might impact".
| NotPractical wrote:
| Apple donated $1 million to Trump. So did all the other big
| tech CEOs, who were also invited as distinguished guests to his
| inauguration. Conservatives like Trump generally favor big
| business and deregulation. Your faith in Trump doing anything
| meaningful about big tech is likely misplaced.
| kristopolous wrote:
| if he can do options and hedge trading against it to
| personally enrich himself I'm sure he'd be game.
| mattnewton wrote:
| That's too complicated. Just extort them until they buy
| $TRUMP coin and open a "factory" in the US for a photo op.
| blibble wrote:
| they were invited to be a display of his power over them, and
| to display this to the world
|
| not to be distinguished guests
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| It's kinda cute that Vance is a big tech skeptic when his
| entire political career was funded by Peter Thiel and Vance got
| rich living in Silicon Valley.
|
| Amazing.
| Kerrick wrote:
| He's a (big tech) skeptic, not a big (tech skeptic). Thiel
| and other VCs stand to gain when competition from startups
| they would invest in have a chance to unseat the big tech
| conglomerates.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| They have no desire to unseat BigTech, they want to be
| acquired by them.
|
| In no world is a startup going to unseat Apple, Amazon, or
| Microsoft. Google and Facebook maybe.
|
| VCs don't want to touch hardware with a ten foot pole
| (Apple), competing with Amazon would be a money sink to
| duplicate all of the infrastructure as would Microsoft (who
| cares about desktop operating systems and the enterprise
| will never leave MS).
| webmaven wrote:
| That's the same thing, the credible "chance to unseat"
| becomes "motivation to acquire", leading to a much faster
| and more certain exit.
|
| Of course, that's exactly the pattern of behavior that is
| seen as problematic.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > They have no desire to unseat BigTech, they want to be
| acquired by them.
|
| Acquisitions are one way to make money off big tech.
| Breaking them up and buying parts of them for cents on
| the dollar are another, especially if you can issue
| barely veiled threats of government-backed retaliation if
| they refuse to come to the table with your allies/fronts.
| With a "loosened regulations" regime, IPOs may be even
| more profitable than acquisitions.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Out of literally thousands of YC companies for instance ,
| less than a dozen have IPOd.
|
| There is very little chance that a startup will IPO
| especially now that the public markets have gotten wise
| to the VC funded Ponzi scheme where they treat the public
| market as the bigger fool
| sangnoir wrote:
| I'm talking about buying pieces of big tech and selling
| them to the public via IPO. I don't thr the public has
| gotten wise to anything when POTUS and FLOTUS have "meme"
| crypto coins.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I mean half the people buying meme coins are doing it to
| bribe Trump and the other half think he was literally
| sent by God.
|
| The latter half aren't going to be buying stocks at IPO
| nostromo wrote:
| Most serious people living in Silicon Valley are deeply
| skeptical of big tech.
|
| Thiel included.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Thiel wants his own monopolies..
| nostromo wrote:
| If you read his book, he's using an unconventional
| definition of "monopoly."
|
| It's more about being so competent as a company that you
| get large network effects as a moat.
|
| He specifically states that he doesn't support anti-
| competitive practices by monopolies.
|
| The common example of this was early Google, that grew
| into a monopoly by being better than all the competition
| by a significant margin.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You realize that even using the word "moat" signals a
| monopoly to the DOJ? If you have ever worked in BigTech,
| part of the indoctrination is never to say the word
| "moat".
|
| All of BigTech is big because of moats.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That kind of significant network effect, while notably
| more legal than anti-competitive practices, is also very
| bad for the consumer. So this hardly acts as a defense of
| his desires.
| tredre3 wrote:
| The way you describe it makes it sound like Vance is
| perfectly positioned to know how bad big tech is, so what are
| you trying to say? That once someone has benefited from a
| system they mustn't criticize it?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Or it's insinuating that he's being politically
| hypocritical- controlled opposition.
| healsdata wrote:
| > Interesting; I wonder if DOJ approaches on this stuff will
| continue
|
| It will, but the remedy for all the cases will be to donate $25
| million to the president's library.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/meta-agrees-pay-25-million-s...
| haliskerbas wrote:
| My dumb American brain is surprised these things are allowed.
| :shrug:
| williamcotton wrote:
| _Sure, during the 2018 election, candidates, parties, PACs,
| and outsiders combined spent about $5 billion - $2.5
| billion on Democrats, $2 billion on Republicans, and $0.5
| billion on third parties. And although that sounds like a
| lot of money to you or me, on the national scale, it's
| puny. The US almond industry earns $12 billion per year.
| Americans spent about 2.5x as much on almonds as on
| candidates last year._
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-
| in...
| timeon wrote:
| Not sure how is paying for food relevant to paying for
| politician. In many countries there is absolute cap per
| campaign to make it fair. Making it 'fair' is maybe not
| that relevant in two party system but still that amount
| of money from single entity is corruption.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yup, it distorts what a politician will say and what
| bills they'll sponsor if they're elected. The most
| dangerous thing the $12 billion in almond money will do
| is buy a politician to allow them to skirt worker
| protections and environmental protections to continue
| maximizing almond money. That puts the interests of the
| politician not with the general population who wants
| clean water and safe non-abusive jobs but rather the few
| almond farm owners who want to maximize almond production
| while minimizing worker costs (and perhaps locking out
| new almond farmers from the industry).
