Because it’s hypocritical. Apple’s marketing tries to cast its products as pro-privacy, and this would suggest that they are willing to give yours up for the right price. The secrecy part is icing on the cake. Privacy exists for them but not for you.
“Guy who verifies” sounds pretty plausible to me. With both companies having tens of thousands of employees within miles of each other, and many who have worked at both, and get drunk together, it would be pretty hard to keep everyone involved from noticing if the numbers didn’t match up.
Given Apple heavily taxes their App ecosystem, even for transactions which incur no direct cost to Apple, nobody can know how many opportunities that don’t occur to Apple to pursue - that would have, if they had to compete for those dollars with actual offerings of their own.
Not as strongly anti-competitive as not competing with a giant, but an angle on the App Store transaction tax that had not occurred to me before.
We knew Apple got paid for default iOS search to be Google but I don't think we knew Apple got paid for Google using Google search in Google Chrome on iOS.
Charging people to make a specific search engine the default for iOS search is arguably abusive of market power, but at least one could argue that it’s well-understood by consumers and competitors alike. Using that market power to demand a cut of revenue from private apps and then keeping it secret looks much worse.
A "potential competitor" that has no product at all? That sounds like nonsense.
They're paying for access, not to keep Apple out of search -- otherwise they'd pay a few extra billions on top so that users on Windows can't use that potential Apple search.
Apple has a search bot, that, from how it interacts with the sites according to my logs, is a decade or so behind. I'm sure they could change that if they bothered, but I doubt they will.
Why isn't Google paying Microsoft billions per quarter to stop Bing? Because Bing isn't a threat, and neither would Apple Search be. What is a threat is Apple making it hard for users on iOS to use Google Search. That's what the money is for, it's the rent they pay to have their little shop in the walled garden.
Entering a search term into the Safari URL bar will often pop up a webpage suggestion. It isn’t the first Google result. (Totally random example: try “Apache Spark tutorial.” Safari suggests a Databricks article, Google suggests something from Tutorialspoint.
If it's quid-pro-quo, ala Firefox funding itself via search defaults, I don't see how it's exploitative. I highly doubt Google is paying just to keep themselves in the Apple app store. They would (and could) have made a big fus about it unless they got something in return from Apple.
What are they getting from Apple, then? That’s the question that raises my anti-competitive fears. Presumably if Apple and Google wanted that question to be easily-answered they wouldn’t have written a secret deal.
Every answer to this question raises more questions not answered by the T-shirt. When two enormously powerful organizations are secretly cutting deals, the chance that somebody’s losing is very high.
I think not. We should have more transparency in the economy. Money of the stock market is a nice carrot. It already forces companies to be more transparent. I think we should bump up the transparency requirements.
Transparency for the same of transparency isn’t a moral virtue. Having secrets or plans hidden from others is fine and a normal part of society and a well functioning economy.
Transparecy definitely is a moral virtue and improves working of nearly all sysytems, markets included.
However it doesn't arise naturally. It must be forced by external incentive because in the absence of it selfish interests of system participants strongly disincentivises it. When it's forced it benefits all, saving all participants from making bad calls.
I disagree, and you and I both know that it isn’t by our very nature. For example please be transparent about your home address, email, phone number and employee, and annual salary for the last 10 years here.
As it relates to companies it stifles innovation for starters.
> It must be forced by external incentive because in the absence of it selfish interests of system participants strongly disincentivises it.
Are you saying here that transparency must be “forced” because the absence of transparency disincentivizes transparency?
There are places where there's transparency about this. And they don't fare worse than other places.
The key is for the transparency to work, everyone needs to be transparent about the thing. Voluntary transparency doesn't work as you noticed.
I wouldn't mind having my home address, email, phone number and salary public if everyone elses is too.
Transparency doesn't stiffle innovation it allows any innovation to spread quickly across the whole market which enables further innovation. Every innovation is built on the shoulders of what came before. Letting the before stay secret stifles innovation.
