The search is over: Apple has 20 billion reasons to stick with Google

What if we held antitrust hearings all the time? If only just for the email disclosure, depositions, and testimony of tech industry executives?

Appearing in the government’s case against Google, Apple Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue answered questions about Apple’s sweetheart search deal with Google.

“Apple defends Google Search deal in court: ‘There wasn’t a valid alternative’”

According to Cue, the choice was simple.

“Certainly there wasn’t a valid alternative to Google at the time,” Cue said. He said there still isn’t one.

Now, the Macalope does not use Google search because Google makes him as uncomfortable as a fresh pair of burlap underwear. (Don’t ask him how he’s able to make that comparison.) While Bing may have become a bit of a punchline, the horny one manages to get through the day using DuckDuckGo as a search engine, which uses Bing results.

So, why does Apple think there’s no valid alternative to Google?

“Google Pays Apple $18B to $20B a Year to Be Default iOS Search Engine”

Oh. Oh, that would do it.

Bernstein says Google pays out 22 percent of total ad revenue under its traffic acquisition costs (TAC) and estimates Apple likely receives around 40 percent of this.

Yeah, if someone was paying the Macalope $18 to $20 billion every year he’d probably also say there was no “valid alternative”, too. No matter what they were paying for. “There is no valid alternative to me receiving all this money.” Not at all incorrect. Possibly not what the question was about but, still.

Honestly, the Macalope would probably say a lot of other crazy things for $18 to $20 billion if you wanted him to, too. Hummingbirds are actually insects. Air is just a really loose liquid. Hot dogs are sandwiches.

Okay, maybe not that last one. Gotta have some standards.

While Google, The Money, may be the only alternative that makes sense to Apple, Google, The Search Engine, no longer makes sense to a lot of users. Writing for The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel described the problem:

It’s harder now to find answers that feel authoritative or uncompromised; a search for healthy toddler snacks is overloaded with sponsored product placement, prompts to engage with “more questions” (How do you fill a hungry toddler? “Meat and Seafood. Bring on the meat!”), and endless, keyword-engorged content.

Has anyone tried feeding keywords to hungry toddlers?

As John Gruber noted:

… as Google’s search result quality deteriorates — but their ability to monetize their search monopoly remains strong — Apple looks bad too.

Of course, you can always switch search engines. It’s relatively easy to do so on a particular device, but how many people go to the trouble on one, let alone all their devices? The Macalope did, of course, but he’s not a run-of-the-mill user of Apple products. Even without the hooves and horns.

The default matters to the user experience and Apple is the company that strives to “surprise and delight” its customers. Unexpected ads and junk answers in search results may surprise people, but they do not delight them. The Macalope likes to imagine a world where Apple implements its own search engine–whether on its own by acquiring one–and implementing more accurate, privacy-forward search without ads. But there are 18 to 20 billion reasons why that’s not gonna happen. (Heck, Apple won’t even do search on the App Store without ads.) The best we could hope for is better search with fewer ads and more privacy.

That is certainly something Apple could achieve. Would taking 100 percent of the ad revenue instead of 22 percent allow it to pencil out? Only Apple knows that. Here’s hoping that a little government intervention might get Apple to do what’s right for the users of its products and not just itself.