|
| This sort of kleptocracy is the problem with American
| politics. Bribery laws are so laughably bad that you have
| to literally stuff gold bars in your suit pockets before
| you run the risk of being prosecuted. You have to be a
| grade A moron to get caught.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Well, almonds are far more delicious than the average
| congressional representative.
| kevindamm wrote:
| Wait, have we actually started eating the rich already? I
| thought that was just a saying.
| Muromec wrote:
| only the arms of, but this joke doesn't work in English.
| no_wizard wrote:
| This conflated two things as equivalent, and they are not
| equivalent.
|
| Buying almonds is a market exchange with good
| transparency around what you're getting and how much it's
| going to cost.
|
| Elections are not open market exchange. For starts, you
| aren't buying a good. Another is that this discounts a
| lot of other election adjacent activities like all the
| party volunteers who are unpaid, for example. Those don't
| count toward spend but if it did I imagine the totals
| would get much higher.
|
| Not to mention, we are talking about someone getting
| elected who very well does have influence over citizenry.
| Buying almonds is just buying almonds. Getting elected is
| a transference of power.
|
| Honestly elections are surprisingly cheap for what is
| gotten in return, but they couldn't be more different
| nine_k wrote:
| I'd say that by spending money on elections, both as
| donations and as taxes, we do buy a good: good governance
| (preferably) and peaceful transfer of power.
|
| The problem is that the market is not efficient: only 2-3
| offers, mostly from the same two brands, each brand with
| its own known serious problems. The process is actually
| an auction of sorts (first past the post), and returns
| are not accepted!
|
| IMHO, the cost is the least of the problems here.
| Sabinus wrote:
| USA should eliminate first-past-the-post voting, and
| replace it with something like ranked choice voting.
| Allows for more brands in the election, as people can
| preference minor parties and not 'throw away their vote'
| if they didnt get enough votes in total.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Yes, it's shocking that we don't spend $100bn on our
| campaigns.
| bombcar wrote:
| Looking over campaign expenses from 2024 it's somewhat
| hard to determine where exactly the other 90 billion
| would be spent.
| tensility wrote:
| Telling folks that they are being sold out for peanuts
| (or almonds) doesn't diminish the betrayal; it only makes
| it worse.
| singron wrote:
| 2018 wasn't a presidential race, which consistently have
| higher spending. 2020 and 2024 were each over $15B, and
| there is a steady upward trend in real dollars.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/total-2024-elect
| ion...
|
| The current supreme court also has a tendency to strike
| down campaign finance regulations. Everyone knows
| citizens United, but more recently e.g. AFP v Bonta
| (2021) struck down reporting requirements in California,
| which paves the way for unlimited anonymous spending, and
| Snyder (2022), which reclassifies anything except the
| most obvious bribes as "gratuities". We'll probably have
| more 5-4 or 6-3 decisions in the next four years that
| increase money in politics.
| y33t wrote:
| There's the idealized America that we learn about in
| school, then there's America as it is.
|
| I guess ideals are a nice tool to compare something against
| to measure something's relative value. But they can also be
| used as a whitewash. Maybe the difference is how engaged an
| informed citizen body is with the government.
| sixothree wrote:
| For the past 40 years one party in particular has
| lectured me about how they are the ones who instill the
| values of this idealized America you mention, how they
| are the ones who are the real patriots, and how they only
| can interpret what the founding fathers intended.
| munificent wrote:
| _> There 's the idealized America that we learn about in
| school, then there's America as it is._
|
| I strongly dislike this take.
|
| There is the idealized America that we wish America was,
| and there is an entire continuum from that point all the
| way to "no functioning state at all Mad Max hellhole".
| Treating all points that are not exactly at "idealized
| America" as equivalent discards a massive amount of
| nuance and effectively makes it impossible to advocate
| for incremental change.
|
| Yes, America is not perfect. But that doesn't mean that
| the America we had before Trump's massive corruption is
| identical to the American we have today.
| y33t wrote:
| > Treating all points that are not exactly at "idealized
| America" as equivalent
|
| > that doesn't mean that the America we had before
| Trump's massive corruption is identical to the American
| we have today.
|
| I don't know how you got that out of my post.
| miningape wrote:
| To be fair, taking bribes for your presidential library
| has been apart of American politics for a while. Also,
| sorry, I forgot we don't call it "bribing" anymore, it's
| called "lobbying" now ;)
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/03/shining-a-light-
| on-...
|
| (also I absolutely love your interpreter book - you
| single-handedly got me a perfect score for my bachelor
| thesis, sorry had to sneak this in)
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you only need the "lobby" cover for levels under
| president. you can note how the meta donation doesn't
| have to be called as such.
| leptons wrote:
| > "no functioning state at all Mad Max hellhole"
|
| This is exactly the track we're on, if you hadn't noticed
| the last week. The train has left the station. We likely
| are arriving a lot sooner than you may think.
| K0balt wrote:
| America rides eternal, shiny and chrome!
