It Is Not Properly Called "Technofeudalism". But What Is It?
A DRAFT of a column for Project Syndicate, triggered by Google's revelation that it paid $26 billion in 2021 for default search-engine position...
It is not technofeudalism, but what is it?
What does it say about market competition in tech these days that we learned in the course of the current antitrust trial that Google is willing to pay so much for the default search-engine position on smartphones and other devices?
A $26 billion money flow from Google to other tech companies in 2021. Of that, $18 billion went to Apple. And of that, the overwhelming bulk was to claim the default position as the search engine for the Safari web browser on the iPhone. Google had tried to guard this number very carefully, but it is so large we all had roughly backed it out by looking at companies' aggregate financials.
Apple could, during initial phone setup, confront you with a screen asking you to pick your Safari web browser search engine. It does not. It assigns the role to Google.
Changing the default search engine on an Apple smartphone is not difficult. Click "Settings". Scroll down two screens and click "Safari". Then, sitting in the middle of the screen, is the line:
Search Engine Google >
Click on "Google" and you are then offered a choice of five search engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosta. Click an alternative. And you are done.
In order to remove the search-engine choice screen from the setup, and so require four clicks and two swipes down to change the search engine away from Google on the iPhone alone, Google pays Apple, let us say $15 billion a year.
Why?
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