And how much money did google make off of our collective data/ads by being the default engine? That's the real question
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
35 points (97.3% liked)
Hacker News
3943 readers
3 users here now
This community serves to share top posts on Hacker News with the wider fediverse.
Rules
0. Keep it legal
- Keep it civil and SFW
- Keep it safe for members of marginalised groups
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
They had $256.74B in revenue that year, so I'm sure they more than made up for it.
If only people understood money like they understood time, they'd see how absurd of a number that is and billionaires wouldn't exist.
256 thousand seconds is about 3 days
256 million seconds is about 8 years.
256 billion seconds is 8,126 years.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Even if it’s easy to switch browsers or platforms or search engines, the one that appears when you turn it on matters a lot.
Google obviously agrees and has paid a staggering amount to make sure it is the default: testimony in the trial revealed that Google spent a total of $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine in multiple browsers, phones, and platforms.
It was made public after a debate earlier in the week between the two sides and Judge Amit Mehta over whether the figure should be redacted.
(Apple’s outsize percentage of the total is why that particular deal has been such a focus of the first weeks of the trial.)
Until now, these numbers have been closely held secrets, leaving competitors and analysts to speculate about exactly what it’s worth to Google to be the near-universal default choice.
He also said that he sees Yelp and Amazon as competitors and that, in such a hot market, Google has to do everything it can to stay relevant and compete.
The original article contains 519 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!