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| Ideal or not, it's propaganda. We're lead to believe only
| other countries use propaganda to control their citizens,
| shield them from truths, and paint foreign countries as
| "lesser than" or, worse "the enemy". All the while, we're
| doing the same thing. Maybe I've had the wool pulled over
| my eyes my first 4 1/2 decades, but it seems pretty clear
| now.
| iknowSFR wrote:
| They don't pay teachers enough to challenge the norm and
| deal with the fallout. Whether that's by design or not...
| probably? The idea here being to incentivize teachers to
| do the bare minimum.
| acomjean wrote:
| If you give after the fact, its a "Gratuity" and allowed.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-
| scop...
| nelox wrote:
| It's not called the American Dream for nothing
| mattnewton wrote:
| We are discovering that enough of the electorate does not
| care when some politicians do it, so that the ideal is
| unenforceable, and I think it's because of the media.
| myko wrote:
| after Nixon various people came together to form media
| organizations explicitly to prevent holding people like
| Nixon accountable, today is a result of that and our
| failure to hold Nixon (and before him the leaders of the
| south in the civil war) accountable
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| It is not allowed. People are conflating a private lawsuit
| between Donald Trump and some large corps, with the Justice
| Dept suing large corps. Justice Dept can't settle and give
| money the money away. Let's not let politics lobotomize our
| common sense.
| econ wrote:
| Put this in it, it might make you feel better.
|
| https://theyesmen.org
| spacephysics wrote:
| This is separate from the kind of case outlined in OP. The
| one linked has to do with Trump's account being suspended.
|
| It's definitely off, but no different than a big pharma
| lobbyist paying every other presidential campaign. Or the
| 100's of senate/rep races.
|
| If anything, the funds Meta paid are less accessible to Trump
| than campaign donations.
|
| The DOJ case has much broader implications than a social
| account being deactivated, then money being paid to the
| presidential library...
| wbl wrote:
| It's hugely different. We limit donations from lobbyists,
| force them to register their activities. This settlement
| goes straight to Trump's pockets like Frank Hagues desk
| drawer.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It seems that the HN commentariat is saying:
|
| "You can't sue, or at least you can't win any kind of $$$
| as a result of a lawsuit, or at the very least you can't
| settle a lawsuit for $$$ if you could possibly use that
| $$$ for campaigns or if you could use it to pay off loans
| from a past campaign."
|
| (or maybe that but where "you" == Trump).
|
| A rule of that sort would mean that you'd have no
| recourse whatsoever against any torts interfering with
| your political campaigns. Utilities could cut water, gas,
| electric, and sewer services to campaign headquarters for
| any campaigns they don't like. Etc.
|
| That cannot be a rule. Perhaps a no-settlements rule
| would be OK -- you have to win at trial or you get
| nothing (and loser pays).
|
| In this case I'd say that on the one hand a settlement
| has the potential to be a bribe since we don't know what
| a trial might have yielded, but also that $25m is
| objectively not very much considering Meta's action and
| its impact on the Trump campaign. That the Trump campaign
| has no debt (I think?) and it's over and he can't run for
| re-election, all mitigates the settlement resembling a
| bribe.
| wbl wrote:
| In the United States of America private corporations can
| refuse to permit a presidential candidate to use their
| platform. Meta had a very strong first amendment defense.
| ABC had a very strong defense against the libel case
| because most of us agree that sticking a finger into
| someone's vagina without them asking for it is in fact
| rape. CBS got sued over damages for misdescribing an
| interview with his opponent. He won that election. What
| damages are there? The NY Times has reported that CBS
| executives view the settlement as a way to win favor.
| cowfriend wrote:
| > remedy for all the cases will be to buy $25 million
| TRUMPCOIN
|
| There, fixed it for you
| chrisco255 wrote:
| That's called an out of court settlement for a lawsuit. Two
| parties can settle a lawsuit on whatever arbitrary terms they
| wish.
| foota wrote:
| I'm not sure this is entirely true, see for example the
| Hunter Biden case. Maybe that's different because it's a
| criminal case?
| bombcar wrote:
| Criminal settlements have to be approved by the judge
| after a point (I think).
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| It's also called a protection racket.
| afavour wrote:
| Technically true but it's very clear what's going on. The
| court case was one pretty much everyone agreed Trump would
| lose. Trump literally told Zuckerberg the court case needed
| to be resolved if he wanted to get into the inner circle...
| ta-da, $25m later, it's all gone.
|
| Let's just call corruption corruption.
| bawolff wrote:
| Settling cases even when its clear you are going to win
| is actually a thing that happens more often than you
| would think. Sometimes the settlement is cheaper than
| paying lawyers in a drawn out trial. Not to mention the
| PR cost.
| afavour wrote:
| Yes, and one side outright asking for a settlement as
| part of a corrupt deal also happens. Let's be real.
| bawolff wrote:
| I suppose, but i don't really see the advantage of doing
| it as part of the settlement. If zuck wanted to give
| trump a bribe why not just donate directly?
| sunshowers wrote:
| Yes, and the rest of us can apply basic logic as to what's
| happening.
| kernal wrote:
| That was a settlement to a lawsuit for deleting his Facebook
| accounts. But you knew that already.
| kabdib wrote:
| that's a lot of crayons
| cdme wrote:
| $25 million for a dumpster that's caught on fire feels
| expensive.
| K0balt wrote:
| 25 million? How many books are going to be in there? All ten?