> Are you saying here that transparency must be “forced” because the absence of transparency disincentivizes transparency?
Yes. Exactly. I'm afraid of disclosing my address because published addresses are rare. If my address was one of millions published addresses I would have way fewer objections. People with personal enemies might have more objections but then again if they couldn't hide it would force the society to deal with their oppressors better.
> Transparency doesn't stiffle innovation it allows any innovation to spread quickly across the whole market which enables further innovation.
Not necessarily. It can happen in some cases, but in others it leads to a lack of innovative behavior because you shouldn’t invest in generating trade secrets or better products because you can just wait for your competitor to do so and then just obtain what they do. This is well understood.
> There are places where there's transparency about this. And they don't fare worse than other places.
What are you basing this claim on?
> Yes. Exactly. I'm afraid of disclosing my address because published addresses are rare.
Well your address is public record and can be obtained easily, but if transparency is a moral virtue as you claim I find it odd that you need others to engage in moral behavior before you do so.
With that being said, I publish my real name and a link to my LinkedIn profile so anyone who reads a comment can attribute it to me (good or bad). I actually find it helps engage better online, so I guess there is some virtue to transparency. Why not do the same in your profile?
> Not necessarily. It can happen in some cases, but in others it leads to a lack of innovative behavior because you shouldn’t invest in generating trade secrets or better products because you can just wait for your competitor to do so and then just obtain what they do. This is well understood.
It's a theory proposed in the defence of intellectual property system. There's zero actual evidence for it that I know of. But there's evidence that economies that disregarded intelectual property rights can grow and become dominant or at least seriously challenge current leaders. UK, USA, Germany, China and others became what they were and are today by blatantly copying innovation with complete disregard to any intellectual property which they introduced only after they rose to prominence to stifle competition.
> transparency is a moral virtue as you claim I find it odd that you need others to engage in moral behavior before you do so
People are immoral by nature. Being moral while others are not puts you at a disadvantage. I have no idea why are you surprised by my reluctance.
I don't do what you do because it wouldn't bring me any benefit.
> Continued existence of the entire country of Norway.
Compared to what? Quality of life? Median income per-person? Longevity? Norway existing and having this feature in absence of some comparable isn’t very helpful.
But also how are you going to account for cultural differences and expectations? Or are you asserting that this is good for all countries no matter what?
> It's a theory proposed in the defence of intellectual property system. There's zero actual evidence for it that I know of.
I don’t think it’s a defense of the intellectual property system although perhaps others have mixed the two. You don’t need an intellectual property system to find the behaviors of companies or other mercantile endeavors where secrets were kept to obtain an advantage. Many companies today don’t publish or try to protect their IP because the act of publishing it makes it open to reverse engineering.
Do you know of any country or even company for that matter that is completely open about all trade secrets, strategic plans, hiring decisions, or other business related activities? Can I see the CEO’s calendar, or read their internal chat messages or email?
> I don't do what you do because it wouldn't bring me any benefit.
> I have no idea why are you surprised by my reluctance.
I wouldn’t say I’m surprised, but it undermines your strong moral claims around transparency in my view. If you won’t be transparent, then why should others? Someone has to be first. Why not you?
> Compared to what? Quality of life? Median income per-person? Longevity?
Whatever. If the argument is that transparency of income inevitably leads to some kind catastrophy then it's your burden to explain why it didn't lead to any catastrophy in Norway. And that's impossible since there are so many factors at play as you noticed that you can't really convlusively prove that income transparency is not benign or even beneficial by itself.
> Many companies today don’t publish or try to protect their IP because the act of publishing it makes it open to reverse engineering.
That's true. Because for them it's not worth it. You could make it worth it for them if you strengthened the external incentive. For example let products on the market only if details of their operation are properly documented and published. We are doing something like that about impotrant products like food which composition must be revealed.
You want to keep your secret ingredients in your food a secret? Sure, but you need to sell it in some other country. We could be doing that about all products which would offer immense consumer protections.
