Obviously, defaults matter to some degree. They have a price. Google and Apple are companies with market caps in the trillions, and at their scale the default has a price in billions, since a small shift redirects a ton of ad revenue. That's fine.
But they're not "incredibly powerful", which implies that most users won't change them. As I pointed out, most users do change from Edge to Chrome.
If defaults were so "incredibly powerful", Edge would be winning. Obviously, therefore, they're not. Defaults have a small-to-medium amount of power. (Which, at Apple+Google scale, happens to be a lot of cash.)
> Google and Apple are companies with market caps in the trillions, and at their scale the default has a price in billions
This is HN's regular reminder that market cap measures the value of the company in the eyes of investors, not its revenue or profit.
Apple had gross revenue of $365 billion and Google $257 billion in 2021, the year in which Google paid Apple $26 billion.
That means that in that year Google paid Apple a solid 10% of their revenue and Google's payment accounted for 7% of Apple's gross revenue. To put that in perspective: that puts this deal on the same scale of importance as a car payment or utilities are for the average US household.
Obviously, defaults matter to some degree. They have a price. Google and Apple are companies with market caps in the trillions, and at their scale the default has a price in billions, since a small shift redirects a ton of ad revenue. That's fine.
But they're not "incredibly powerful", which implies that most users won't change them. As I pointed out, most users do change from Edge to Chrome.
If defaults were so "incredibly powerful", Edge would be winning. Obviously, therefore, they're not. Defaults have a small-to-medium amount of power. (Which, at Apple+Google scale, happens to be a lot of cash.)