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| Clearly a bribe.
| ActionHank wrote:
| Vance came from big tech, he's not a skeptic, it's an act. He
| says things that make it seem like the leadership are against
| the big bad and for the average Joe. Apple is piling on this
| one so that both can get a win at the same time.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Came here to say this. He brought all the tech industry with
| him.
| mightyham wrote:
| Vance did not come from big tech, he comes from VC circles in
| silicon valley which is an important distinction. The people
| he runs with quite literally call themselves "little tech"
| [1], and they have an agenda that does not necessarily align
| with the objectives of big 5 tech firms. However, I'm not at
| all trying to disagree with you on the fact that much of what
| he says and does is performative and has ulterior motives.
|
| [1] https://a16z.com/the-little-tech-agenda/
| danudey wrote:
| I mean, Vance's first job in VC was becoming a partner at
| Thiel's Mithril Capital in 2015, then he moved to
| Revolution LLC which was founded by Steve Case (of AOL
| fame), then he co-founded a VC firm with a former colleague
| from Mithril and funding from Peter Thiel.
|
| So I mean, he's not "big tech" in the sense of working with
| or for the few huge corporations that control what we see
| and read and how we do it, but he's "big tech" in the way
| of being highly influenced by Silicon Valley billionaires
| and their "government just gets in the way, down with
| regulations and laws so I can get more wealth and power"
| ethos.
| sangnoir wrote:
| IMO, the SV mindset, VC and big tech aren't
| interchangeable in that way.
|
| Sequoia Capital, the 900 lb gorilla of VCs reportedly had
| $102B in funds/assets in 2024. Apple just had $124B as
| _first quarter revenue_ and had over $200B in cash
| reserves after a $30B stock buyback. I don 't know the
| size of the funds Vance oversaw, but I bet dollars to
| donuts, the scale is far bigger at big tech.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| One way VC firms earn money is when the businesses they
| fund get purchased by bigger businesses like Apple.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Vance came from Venture Capital, not big tech. Now that they
| have a seat st the table, I can see VC folk cannibalizing big
| tech if there's enough money in it. Who can say no to a
| court-mandated fire sale of Chrome Inc or Android Inc? They'd
| ride it all the way to an IPO, before the enterprises
| collapse without the ad-dollars <-> eyeballs virtuous cycle.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Android is not nearly as profitable as you think and how
| would you make money from Chrome?
| sangnoir wrote:
| You may have missed my final sentence.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can see VC folk cannibalizing big tech if there 's
| enough money in it_
|
| Vance's circle has never been in the business of disrupting
| Big Tech. They're looking to sell to them. (Also the White
| House pigeons have more influence than Vance inasmuch as
| they might shit on Trump and thus catch his attention.)
| sangnoir wrote:
| I don't think people with skin in the game are as
| cavalier about Vance as you are. He is after all, a
| heartbeat from the presidency whose incumbent will become
| the oldest on record - you probably don't want to be on
| his bad side - just in case. If he calls you, you
| probably want to pick up the phone and hear him out.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _He is after all, a heartbeat from the presidency_
|
| Vance has tremendous _potential_ power. He has no say
| right now. That is evidenced to a _remarkable_ degree,
| for such things so early in a Presidency, in the public
| record. People aren 't bothering to keep him in the loop.
|
| Also, Vance's power isn't solely conditional on Trump's
| EKG. He's very much constrained by MAGA and friends.
|
| > _If he calls you, you probably want to pick up the
| phone and hear him out_
|
| Of course. He's still my Vice President and from my
| interactions with him to date, a perfectly nice person.
|
| But I wouldn't expect anything to come of it. I would not
| be able to take him at his word, not because I think he's
| dishonest, but because I really don't think he is in the
| know. And I can think of a few people I'd be willing to
| cut that call short for if _they_ called during that
| call.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > He's very much constrained by MAGA and friends
|
| A promoted president Vance will be in no way constrained
| or contained by MAGA if he has Thiel in his corner.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _A promoted president Vance will be in no way
| constrained or contained by MAGA if he has Thiel in his
| corner_
|
| What do you think Thiel brings to the table with MAGA?
| mullingitover wrote:
| I think it's the other way around, what does MAGA offer
| Thiel.
|
| They got him the presidency this time around, but he
| could dump them for centrists if that group is up for
| sale next time.
| rcpt wrote:
| Nah. It's a cult and it does with the leader. Look how
| badly Desantis flopped when he tried to move up.
| beambot wrote:
| VC relies on IPOs and BigTech M&A to survive... Need
| someone to pass their bags to.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I think it needs to be stated as a matter of fact that Vance
| has demonstrated he doesn't hold a position if it isn't
| advantageous to him. Which is normal for politicians, but in
| his case very extreme.