> Do you know of any country or even company for that matter that is completely open about all trade secrets, strategic plans, hiring decisions, or other business related activities? Can I see the CEO’s calendar, or read their internal chat messages or email?
Unfortunately not, but there are some rules about public companies that let you get a lot of very enlightening information about them. I really see no downside to extending those rules to all companies and extending the scope of those rules as much as possible. Imagine how many environmental and health disasters could be avoided.
> Someone has to be first. Why not you?
Because it doesn't work like that. If I do it, it doesn't improve probability of others doing it. It might even lower it because being moral among a morals puts me at visible disadvantage. And benefits of transparency grows with the number of transparent entities.
It's the same argument as with millionaires whi want higher taxation on millionaires. Why they don't just tax themselves voluntarily? Because others wouldn't follow and it's not about taxing them and putting themselves at disadvantage. It's about taxing all, so that the poor can benefit but it's still fair game between the rich.
> I wouldn’t say I’m surprised, but it undermines your strong moral claims around transparency in my view.
I never claimed to be a moral person myself. I won't do things I consider moral and benefit to society if they put me at a disadvantage. But that doesn't make me not see that those things in fact are moral and would benefit the society if they were enforced on everybody equally including me.
Yeah this sounds like Apple shaking down Google for additional revenue, rather than Google somehow sidestepping competition. Google is paying for the privilege of being able to compete in the browser space on iOS, because if they didn't, Apple would find some reason to ban Chrome from the platform.
I'm thinking Satya is pretty jealous of this arrangement. Recent comments of his suggest that he thinks Google should be paying Microsoft every time a Windows user searches on Google.
>I'm thinking Satya is pretty jealous of this arrangement. Recent comments of his suggest that he thinks Google should be paying Microsoft every time a Windows user searches on Google.
I don’t doubt Satya feels that way, but for the situation to really be analogous, Google would need to be the default search on Windows instead of Bing. Google has to deal with Apple because Google wants to be the default on the iPhone.
The assumption following this revaluation is that this is an incentive for Apple to keep this secondary market as small as possible. A google search in ios safari means a revenue for Apple. Another browser does not. With this, there is a double vendor lock-in.
If you're not entirely on Apple ecosystem, secondary browser is the way to go to share bookmarks, history, etc. For example I'm using iPads since the first version came out, but otherwise I'm on Windows/Android. Also plenty of people around here own combination of iPhone and Windows. That said, I don't know how many of them know or care about non-default browsers.
Financial reports aren't as strict as you might believe them to be. There are many widely accepted tactics utilized to keep certain things secret or just in general to paint a better picture. You can report on a deal with another company, but not specify every detail of that deal. Nobody would ever notice unless you're doing something egregious as suddenly having a 500% increase in "Other" revenue, or in the case of this situation being specifically investigated.
Many companies have a growing category on their income statement just called 'services'. They don't need to explain what services were bought or sold. Services is often where data deals land. I remember helping Microsoft setup a $1B contract for services with the DOD, but they wouldn't tell me any details. I can only use my imagination.
It isn't a major part of Google's costs, nor a major part of Apple's revenue.
Subsidies from apps, while they are usually bundled apps, which Apple doesn't do, are commonplace in hardware vendors' income. For PC makers, it is a more significant part of their business model.
I didn't think I need to state the obvious, but clearly I meant "for so long". If it's been secret revenue for any length of time in a public company, that is the part I'm trying to understand.
Chrome on iOS is just safari with a chrome wrapper, like every other browser on iOS. It doesn’t surprise me that the revenue deal works for all browsers because they’re all using Safari under the hood…
Why? The money comes from being default search engine in the default browser. If a user goes out of their way to use chrome… they we’re probably going to switch to Google search.
My only guess is that apple was gunna force all browser apps to respect default search engine settings unless Google paid the money.
The ostensible agreement is just to be the default search engine. Estimates this year for pay out is ~$20B. Now that we know that it is also based on actual searches, we are safe to assume they are passing other data too.
