The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 36 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Apple will maintain Google defaults while routing specialized queries to AI
“Apple will carry on treating Google as the default general search engine. They'll just peel more stuff out into their own foundation model or into chat TPT or into booking.com.”
Google paid $25 billion last year in device revenue share
“Google is paying a revenue share of 25 to 35% of the revenue they get from each search back to the device, and that was twenty-five billion dollars last year.”
The US court cannot compel Apple to add Safari choice screens
“The court can't make Apple put a choice screen in Safari. Like, Apple isn't in court. Like, they haven't been convicted of anything.”
Evans: Product search moved almost entirely from Google to Amazon
“What's happened in the last decade or so is product search has moved almost entirely from Google to Amazon.”
Evans: Most Big Tech sub-threshold acquisitions were under $10M and 10 employees
“And the vast majority of them were less than 10 people, and less than ten million dollars.”
Evans: Australian court ruled Google is not a publisher in defamation suit
“There was a fascinating court case a couple of weeks ago in which some, someone, a newspaper would describe somebody as a gangster, and the newspaper story is in Google, and the person accused of being a gangster sued Google for defamation, and the court said,…”
Evans: The 30% App Store commission rule is toast
“Look, the 30% rule is toast, but we don't really know quite how and what and where”
Evans: 10% of Google's workforce will work in compliance by late 2025
“I think the only certainty is that when we come back in five years' time, 10% of people who work at Google will work in compliance.”
Evans: Telco stocks were flat for 20 years while apps captured value
“Giant industry, trillion dollars of revenue, two hundred billion dollars a year of CapEx stocks have gone nowhere in 20 years, and all the value is built by other people.”
70% of US search happens on Google default placements
“About 70% of search in the US happens on a device where Google's made it the default.”
Evans: AI search answers will drain web traffic from lifestyle publishers
“But if I'm going to say, you know, write me an itinerary for hotels, restaurants, and architecture in Barcelona, I'm going to get, that's going to produce less click-through, and so that's going to be less traffic for Condé Nast Traveler, it's going to be less…”
Evans: Google pays Apple nearly $20B for default iPhone search
“Google pays, Apple pays, Apple probably close to twenty billion dollars to be the default search engine on the iPhone.”
Evans: Modern tech company returns occur mostly in private markets pre-IPO
“Tech companies of the eighties and nineties, like 80 or 90% of the returns to investors came in after the IPO. Let's say IPO at a hundred million dollars, and then they end up being a fifty billion dollar company. Whereas for something like Google or Facebook …”
Evans: Big Four tech capex will jump from $400B to $650B
“The big four companies, platform companies, spent four hundred billion dollars on capex last year. This year, they've said they'll spend 650, more or less. Microsoft hasn't been given full year guidance. But Meta and Google and Amazon have more or less doubled…”
Evans: Big Tech funds AI capex out of cash flow, unlike OpenAI
“Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are funding it out of cash flow, Meta less so than the others, whereas OpenAI has to do these innovative funding structures because it has no cash flow, and Oracle is basically going to borrow a hundred percent of revenue to…”
Evans: Google, AWS, and Microsoft Cloud Capex Will Near $100B in 2023
“Google AWS, Microsoft probably spent, will probably spend a hundred billion dollars on cloud capex this year.”
Evans: Google did not invent search advertising
“Search advertising wasn't invented by Google, it was invented by somebody else, and they presented, I think it was at a TED talk, and everyone started booing, and they thought this was evil, like, you're corrupting search results. You're letting pay to people …”
Evans: Amazon ad revenue makes it a top-four global media owner
“And they did, I think, thirty one billion dollars last year, and they've done like 36, thirty seven billion dollars in the last 12 months which gets them to being like a top three, top four media owner. Globally. It's like Alphabet, Meta, ByteDance and then I …”
Evans: Specialized vertical software on iPads captured restaurants, not Big Tech
“That didn't get eaten by Google, or Amazon, or Apple. It's a generic iPad in a case, and then there's However many software companies, a bunch of software companies that go and solve, this is what restaurants need.”