|
| So not to take anything away from the rest of your comment but
| that part of it should be disregarded.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Lawyer here: As a general rule, you can't bind non-parties with
| injunctions. Courts have no authority to enforce such
| injunctions either.
|
| A very recent example:
| https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/24/google-as-non-party-not...
| masfuerte wrote:
| Idiot here. So the court can't ban Apple from doing business
| with Google but they can ban Google from doing business with
| Apple?
| DannyBee wrote:
| Generally no, actually. Not without apple being a party.
|
| Now, over the past few decades this has been slowly relaxed
| in practice (IE courts willing to try to do it), but the
| underlying precedent has not actually changed on this.
| Hence my comment elsewhere that the supreme court has been
| looking for a case in which to reassert this precedent
| (They have).
|
| Where it starts to get weird is when you ask the more
| generic variations of this question: Can a court ban Google
| from doing business with companies with market cap more
| than 1 trillion?
|
| Can a court order Google to have an independent master
| approve any contracts it enters into?
|
| etc
|
| Generally the remedies are limited by applicable law, and
| in turn by congress's authority in the first place (in the
| case of federal lawsuits like this).
|
| Trying to enjoin apple when they are a non-party runs into
| the latter more than the former.
|
| Trying to say who Google can contract with runs more into
| the former than the latter.
|
| Keep in mind civil remedies are also much less expansive
| than criminal ones because of constitutional limitations.
|
| Unfortunately, for any mildly novel remedy, it's hard to
| predict what will happen - they are just uncommon enough
| that without running it through appeals/etc, you just don't
| know what will happen. It's total guesswork in practice.
|
| Even things that were once considered not novel have
| changed - for a long time, the FTC sought money damages in
| antitrust cases and unfair competition cases, but that was
| ruled "not okay" 5 years ago. Whatever one may think of the
| court, this was actually quite right, as the statute goes -
| they were abusing a statutory provision that granted them
| the ability to get injunctions to basically "enjoin"
| companies into paying them fines. This was clearly
| ridiculous. But it went on quite a while.
| cma wrote:
| > Vance has been clear he's a big tech skeptic
|
| I'm sure he's extremely skeptical of Palantir and Oracle.
| yapyap wrote:
| Defendant, so on the side of US?
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| No, the title is (well, it was) misleading (now the title has
| been edited to read US vs Google when it previously said Google
| vs US). Apple wants to join Google as co-defendant, because if
| Google loses their monopoly case it won't be able to pay Apple
| to be the default search on iOS. Apple is therefore joining the
| case because it wants Google to be able to continue paying
| Apple billions of dollars.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| The title was just updated as the original had them reversed.
| The defendant is Google.
| columb wrote:
| So Apple is also scared of the US breaking monopoly like the EU
| did with the app store? We all know that this isn't just a search
| here at play. Maybe the end of walled gardens... One can only
| hope!
| MBCook wrote:
| Was that an issue in this case?
| arvinsim wrote:
| I have read somewhere that the money Google pays Apple for being
| the default is a relatively big chunk of Apple's profit margins.
| If true, then it is understandable why Apple is fighting hard for
| it.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Also, what will apple do - make Google not the default? Giving
| users bing or whatever will just piss off a lot of people.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| Develop their own crappy version and rely on most people not
| noticing. (Apple Maps)
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| Google search has already become crappy enough. I doubt
| Apples would do so much worse at this point.
| sthatipamala wrote:
| Your info might be outdated. Apple Maps is actually better
| than Google Maps in many ways (e.g. it says "pass this
| light and at the next one, turn left" instead of "in 300
| feet, turn left")
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I notice that I don't see ads in Apple Maps.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Option 1: Present the choices on the Setup screen when you
| install the new iOS.
|
| Option 2: Leave the default NULL and when the user first hits
| search in iOS (and default is NULL), present the list of
| search providers.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| If they're still not being paid for those choices, I don't
| see why Apple would do this instead of just making the
| default Google (or something else reasonable).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| In the EU both Google and Microsoft have such selection
| screens for search engines (and at some point browsers)
| because of antitrust concerns. I believe Apple also has a
| browser selection screen on iOS, but I'm not sure if this
| is the case for search engines.
|
| If antitrust rulings make the case that any such big tech
| deals are illegal, Apple may not have a choice in the
| matter.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| It's possible that Apple could be forced to do this, but
| just want to note that the EU Google and Microsoft thing
| is different. The EU didn't want them to push their own
| browsers, search engines, or other software on users.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Sure - but what I mean is that Apple seems to be stuck
| without any good options here. Even if they don't get the
| $20B/yr, most users will probably either choose google
| search, or be upset if they don't get google search on
| mobile safari.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It seems the main thing the DoJ is upset about is that Apple
| hasn't developed a search engine themselves, because they
| have these deals with Google.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Surprised Apple and Google haven't just come to an
| agreement for Apple to "create their own" search engine
| which uses Google as the backend to work around it.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| This is pretty much exactly one of DoJ's proposed
| remedies they're trying to force Google to do
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/27/24302415/doj-google-
| sear...
