Sunil Daluvoy’s Post

It’s come a long way with mobile search. Despite feeling hard, the reality is the economics of a phone were really hard to make useful services. In the beginning of mobile search, there were lots of ideas but over time it’s become easier to ask questions from your phone. While this is true for the first deals in the US for search, I recall many of the issues revolving around the many privacy walls that exist in the mobile ecosystem for devices, carriers, and developers that are still there on our current devices. It will be interesting to see what happens as we enter the next era of mobile search.

Don't be square... https://ie.issquareup.com/ Just in case you are an ISP or managed service provider, and there was a sudden surge in reports of slow or no internet yesterday ( and still today ) , step back for a second as it's not always the "internet" that is at fault . Often, users presume the internet isn't working when a key line of business application has issues, although every other aspect of internet access seems to be fine. With so many services for businesses being provided as a cloud offering, the reliance on internet access is more critical now than ever. When software becomes slower than normal or not accessible at all, the first thing to blame is the internet. We don't expect the big global platforms to ever fail but, of course they do. Even facebook, X :-) ,Google and Microsoft have outages.. It's a fact of life and yesterday it was the turn of square , a global provider of lots of services around POS and payments. If the cloud platform happens to be EPOS, CRM , Accounting of some other key line of business application, consider what your backup plan is in the event of no or limited access due to SaaS platform outage. Avoid the panic, realise the limitations and wait it out. There's not much else you can do as a small business once you enter the world of Cloud SaaS #smarthotspots #ManagedNetworks #CheckTheStatusPage #EPOS #POS #SaaS

It will have surprised many that 7% of Apple's revenue comes from Google paying it to make its search engine the iPhone default. However, this is not a particularly unusual deal in industry and it was a way for Apple to provide a better product for its customers. Building search engines is hard. There's a reason Google search owns so much market share, it's an exceedingly good product, optimized over 25 years with the best technology in the business. They have never rested on their laurels and have continued to innovate. Of course, the broader industry has also innovated and there are changes ahead for what search will look like two or three years from now. If the current monopoly trial goes against Google, then there's a possibility that these kinds of exclusive deals will be deemed anti-competitive and thus illegal. That raises the prospect of the removal of Google from iPhones, to be replaced by a competitor that may offer interior results. A more interesting scenario is one in which Apple creates its own, on device, large language model that can answer about 50% of user queries without even requiring an internet connection. This is a platform they will build on and develop a personalized concierge service that has an intimate knowledge of the phone's user but without a requirement to share it with Apple. An incredibly useful service such as this would go on to handle purchasing funnels for restaurant and cinema bookings, ecommerce checkouts, and big ticket items like flights. Looking at recent Apple announcements, I have a strong hunch that this will be the route they take and a lot of this will be mediated through voice input. Keep a close eye on what happens to their headphone range, which will become the predominant point of interaction with the next generation of Siri, driven by personalized AI. /// "The Google CEO finally admitted that his company pays as much as $26.3 billion annually to set its search engine as the default in browsers and mobile devices because those default placements can be very valuable." #google #apple #search #ios #chatbot

✅ ❎ False positives and false negatives in the DMA - another drop in the bucket of designation. The qualitative designation of Apple's iPadOS. A week back, the European Commission published its designation decision relating to this service under Article 17(1) DMA. The decision illustrates the first time the EC has used the qualitative designation process to capture a service under the DMA. The decision really builds upon the discussion I had a week back with Tabea Bauermeister at ASCOLA. We discussed whether the two types of designations are just manifestations of one and the same process or whether there is a clear split between the two different pathways the European Commission can follow to capture a service under the regulation. If anything, Apple's iPadOS decision does not make it all that clear, because one of the four arguments the European Commission uses to designate the service via qualitative means is that of the number of business and end users. A quantitative parameter, by all means. Then, we could argue that designation is one and the same and quantitative and qualitative considerations can go into the process. Going back to the rest of the designation decisions, the solution is quite not as straightforward, since the rebuttal of the quantitative presumption seems to be narrowed down to a quantitative line of reasoning (Recital 23). On the side of Apple's iPadOS, the European Commission did not present its dialogue vis-à-vis the gatekeeper as it did in the rest of the designation decisions, i.e., Apple's arguments putting forward the reasons under Article 3(8)(c) to (g) were not fleshed out. The EC just recognised Apple did not agree with its preliminary findings and simply went on to present its interpretation of the DMA. Moreover, to establish that Apple is an important gateway for business users to reach end users, the EC additionally set forth the degree of end user and business user lock-in into the service, its network and scale effects. A few ideas sparked my mind when reading the decision: - The DMA projects bigness into the past and not the present. Since the designation process of the service technically started in 2023 (with its notification to the EC), then the EC accounts for the thresholds with respect to the sales and usage of tablets between 2020 and 2022. - In some instances of the decision, the EC's market investigation lacks a Union-wide perspective. For instance, to demonstrate the end user's lock-in effects, the EC presents the expenditure and brand loyalty of the service in French and German households. The remaining 25 Member States, anyone? - The buzzword for deciding cases that can fall within the category of false positives (non-designation) and false negatives (qualitative designation) is that of ecosystems. The EC takes recourse to the concept (once again!) to demonstrate lock-in effects on business users. Follow this space for more DMA-driven comments! #dma #tech #apple #ipad

