He Google search engine is the one used by default in all browsers and Apple devices. Both on Mac computers and on iPhone and iPad. For it, Google has been paying Apple for several years, a fairly large sum. Until now, how much he paid for it has been a mystery. They had only been revealed, behind closed doors, before a court, but thanks to a report from the New York Times it has already been confirmed how much the amount they pay to those in Cupertino each year is: around 18 billion of dollars.
It is the amount that Google paid Apple in 2021 to be its default search engine. According to various rumors, the figure was between 10,000 and 20,000 million, but it seems to be closer to the latter. That money not only gives Mountain View a prominent position as Apple’s default search engine, but it also has another effect: preventing them from developing their own.
As he testified in the monopoly trial against Google John Giannandreaa former Google executive whoHora is in charge of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence at Apple, this company had evaluated all the options for this. From buying Bing to developing its own search engine, but it was worried about competing with Google and losing its deal.
Another of the trial witnesses, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, has given another reason for Apple to continue maintaining the agreement: Google could cause problems if it were no longer in force. Nadella has pointed out that they could use very popular apps of theirs, such as Gmail, Maps and YouTube, to promote Chrome and the Google app, driving people away from Safari and potentially lowering the value of Apple’s agreement with another search engine. . The manager has also highlighted that he was determined to lose about 15 billion dollars each year, which apparently would mean an agreement with Google, to make Bing more relevant.
For all this, the agreement between Google and Apple has not only been satisfactory for both parties, but it has also worked as a kind of peace agreement so that neither company harms the other. In recent years, Google has felt threatened by improvements to the Spotlight feature, built into Apple.
Given this, Google seems to have explored ways to reduce the scope and importance of Spotlight by developing a similar function that it integrated into Chrome. This feature showed users brief details and information about files, messages, and apps installed on the device. Google also began to explore how to use the new competition laws of the European Union in its favor, to try to get more people to switch browsers and start using Chrome.
The terms of this agreement between Apple and Google, and its effects, have become one of the elements in the trial being held in the United States against the dominant position of the Google search engine. The Department of Justice has pointed out that it amounts to an anti-competitive monopoly, since numerous witnesses have assured that any search engine with access to Apple’s enormous market would immediately become a relevant player in the sector.
During the next few weeks, Google will be the party that takes the floor in the trial that is being followed against the company. Your lawyers will take care of present your defensewhich until now has consisted of emphasize that Google is successful not because it expels its rivals, but because it is the best engine search.