| iforgot22 wrote:
| So they want _more_ vertical integration?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Apple need to get their AI act together and replace Siri with a
| decent RAG-supporting AI that people are likely to prefer to
| search (Google search is becoming less and less useful, both in
| of itself and wrt AI).
|
| It's funny that when Apple originally acquired the Siri tech
| from SRI international ("Siri" = "SRI"), there were plans to
| augment it with all sorts of agentic behaviors like OpenTable
| bookings, which never happened, and now OpenAI's first agent
| "Operator" seems to be focusing on exactly use cases like that
| (OpenTable, Uber, etc). Rather than paying for search, these
| sort of AI-generated business referrals could be a revenue
| source for Apple, or at least offset the cost of licencing a
| SOTA AI from someone else until/unless they develop their own.
| fullshark wrote:
| Their services profits maybe (which is where Wallstreet's
| perceived growth is coming from)
| iforgot22 wrote:
| Does Apple think Google is going to intentionally lose the
| trial so they don't have to pay anymore :D?
| threeseed wrote:
| > relatively big chunk of Apple's profit margins
|
| It's about 1/6 of Apple's profits.
|
| And proportional to the growth of their devices i.e it's likely
| to go down over time as they grow beyond iPhone/Mac.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Doesn't matter what % of Apple's profits, we're talking
| $11-figures per year.
|
| There are not enough lawyers in American (within this legal
| niche) to soak up all the legal expenses that defending an
| 11-figure profit center could justify.
| parhamn wrote:
| Who would Apple choose as their search provider even if Google
| didn't pay them? If they gave users a choice up-front I'm sure
| 99% would choose Google too. Can someone explain how this isn't a
| big deal for Google?
| asadotzler wrote:
| It opens the possibility that not-Google web search services
| could sell their way into various apps and service.
|
| Right now, Google has _exclusive_ global contracts. A company
| with a product that 's paid for Google's web search must use
| Google at every search access point and in every country they
| sell into where Google does business.
|
| If Google's restricted from those contracts, local web search
| has a chance, user web search choice has a chance, the web
| itself has a chance.
|
| Sure, Apple may keep Google in the US, but they might start
| swapping in Siri for some search access points, or swapping in
| ChatGPT search in others, or switching away from Google in
| Korea or Brazil or other markets with strong local services.
|
| Who knows, maybe we'd have a compelling Apple Web Search today,
| like we have Apple Maps as an alternative to Google Maps, but
| that couldn't have happened because of these incentives. Take
| away the $20B+ a year Google pays Apple for that placement and
| maybe Apple provides a better service with more privacy
| protections and less spam. Maybe not, but if we don't change
| how this all works, we'll never know.
| wbl wrote:
| The product of competitors is somehow not better enough to
| cause people to navigate a click away.
| threeseed wrote:
| > but they might start swapping in Siri for some search
| access points
|
| They've been doing this for years now.
|
| AppleBot has been crawling away powering the Safari
| Suggestions engine.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| prep for court judgement release:
|
| "In lieu of the court ruling, Apple today announces the
| availability of Apple Scout and Apple AdSight. Apple Scout will
| serve as the new default search engine in MacOS and iOS."
|
| "Markets were shaken today as Alphabet plunged 20%..."
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| IDK but I think it'd be really funny if Apple switched to using
| Bing as their default search engine.
| granzymes wrote:
| I think people have the wrong idea when they see "defendant" in
| the title. Here's what happened:
|
| Apple has been watching this case closely from the beginning
| because it implicates the enormous amounts of money that Google
| pays them to be the default search engine on Apple devices.
| They've been involved as a nonparty, providing witnesses and
| documents requested by Google and the United States and have had
| lawyers present to observe from the gallery throughout the
| proceedings.
|
| Until recently, Apple and Google were on the same side. Google
| was incentivized to win the case, which is also what Apple wanted
| because that would preserve the revenue share. But then Google
| lost the liability phase of the trial, and the government asked
| for truly extraordinary remedies including a divestiture of
| Chrome, significant changes to Android contracts, and a 10 year
| ban on any contract of any value whatsoever between Apple and
| Google.
|
| Apple feels that its interests are no longer perfectly aligned
| with Google's. First, Google has bigger fish to fry than its
| Apple revenue share because it needs to defend its Chrome and
| Android businesses. Second, it would actually benefit Google if
| they weren't able to pay Apple revenue share if Apple kept Google
| as the default search engine because it's the best on the market
| and Apple doesn't want to provide an inferior option to its
| users.
|
| So Apple filed a motion to intervene for the limited purpose of
| defending its right to contract during the remedies phase of the
| trial. That doesn't make Apple a defendant. The Court can't order
| Apple to do anything in its final remodels order. But it would
| allow Apple to present evidence during the remedy phase, call and
| cross-examine witnesses, and participate in the post-hearing
| briefing.