Except that in this case Apple is a distributor. This is a pretty normal distribution agreement. Apple isn't in the search engine business, so to say they are being paid to not compete is like saying Best Buy is being paid not to compete (ie, they don't produce computers) by Lenovo.
Many distribution agreements have a clause saying the distributor can't create their own product and compete. The reason is, as a distributor, you get a lot of insight into the customers, the product, the pricing. It's completely reasonable when you consider the full value chain of a product. Further, if Apple did compete in the search engine business, many would claim they would be unfairly competing by using their dominant market position in smart phones to dominate another industry.
We don't need a government regulator guaranteeing Google's profits. If Apple is in a position to dictate the defaults and Google wants them to make a certain choice, then Google should have to pay. Bringing in a regulator to control how Apple chooses the default search engine is a bad idea. We've seen similar attempts in the EU trying to break Internet Explorer and it turned out to be quite impotent compared to the march of Google Chrome. Regulators are ineffective at solving this sort of thing.
Although it occurs to me that you might mean Apple should build their own search engine - which is a terrible idea. Google is really good at search engines and Apple wants their customers to have the best experience. Forcing Apple to build and promote an inferior search engine would be terrible for everyone.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. I think the redacted product is Siri, and the author’s dismissal of this possibility shows how people underestimate the number of voice searches conducted using that service. As far as I know, it is the world’s most-used “AI service.”
I took a look at the PDF linked from the Register article but sadly the term is replaced with an icon in reflowed text, rather than a black bar, so you can't judge the width of it to tell which term is more likely.
I agree Siri would make sense, but on the other hand I can't imagine any reason Siri would be redacted.
> Apple does limit tracking [to first party data collection] for iPhone users
Fixed that for ya.
Google is still collecting data on you through Google search. Facebook is still collecting data on you in app. The machine is working as intended. All that changed is that small(er) sites can’t load up on trackers for a few extra bucks. But don’t confuse that with blocking tracking. Oh and Google conveniently released tag manager support for first-party cookies so they track you by pretending not to be 3rd party trackers.
Oh and apple still tracks you throughout iOS even less transparently.
Facebook using information that I give them while using Facebook.com, or the App Store using information about what apps I browse on the App Store, is not exactly a shocker, nor something I particularly find concerning. The word "tracking" doesn't even seem to really apply to this case -- the whole reason tracking is bad is that it means "tracking" me across multiple unrelated websites or apps (like, you know, a tracker would follow the trail of a person or a wild animal), allowing companies to correlate what would otherwise be independent, anonymous profiles.
Apple collecting analytics even with the toggle turned off is clearly wrong. But I don't think they're being sneaky about the usage of the word "tracking".
> The machine is working as intended.
It sounds like you're implying the anti-tracking measures had no effect, but Facebook's revenue numbers would disagree.
The main point was Googles behavior, who is largely unaffected from the tracking crackdown compared to Facebook, and their revenue numbers back it up.
But either way, I think that most people assume tracker-blocking keeps them at least somewhat private, and it’s not as true as the headlines and big corps want you to think it is.
> “This perhaps explains why Apple has not launched a rival search engine or invested in the development of its Safari browser to the point that it could become a credible challenger to Chrome,”
I'm sorry what? On iOS, Safari is superior to Chrome in every way.
People use Chrome for the cross-platform Google account integration
On iOS, Chrome is Safari. Apple outright bans competing web browsers on its platform; what they allow is reskinned versions of Safari, which is basically a way to allow Chrome and Firefox to save face and support bookmarks-syncing, but not a genuine alternative browser.
That's like saying games that use Unreal Engine are basically reskins of each other. Yes, they both use WebKit, but as browsers they're quite different, and the data that Google collects when you're using Chrome is quite different than what it gets when you're using Safari.
I'm not sure to what extent this is true but here's an anecdote.
The other day I was at the local climbing gym where they have a "Moonboard"-clone - basically a spraywall with LEDs so you can program different boulder problems by selecting holds and having their LEDs light up to indicate which are part of the problem.
