Daily Archives: 2025-04-22

Google will keep cookies and skip opt-out option in Chrome

Posted on 2025-04-22 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: "Actually, we're not going to reduce tracking surface, we're going to keep all the old methods AND all the new methods to make sure those user tracking ad dollars keep flowing." I wonder if this was the plan all along, or if this is a reaction to getting busted on the monopolistic practices thing for making themselves [as the largest browser vendor] the MITM for ad brokers [of which they are also the largest].
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Google pays Samsung an ‘enormous’ amount of money to pre-install Gemini on phones

Posted on 2025-04-22 by pappp

Source: Engadget

Article note: So, aside from the "AI bullshit is a money hole, most of which is completely unwanted by end users, being pushed by an industry desperate for a next big thing to maintain their growth" angle, this is also a "We've already lost court cases to exactly this flavor of anti-competitive practice, but we're going to doing it wile the government threatens to break us up." situation. It feels very desperate.

Google has been paying Samsung tons of cash every month to pre-install the AI app Gemini on its smartphones, according to a report by Bloomberg. This information comes to us as part of a pre-existing antitrust case against Google.

Peter Fitzgerald, Google’s VP of platforms and device partnerships, testified in federal court that it began paying Samsung for this service back in January. The pair of companies have a contract that’s set to run at least two years.

Fitzgerald told Judge Amit Metha, who is overseeing the case, that Google provides Samsung with both fixed monthly payments and a percentage of revenue earned from advertisers within the Gemini app. The monetary figures are unknown, but DOJ lawyer David Dahlquist called it an "enormous sum of money in a fixed monthly payment."

This antitrust case started with an accusation that Google had been illegally abusing a monopoly over the search engine industry. Part of the testimony surrounding that case involved Google paying Apple, Samsung and other companies to ensure it was the default search engine on its devices.

Judge Mehta agreed and found that this practice constitutes a violation of antitrust law. He’s currently hearing additional testimony to decide what measures Google must take to remedy the illegal behavior, which is where this Gemini reveal comes from.

Testimony from another case involving Epic Games indicated that Google handed over $8 billion from 2020 to 2023 to ensure that Google Search, the Play Store and Google Assistant were used by default on Samsung mobile devices. A California federal judge later ruled that the company must lift restrictions that prevent rival marketplaces and billing systems. Google is in the process of appealing that ruling.

As an aside, if Google is hellbent on handing out Scrooge McDuck-sized bags of money to increase adoption rates of its generative AI app, why not give the regular people who have to actually use the bloatware some of that cash? Just saying.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-pays-samsung-an-enormous-amount-of-money-to-pre-install-gemini-on-phones-153439068.html?src=rss
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