|
| Apple says its purpose in participating in the remedies phase is
| to present evidence that neither Google nor the government is
| equipped to provide: information on Apple's future plans. Apple
| says, regardless of what the Court does, it has no plans to
| invest the billions of dollars that would be required to enter
| the general search market. The government's ban on Apple working
| with Google is premised at least in part on that competitive
| entry, which Apple aims to demonstrate is a fantasy.
|
| The Court partially denied Apple's request, fearing that other
| parties would also want to intervene. The Court will not allow
| Apple to call or cross-examine witnesses, but Apple can submit up
| to two affidavits from fact witnesses and participate in writing
| post-hearing briefs.
|
| The government has represented to Apple that it will challenge
| the Court's decision to give Apple that limited role during the
| remedies phase, and so the linked document is a request for a
| pause of the remedies phase while Apple appeals the partial
| denial of its motion to intervene to the D.C. Circuit.
|
| Happy to answer any questions about the legal standards involved
| or the procedural history of the case.
| Oarch wrote:
| I very much needed the plain English. Thank you!
| yellow_lead wrote:
| > Second, it would actually benefit Google if they weren't able
| to pay Apple revenue share if Apple kept Google as the default
| search engine because it's the best on the market and Apple
| doesn't want to provide an inferior option to its users.
|
| That doesn't make much sense to me. If that were the case,
| Google could've stopped paying it long ago?
| granzymes wrote:
| Prior to this lawsuit, Apple could bluff and say they would
| contract with Bing or some other search engine, and indeed
| evidence from the trial showed that Apple would invite Bing
| to submit bids but internally was clear that no amount of
| money would be enough to switch from Google. One key piece of
| evidence showed that Microsoft had offered to give Apple 100%
| of its Bing revenue on Apple devices and that still wasn't
| enough to overcome Bing's lack of quality.
|
| If Google is removed as an available option, Apple can longer
| keep up the facade and will be forced to either suck it up
| and keep Google for free or give their users an inferior
| product. Mozilla tried switching from Google once and users
| hated it. Apple doesn't want to piss off its users.
| modeless wrote:
| Apple did send traffic to Bing in the past. It wasn't all
| of their iOS search traffic, but some.
| avianlyric wrote:
| At different points in time Spotlight search and Siri
| have used Bing for internet search. It's not totally
| clear what the latest version of iOS uses, but it
| wouldn't surprise me if Bing was still used.
| everial wrote:
| (not a lawyer) What's gut check on how likely this is to
| succeed? Is this one of those things like preliminary motions
| to dismiss that are almost always filed but rarely successful,
| or has a decent shot?
| granzymes wrote:
| My gut says that Apple will probably get to keep what the
| Court gave it already (the ability to file two affidavits and
| participate in the post-hearing briefing) but not full
| intervention as it originally requested.
|
| District courts have very broad discretion to order their
| affairs (going to the first point) and Apple's request likely
| came too late to be permitted to intervene (going to the
| second point).
| alt227 wrote:
| Thankyou so much for the laymens terms explanation.
|
| This all sounds so complex to my non legal brain, but is _' a
| request for a pause of the remedies phase while Apple appeals
| the partial denial of its motion to intervene'_ classed as a
| really simple standard legal procedure in the courts?
| granzymes wrote:
| These types of motions for a stay are analyzed under a four-
| part test. Apple needs to show that 1) it is likely to
| succeed in its underlying request, 2) that without a stay it
| will suffer irreparable harm, 3) that no other party is
| unduly harmed by a stay, and 4) that the public interest is
| not disserved by a stay.
|
| The four parts are weighed together, and a strong showing on
| one part can make up for a weaker showing on another part.
|
| Assuming that Apple can make that showing, yes the standard
| procedure is to stay the case while Apple appeals. That
| preserves the status quo, which would be lost to Apple
| forever even if it ultimately succeeds on appeal if there was
| no stay (this is the "irreparable harm" part of the test).
| deafpiano wrote:
| If the DoJ get's Google to divest from Chrome, wouldn't that
| also setup some precident to force Microsoft/Bing to divest
| from (the new chromium) Edge?
| granzymes wrote:
| I highly highly doubt that DOJ succeeds in convincing the
| Court to force Google to divest Chrome. That wasn't really
| part of the trial, which focused on Google's contracts to
| make its search engine the default on other platforms.
|
| However, if DOJ does succeed then yes this case could make it
| easier in the future to force Microsoft to divest Bing if
| Bing ever gained a monopoly in search. As a comparison, the
| original Microsoft antitrust case precedent is very important
| to this search case. That's why the government sued in this
| district (the same district they sued Microsoft in decades
| ago).
