If not for this deal, what would be the default search engine in Safari? I feel like most normal people (not HN weirdos) would be angry if their browser defaulted to something other than Google when they tried to "Google something." Isn't this part of what so many people have complained about with Edge and Bing?
Even 5 years ago I would have said the same but Google search quality has degraded so much that I don't think changing to another one would-be noticeable to the average user.
I don't think the search quality would be the problem. But they would miss these shopping ads and carousels, the restaurant reviews and direct link to google maps, and all that fuzz.
The shopping ads would be a huge lose to many, they are the only reason I ever visit Google these days. I feel like the shopping ads fit my queries much much better than the actual search results if I'm actively looking for a product to buy.
Google as evolved into the number one product search engine. It's doesn't have ay advantage in actual search anymore. DDG, plain Bing and reskins/whitelabels like Ecosia deliver the exact same quality of result and often better, but I suspect that's because there's greater value manipulating Google results. What they can't do is compete with the search engine powering Google ads.
I assume that both parties have market research showing that enough people (maybe even 36%) don't care enough to figure out how to change the search engine or buy a different phone.
I use brave search and usually end up clicking on the google button midway down on the page. Every search engine is inferior and if google wasn't the default search on iOS it would hurt the brand, especially since google is the default search on android. I'm a little older and using bing just feels like altavista in the 90's. Its good enough, but it feels like its selling me something I don't want. Just give me a good search result or I'll have to stop using the phone's web browser to look things up (or manually change the browser search engine with every release).
