Firefox can still get money, and maybe Apple too. The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity.

Google also must share search data with competitors, but it's not totally clear what this is. The ruling mentions helping other engines with "long tail" queries.

All in all this seems like a pretty mild ruling, and an appeal can generally only help Google from a not to bad ruling at this point.

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ankit219 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The problem for the judge seems to be that there is no alternative at this point. No other company can bid for or credibly pay Apple/Mozilla as much as Google did. Apple testified they would spend less on innovation if the payment goes away, Mozilla said they wont survive. So the alternative for the judge is to create a market in the next five years where people invest in search, there are more credible products that come up, and are competitive enough to justify the placement bids (ending dependency on google).

The nuclear option was DDG's hope. Google should share their entire data, so DDG can offer the same product without having to build out the thing themselves. The judge correctly identified (imo) where this sharing of index and search results would have meant a bunch of white labeled wrappers selling Google search and would have no incentive to innovate themselves in the short term. Somehow, DDG did not see that happening. At that goal, it's a great ruling, well considered.

	▲	dabockster a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Mozilla said they wont survive Entirely their fault, tbh. Mozilla's C suite has knowingly enriched themselves off this money for over 15 years now. If they were serious about surviving, they would have found alternative funding sources a long time ago. Firefox isn't a true project. It's Google paying off someone to make Chrome appear not to be a monopoly at first glance.

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mig39 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, I don't think Google is the "exclusive" on either Apple OSes or Firefox. Just the default.

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johanyc 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> The decision said that Apple's deal with Google to be the default search engine was "exclusive" because it established Google as the default out-of-the-box search engine.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/09/02/apple-shares-rise-after-...

	▲	johncolanduoni 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I’m confused what deals the court would accept as non-exclusive then. Do they have to randomize the default search engines when you first boot a new iPhone?

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nsonha 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

using that argument nothing is exclusive, no browser is hard coded to a single search engine

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dh2022 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It shows you how well the judge understands the situation. More or less the remedy is keep doing what you are doing.

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thayne 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The ruling says they can pay for preload, but not for exclusivity.

From what I understand Google could pay for Firefox to install a Google search extension, but they can't pay Firefox to make Google the default search engine. Even if they get google to pay for just pre-installing it, it's not going to be anywhere near what Google currently pays to be the default.

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conartist6 2 days ago | parent [-]

I read that part. The court mandates a search engine choice screen initially for each device, then once a year afterwards. Google is allowed to pay for advertising on this screen.

It seems to me that at very least Mozilla will have to renegotiate a contract and it's not clear what they might make off selling ads in that space. Google will presumably not value the lesser advantage as highly, but if the other provisions create more search engine competition there could be growing value to Mozilla in that ad real estate in theory

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the_other 2 days ago | parent [-]

How much could a slot that shows up at most twice per year for ~20s, for ~2% of web users, be worth, and where does that sit in the market? It sounds tiny, to me.

	▲	conartist6 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah it sounds tiny to me too. I strongly doubt that many people will change their choice after the first time so the only way it's worth as much to Google is if they think they can keep the market mostly as anti-competitive, which the government is indicating they should not try.

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makeitdouble 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Google being allowed to pay Firefox or Apple whatever they want makes the exclusivity restriction pretty moot.

If Google pays Apple 3x more than OpenAI and Apple sets Google as default "because of market research, not because of the money", we're firmly in the status quo. So much as Google can modulate how much it pays Apple depending on how friendly they've been to Google in the last round.

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lofaszvanitt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

DOJ is neutered by the corpo obelisks.