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Microsoft/Bing is not the dominant (far from it)
| search/ad/platform provider
| DannyBee wrote:
| The court's position here is strange - you can't bind non-
| parties with injunctions.
|
| This is even part of the FRCP - see 65(d)(2)
|
| The only exception is basically aiding and abetting.
|
| This is well settled caselaw basically forever. I posted it
| elsewhere in the thread, but here's a very recent example:
| https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/24/google-as-non-party-not...
|
| (Youtube can't be ordered by a federal court to take down posts
| as part of an injunction, when they aren't party to the case).
|
| The court may want to keep whatever scheduling it has, but it's
| going to royally screw itself if it tries to order an
| injunction that affects the rights of non-parties in a
| meaningful way like this, without being really really careful
| about it.
|
| Especially with SCOTUS just itching to find important cases
| where they can reinforce the limited nature of injunctions and
| ensure courts only grant relief that deals with the parties at
| hand.
| FateOfNations wrote:
| I'd summarise it as:
|
| Apple can ask Google to do business, but Google will be under
| court order to respond, "Sorry, we can't."
|
| In that situation, Apple would not have any obligations to
| the court. Google would be responsible for avoiding doing
| business with Apple.
|
| Obviously, this would impact Apple's economic interests, so
| they want a seat at the table.
| Sargos wrote:
| >if Apple kept Google as the default search engine because it's
| the best on the market and Apple doesn't want to provide an
| inferior option to its users
|
| Apple did exactly this in the past with Apple Maps replacing
| Google Maps, so I don't see why this would bother them much.
| tolerance wrote:
| It's impressive how a decision as banal-on-the-surface as a
| default search engine can kick open the strongbox of big
| business, unravel anti-trust suits and crook the neck and knee of
| businessmen to the State.
| narenkeshav wrote:
| Nuclear warfare that Steve jobs wanted.
| supermatt wrote:
| Google still win if/when they lose this case.
|
| They won't be able to pay 3rd parties, but those 3rd parties will
| still end up referring their users to google and google pockets
| the fees they previously paid.
|
| The whole "choice" process is a farce in the EU. People still
| choose google because they don't know any different.
| NotPractical wrote:
| > The whole "choice" process is a farce in the EU.
|
| What do you suggest? Forcing people to use DuckDuckGo against
| their will?
| supermatt wrote:
| Removing google from the list entirely. If people want it
| they should actively seek it out to install, like every other
| search engine other than the "curated" 6.
| Kuinox wrote:
| It will allow me to use the search engine I use in the os
| integration. Currently it open google, I use Kagi, which should
| be soon an option.
| bradyd wrote:
| You can already choose a different search engine than Google.
| You are given the option of Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo,
| and Ecosia. But it would be nice if you could add your own.
| Kuinox wrote:
| That why I said "it will", I pay for Kagi, and soon Kagi
| will be in this list (they need a download count threshold
| on their app)
| schnable wrote:
| Yes, in a vacuum, but there are other antitrust cases and
| remedies in play against Google that have the goal of further
| reducing their dominance in search and advertising.
| jmyeet wrote:
| How this case works out for Apple and Google depends entirely on
| the remedy.
|
| IF the court ends up banning ANY search engine paying for being
| the default search engine then that (IMHO) it's a massive win for
| Google. Why? Because _nobody else_ can pay for being the default.
| And Google will save billions of dollars. Apple loses billions of
| dollars, which is why they 're trying to intervene.
|
| IF the court simply restricts Google from paying for being the
| default search engine then that's less good for Google and
| slightly better but still bad for Apple because nobody can write
| checks like Google can.
|
| We have some direct data of how others paying for being the
| default search engine hasn't worked out so great. I'm
| specifically referring to the Firefox-Bing deal that didn't last
| all that long.
|
| Could this prompt Apple to make their own search? I'm inclined to
| say "no". Apple already took this step with Apple Maps. It's been
| 12 years and, depending on country, there are still some massive
| gaps to Google Maps. I think it's (finally) pretty decent in the
| US. In others it's almost unusable however.
|
| I also think that Apple will probably bet on AI Assistants as the
| future.
|
| I also think that Google maintains its marketshare because,
| despite pearl-clutching about how Google has fallen off by tech
| people who never seem to substantiate that with actual examples,
| Google is still the best option for most people. And it's not
| even close.
| tempodox wrote:
| Monopolists of all countries, unite!
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple isn't a monopoly.
|
| And as advertising starts coming to LLMs this year I would
| argue Google isn't either.
| talldayo wrote:
| FAANG becomes Voltron
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| "Trust beneficiary objects to trust busting."
| nostromo wrote:
| Apple has known their deal with Google was on shaky legal ground
| for some time.
|
| They should have been buying search engine startups and
| developing one internally for at least a decade now.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| The title is not accurate. This is a motion for a stay pending an
| appeal.
|
| Apple already moved to intervene ("become a defendant") back on
| December 23, 2024. It was not an emergency motion. That motion
| was denied on January 27, 2025. Read the Opinion:
|
| https://ia800602.us.archive.org/6/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...
|
| Apple now wishes to appeal.
|
| The top comment states "When they asked to file some briefs they
| were denied."
|
| In fact, the court will allow Apple to file an amicus brief:
|
| "The court hereby grants Apple permission to participate as
| amicus curiae and file a posthearing brief alongside the parties.
| If Mr. Cue is called to testify at the evidentiary hearing, Apple
| may also submit an affidavit from one additional fact witness
| that addresses facts not covered by Mr. Cue's testimony. If Mr.
| Cue is not called to testify, Apple may submit two affidavits
| from fact witnesses, in addition to a post-hearing brief."
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