The application to control it is a web app. It didn't work for me on Safari, but it did on Firefox.
I thought it could be some difference in configuration but another iOS user confirmed it worked for him on Firefox but not Safari on his phone either.
Please point where in my post I made this claim before making accusations.
I know for a fact that Firefox uses WebKit as a rendering engine on iOS. I'm just responding to the claim that "On iOS, Chrome is Safari" and "what they allow is reskinned versions of Safari, which is basically a way to allow Chrome and Firefox to save face and support bookmarks-syncing".
I have given one example where Firefox behaves differently than Safari on iOS, and my experience was further validated by another iOS user who had never been able to use the system until I suggested they try Firefox.
I have seen other websites that behave subtly different between the browsers. Orion is another example of a browser that behaves quite differently on iOS despite also using WebKit - which they also use on the desktop apps and those also behave differently from desktop Safari.
I would add that on macOS as well Safari is far superior in many aspects e.g. battery life, efficiency, performance.
Also it argues that Apple takes more time to think through features rather than just blindly adding them. For example only allowing Web Push for apps installed to the phone rather than the bombarding the user.
Yeah, I think most complaints about Safari come from web developers. I do a fair amount of web dev yet use Safari as my default browser. As a user, it's great. It seems faster and leaner and it's definitely batter for battery life. The one downside is the extension ecosystem isn't as good as Chrome, but Ad Guard works ok (not as good as uBlock Origin, but good enough) and that's really all I need.
It’s shocking that Safari is the only browser that seems to aim specifically for not eating battery and not turning your laptop into an oven. With the ever rising importance of mobile platforms you’d think these things would be a bigger priority at Google and Mozilla, especially since Google has not one but two mobile platforms, but instead the focus seems to be on gee-whiz bells and whistles of questionable value.
Firefox is very good on macOS these days. Very low memory and CPU footprint, great battery life.
I haven't run numbers but it feels similar to Safari in that I can use it pretty much all day without reaching for the charger - that is, unless I'm doing a lot of video confs.
Weird. I have Firefox with quite a few extensions and probably about 50 tabs open (most are dormant, but still), and it's not showing as an energy hog.
Unless I'm using video conf or other very heavy websites, CPU usage tends to sit between 2 and 5% with an occasional spike.
12 hr Power in activity manager shows 19.50 (Watts, I presume) which is by far the largest in the list but it's also more or less the only app I've used in those hours :D . Activity Monitor itself usually has an energy impact of ~30.
This is not wrong. I use Chrome because I use a lot of other Google tools, but Safari is clearly faster, lighter, and trouble free to the extent I have used it. Chrome isn't a necessity on MacOS.
I think this is bigger news than that. I think it's suggestive of controversial backroom deals where Apple allows Google Crome of iOS in return for a kickback on revenue.
Obviously it could have been part of the negotiations around Google being the default search engine and revenue share with Safari, which if you are generous makes it less bad. But with the oncoming investigations and potential sanctions Apple is in line for (particularly in Europe) it doesn't paint the best picture.
Apple are paid $15 billion annually by Google for the Safari default. That's around 10-15% of their profit for doing nothing other than setting a default.
I've always wondered about the lost revenue possibilities of Apple not building their own search engine. Imagine in a perfect world (for Apple) that all Apple devices used AppleSearch 100% of the time. What kind of revenue would they need to pull in to clear 15 billion in profit per year?
Some back of the napkin math shows that Alphabet is averaging about a 30% profit margin the last few years. Of course they do a ton of other stuff, most loosing money, but let's say Apple can make 30% off their search engine. That'd be 50 billion of revenue per year that Apple would need to bring in to break even with Google's 15 billion payment. Seeing as they already pull in ~20 billion per year revenue from App Store ads alone, I think it's not far fetched to think that Apple is leaving money on the table by not rolling their own search engine.
I think they must be working on something, even if it's just as a backup plan in case Google is prevented from making such deals in the future due to anti-trust issues.
