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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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)
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.
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[…]
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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!
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.
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.
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".
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
>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!
> 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.
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".
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
"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."
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?
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).
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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).
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Ivy League schools are notorious for inflating grades to make their graduates look smarter. It seems the biggest factor for entry is money.
Before you reply, let me be very clear: Yes, very smart people do go to Yale, and yes, people go to Yale without lots of money. A few specific instances does not negate the general case.
Trump isn’t investing anything. That stargate deal is a bit of show business. Everything is unconfirmed and non-binding commitments by private players.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?)
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%.
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.
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.
"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. § 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."
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."
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.
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.
> 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.”
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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”
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.)
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.
> 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.
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."
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).
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.
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
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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), ...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> “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.
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.
>> 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?
> 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.
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.
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.
(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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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?
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).
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).
>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.
(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?
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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")
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.
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.
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:
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."
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).
- "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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
"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%..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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