Of course, this is not the bad reviewer's account. After all, if I have this ability, I can just put it off for life.
In fact, this is a huge sum of money paid by Google to Apple last year. In order to make Google the default search engine for Safari on Apple devices.
The money was only $8 billion a few years ago. . . Next year, it may rise to $20 billion.
You know, in the eyes of most poor friends, Google and Apple, two Silicon Valley giants, often appear in the form of rivals.
After all, one represents the Android camp and the other represents the IOS camp.
At least when colleagues in the editorial department heard this cold knowledge, they couldn't help but marvel at a wave: better than Google, but also pay huge protection fees to the "sworn enemy" apple?
So if nothing else is said today, the bad reviewer is going to tell you the story and logic behind this rising "protection fee".
First of all, what bad reviewers want to say is that tens of billions of protection fees are expensive, but the value is true.
Because of Apple's powerful dominance, you can't just eat more sea cucumbers at the last minute, or just shout a few slogans about comprehensively benchmarking apples.
Let's just say that there are1.800 million active Apple devices on our blue planet.
Then, get rid of 20% to 30% Chinese mainland users. . .
The remaining billions of Apple devices are potential traffic portals for Google.
On the other hand, Google search, as a search engine, has earned about 90% of its revenue from advertising for many years.
By becoming the default search engine for Apple devices, Google can absorb a large amount of users and user data to push advertisements.
If you look at the proportion of users of mobile browsers around the world, it will be more obvious.
Although not as good as Chrome (and Google's own), Safari devices still account for a quarter of mobile devices.
And interestingly, the number of Apple users is less than half that of Android users, but their activity seems to far exceed that of Android users.
Because more than half of Google's search traffic comes from Apple devices.
To make a long story short, it is Apple's traffic portal, which is very important to Google.
The reviewer also looked at Google's financial report. Last year, Google's annual operating profit was $78.7 billion.
Therefore, this 65.438+0.5 billion Apple protection fee is equivalent to spending less than 20% of the profits and buying half of Google's search traffic. Do you think it is worth it?
In addition, in many cases, occupying a pit is not necessarily for shitting, because letting others have nowhere to shit is also part of the strategy.
Actually, it's the same. If Google doesn't want to pay these tens of billions, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo, which are also not bad, may immediately become full members from spare tires.
In addition to preventing those old rivals in the search engine industry from occupying the pit. Critics believe that it is equally important to guard against Apple's own search engine.
Because the power of holding the flow inlet is not clear in one or two sentences.
In Ancient Times, there was an IE browser with Windows operating system, which defeated the legend of Netscape browser by bundling.
Now, there is also a "King of Africa" voice phone, which tells the story of Boomplay and Vskit, the largest online music platform in Africa, relying on the entrance of voice OS.
There are countless bad reviews of similar examples.
If Apple disagrees with each other here, it will be another potential battle for Google to create something like iSearch and Apple Search.
And there are always one or two rumors on the Internet about Apple's self-developed search engine or its acquisition of the search engine DuckDuckGo.
I believe that the major search giants, including Google, are also watching the news while wiping their sweat.
Therefore, for Google, the owner who is not bad at money, it is better to spend money to buy peace and pay one-fifth of the profits as protection fees to consolidate its position.
And this money is actually equivalent to compensating Apple for not doing search business.
Apple doesn't have to risk developing new business, just take the protection money from Google and put it in the bag.
After all, Apple's net profit last year was "only" more than 90 billion, and taking 654.38+0.5 billion can be said to be a win-win situation.
However, while winning marijuana, the PY transaction between Google and Apple also lit up the anti-monopoly alarm.
Not long ago, in California, they were filed a class action lawsuit.
The specific content of the lawsuit is actually very simple, that is, Google and Apple are in cahoots.
It also lists six major crimes of Google and Apple's protection fee transaction, which are probably:
The two giants, Apple and Google, divide the search profits. Apple gives Google preferential treatment on equipment. Executives of the two companies often meet in secret. Google fills Apple's search ambition with money. This transaction makes other poor rivals have no chance. They also maliciously acquire other search engines.
Their appeal is to let Google and Apple stop the "non-competition agreement", "profit sharing agreement" and so on, and directly separate Google and Apple. . .
Google and Apple responded: I'm not, I'm legal, you're talking nonsense.
"Safari is just the default Google. You can change to Bing or DuckDuckGo. "
"Our agreement is completely legal, and we Apple are also studying search engines, not bought out by Google!"
Many people have their own opinions about this lawsuit.
Some people think: Google, Apple, and you say you can't do martial arts! Capitalists have joined forces to monopolize!
Another wave of people think that monopoly is a basket into which everything can be put. Just because Apple didn't develop a search engine, Google just paid for it and the defendant monopolized it, which is a bit outrageous.
And this class action lawsuit is not over yet. Those who want to eat melons can continue to wait. . .
Of course, in addition to Apple's Safari, Google actually sent money to many browsers, in order to let them set the default search engine as Google.
For example, Google gives Firefox more than $400 million a year. . . And this money accounts for more than 80% of Firefox's total annual income.
Similarly, more than 40% of the annual revenue of Opera browser comes from Google.
In short, Google is a rich boy in the browser industry.
But it is different from Safari, because many people think that what Google sends to Firefox and Opera is actually a red envelope, not a protection fee.
Let's just say, because Firefox is too small for Chrome and Safari compared with Opera. . .
Counting Google's own Chrome, after winning Safari, 80% of the market is actually occupied.
So everyone thinks that the biggest significance of giving money to Google, Firefox and Opera is to keep them alive.
It is equivalent to raising several puppet companies to prevent their Chrome browsers from being monopolized.
"I have no monopoly. There are also strong competitors such as Firefox and Opera on the market! " A similar dialogue may occur in the antitrust investigation.
Finally, what the bad review wants to say is that the browser itself does not make money, and it can only make money by selling the default search engine and draining the website, which is almost an open secret in the browser circle.
Safari, Firefox and Opera rely on Google to plug money; At the beginning of the development of Yandex browser, it was to drain Yandex; Even the 360 browser, in the early days, relied on Baidu, the gold owner, to plug the money.
As for the expiration of Apple and Google, it is not clear whether Apple will let its browser catch up with its search business like 360.
However, from the price of120 billion a year, it can still be seen that both browsers and search engines are still just games that giants can afford.