Apple receives 36% of Google’s revenue earned from advertising to Safari users. Would Apple use Google as the default search engine for Safari if they were worried about our privacy?
The reality of Apple’s commitment to user privacy has never been as expansive as their privacy branding would have us believe. I don’t like that Google is the default search engine in Safari, even though it’s easy to change.
But Google, which makes most of its income by spying on people to serve them ads, is in a completely different league when it comes to disrespecting and abusing user privacy.
I’m missing the quote right now, but Omni’s hinted they’ve started developing the next OmniOutliner.
@svsmailus glad you’ve found peace. 
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There was a comment in their roadmap about developing OO for the Vision Pro.
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The end-result is that using Apple devices provide decent privacy - but they would of course never accept that deal from Google if they really cared. Apple will make something private if they can use it to sell devices and services, and when it just so happens to hurt their competitors.
Perfect examples are them selling our info to Google for billions, while also blocking their competitors from using the NFC chip because privacy.
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What info do they sell?
The info Google gains from being the default on Apple’s platform.
Edit: Let’s say Apple had DuckDuckGo as the default: Some would probably switch to Google anyway, but the total amount of info shared about Apple customers would change.
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I think you are confused about what is being sold and by who.
But it sure makes a good narrative.
Cheers.
Correct. Google pays Apple 36% of Safari search revenue. That was around $20 billion last year.
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Search Revenue != Selling User Info.
It does equal selling access to eyeballs. Which is still valuable.
There is nuance here.
And one of these two companies blocks third party cookies in their browser (since 2020), the cookies used for add tracking, and the other has repeatedly delayed doing so (maybe in 2025?).
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which does what.
Cheers!
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Scenario A: Apple chooses default search engine based on user-privacy, say DDG.
Scenario B: Instead Apple accepts $20 billion from Google, and goes for an option with terrible privacy for its users.
Yeah, I get that Google is more to blame here - but I think it’s very weird not to criticise Apple for choosing Scenario B.
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When it comes to search there has really only been Google and Bing because it takes $ billions to create the needed infrastructure. So Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Dogpile, and numerous other sites currently get a large percentage of their search results from Bing.
But that could be changing. Google search results, IMO, aren’t nearly as good as in years past and they could fumble the transition to AI. OTOH, if AI is truly the disrupter some think there could be someone on the sidelines with that could change everything like the iPhone did. Fun times.
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I don’t think anyone would disagree with that statement (of course someone would, it’s the internet after all), Google is basically the least bad at this point. And the new AI summaries are pointless. AI is wrong so often, I just skip over it.
One thing though, for those who don’t read Daring Fireball. If you do a search and then go under “More”>“Web” you get much better results.
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I don’t disagree, it is somewhat incongruous that Apple works with Google in this fashion. Although I think you overstate it a bit with the “terrible privacy for its users” claim. Chrome has privacy issues. Safari, not in the same league. You are mixing up Google tracking users of its browser and other ‘free’ tools to sell targeted ads on its search engine, with people only using the search engine.
Apple is clearly pragmatic and not dogmatic when it comes to privacy. And should be called out when there is a disconnect between what they say and what they do.
But it is important to state the issue correctly. Because if you do not correctly identify the problem then the ‘solution’, as we’ve seen with the EU and now with the US antitrust case, won’t really correct actual problem.
And there are plenty of things that Apple (and Google and … ) should be doing differently.
And it seems we’ve ventured quite a bit astray of the topic of this thread now haven’t we?
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What I found hysterical was when Apple tried to tell the US antitrust regulators that it isn’t about the money because Google is “the only viable (search engine) option.” If that were true, Apple would make it the default even if Google didn’t pay them anything.
I started using the ‘Web’ filter for my search results since it was introduced earlier this month:
https://www.makeuseof.com/google-offers-a-new-way-to-show-results-heres-how-you-find-it/
Accordingly to OSX Daily, you can set any Chromium based browser to perform web-only searches with Google as default (although I haven’t tried it yet):
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Yes but it doesn’t make anywhere near a profit on that. Remember is purely an advertising companies, and it will be running rampant amongst your data to profile you in every way to targets adverts at you.
Google collects data from many of its free services like search, maps, YouTube, etc. but not from its paid services and not from Gmail.
They have users in government, finance, healthcare, etc. and couldn’t meet their requirements if they didn’t protect user privacy. Anyone with a Google account can choose what information they share with Google, and review or delete it at any time. For example, I frequently turn on tracking on Maps when I’m traveling and turn it off when I return.
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