Evans: Google pays roughly $15B for default search in Safari and Mozilla
“And so Google is paying something like fifteen billion dollars to be the default search engine in Mozilla and Safari and whatever else is out there, basically Mozilla and Safari.”
Evans: Google employees internally nicknamed early Hulu 'Clown Co'
“Google people nicknamed it Clown Co because they thought it was obvious it was going to fail because it was, you know, a private equity firm and two giant old media companies.”
Evans: Google handed home security to ADT to avoid physical installations
“And a much more recent example is Google handing off its home security product line to ADT. And the theory was that you could turn home security from these boxes that, you know, somebody in a pickup truck comes with a ladder and spends all afternoon putting bo…”
Evans: Google's post-cookie alternative assigns users to cohorts locally within browsers
“Google's proposal for replacement is that this happens in the browser, that the browser basically builds sort of
Algorithmically determined cohorts.
So there's like 10,015 thousand cohorts, and the browser works out which one of those you're in, but that neve…”
Evans: Google acquired Android over ten years ago to block Microsoft dominance
“This is why Google created Android, because they were afraid of Microsoft doing this. You know, they bought Android and created Android, and this was over 10 years ago.”
Evans: Google has systematically made Android more restricted over time for security
“Google has pulled much more towards as a more secure model because they started very open and realized all of these problems. And so Google has been sort of systemically making Android more secure over time and more locked out over time.”
Evans: Regulatory proposals require Google to share clickstream data with rivals
“All these competition proposals that Google has to give clickstream data to competing search engines so they can actually build a competing search engine.”
Evans: Banning search default payments would eliminate Firefox's business model
“They say that you're not allowed to pay third-party browsers to be the default search engine, but that's Firefox's whole business model, so if they don't do that, Firefox goes away.”
Federal court ruled Google is an illegal monopoly abusing its power
“This federal court ruled that the DOJ is right and Google is an illegal monopoly that it's abusing monopoly”
Programmatic display advertising accounts for only 10% of Google's total revenue
“There's another case coming down the pipe for Google on the display side the programmatic advertising, display advertising side which is, will be, is only 10% of revenue, but, you know, it might be more consequential on that side.”
Evans: Asbestos lawyer queries are historically search's most valuable terms
“This has been the most valuable search term since forever because it's personal injury. So you've got it, you get a lawyer, you sue, the lawyer makes a lot, you make, you get a big payout, the lawyer, it's a lot. So this has been one of the most valuable searc…”
Evans: Google's core search operating margin is around 60% excluding TAC
“If you exclude that, Google operating margins are core operating margins for the, like, the actual core search and advertising business are like 60%.”
Evans: Google Trends shows searches for 'best' overtook 'cheap' over 15 years
“Now my other kind of chart that I always use is Google Trends for best versus cheap. Because what happens is cheap has gone down. It's a classic crossing, crossing lines chart. Cheap goes down, best goes up. Over the last 15 years”
Evans: The global ad market is $600B with half spent online
“Firstly, here is, like, the global advertising industry this year is probably 606 hundred Fifty billion dollars, and at least half of that is online, and that pays for a very large chunk of all the stuff that we use, including Google and Facebook and Twitter, …”
Evans: Booking and Expedia spent $10B on Google search in 2019
“Booking.com and Expedia between them, I think, in 2019 paid between them about ten billion dollars in search advertising to Google.”
Evans: Apple blocks and Google will soon eliminate third-party browser cookies
“Apple has been blocking third-party cookies entirely in Safari by default, and now Google has said from next year they're going to do that as well.”
Evans: Google and Facebook hold at least two-thirds of online advertising
“So something like half of online advertising is search, which means, mostly means Google. And then like another maybe 10 or 20%, I'm picking these numbers from memory, is Facebook. So Google and Facebook, between them, have at least two-thirds of online advert…”