https://lnkd.in/gFv4MYSA? Google has been providing search services for Apple for over two decades, since signing a deal to make Google the default search engine in Safari in 2002. Since then, each company has moved closer to the other's territory, as Apple grows its software business and Google gets closer to the hardware for the mobile devices on which most search growth happens. That relationship has also involved lots of back and forth, where Google tries to discourage Apple from doing more in search while Apple presumably invests more in search so its negotiating position with Google is better. This piece is a good look at how monopolistic tech businesses work in practice: even when they dominate some category and have unusually good economics, they're constantly worried about losing control.

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Google Pays $10 Billion a Year To Maintain Monopoly, US Says: Alphabet's Google pays more than $10 billion a year to maintain its position as the default search engine on web browsers and mobile devices, stifling competition, the US Justice Department said Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Washington. From a report: "This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition," Kenneth Dintzer, a government lawyer, said in his opening statement. "The evidence will show they demanded default exclusivity to block rivals." Dintzer said Google became a monopoly by at least 2010 and today controls more than 89% of the online search market. "The company pays billions for defaults because they are uniquely powerful," he said. "For the last 12 years, Google has abused its monopoly in general search." The monopolization trial is the first pitting the federal government against a US technology company in more than two decades. The Justice Department and 52 attorneys general from states and US territories allege Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying billions to tech rivals, smartphone makers and wireless providers in exchange for being set as the preselected option or default on mobile phones and web browsers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Pays $10 Billion a Year To Maintain Monopoly, US Says: Alphabet's Google pays more than $10 billion a year to maintain its position as the default search engine on web browsers and mobile devices, stifling competition, the US Justice Department said Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Washington. From a report: "This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition," Kenneth Dintzer, a government lawyer, said in his opening statement. "The evidence will show they demanded default exclusivity to block rivals." Dintzer said Google became a monopoly by at least 2010 and today controls more than 89% of the online search market. "The company pays billions for defaults because they are uniquely powerful," he said. "For the last 12 years, Google has abused its monopoly in general search." The monopolization trial is the first pitting the federal government against a US technology company in more than two decades. The Justice Department and 52 attorneys general from states and US territories allege Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying billions to tech rivals, smartphone makers and wireless providers in exchange for being set as the preselected option or default on mobile phones and web browsers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"#Google ’s #antitrust trial revealed the multi-billion dollar tech company paid out a whopping total of $26.3 billion in 2021 to keep its status as the default #searchengine on phones and multiple browsers...Google is ensuring the market isn’t competitive with other search engines...the company paid #Apple roughly $18 billion in 2021 to keep #Chrome as the default on #Macs, #iPads, and #iPhones. The report, shared with The Register, estimates that Google’s payout accounts for 14% to 16% of Apple’s annual operating profits." https://lnkd.in/eqiAV-Jm

After 3yrs of filling, What's been referred to as #US #antitrust #trial in #decades, #Google being asked on "Search engine" monopoly power through exclusionary practices that are harmful to competition & innovation Google's patent is $1.7 trillion worth, with most coming from $224 billion in annual ad sales via network of digital services anchored by a search engine that fields billions of queries a day. Chris Barton, who worked for Google from 2004 to 2011, testified that he made it a priority to negotiate for Google to be the default search engine on mobile devices. In exchange, phone service providers or manufacturers were offered a share of revenue generated when users clicked on ads. A recent report from a House Judiciary subcommittee: - Google has monopoly power in the market for search, - Many markets via acquisitions of successful technologies - Buying an estimated 260 companies in 20 years. The Trial: Government is arguing that Google has the market in its favor by locking in its search engine as the one users see first on their devices, shutting out competition and smothering innovation. What could have happen: One possibility, to stop paying Apple and other companies to make Google the default search engine on smartphones and computers https://lnkd.in/djp9kAkx https://lnkd.in/dt8ZyznJ https://lnkd.in/dtEvQGfh