Google paid Apple a sum of $20 billion in 2020 to be Safari’s default search engine on the iPhone and across all Apple devices, court documents seen by Bloomberg show.
The court documents are part of Google’s antitrust case brought forward by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). The lawsuit primarily focused on how Google is influencing its monopoly over the internet search and browsing markets, with its relationship with Apple put under the spotlight. As reported earlier, a witness for Google accidentally revealed that the company pays Apple 36 percent of its total search ads revenue.
Newly unsealed court documents have now revealed that the percentage share is worth $20 billion. For Apple, the $20 billion figure represented about 17.5 percent of the company’s total turnover in 2020. Google has been the default search engine on Safari since 2002, but the companies negotiated the deal’s terms several times to reflect the booming popularity of Apple devices. The Cupertino company has constantly raised the amount of money Google has to pay to remain Safari’s default search engine, with the figure topping one billion every month starting from May 2021.
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The court documents also reveal that Microsoft once persuaded Apple to make Bing the new default engine on Safari by offering a staggering 90 percent of Bing’s search ads revenue. The deal never went through, with Apple also declining to purchase Bing as reported several months ago as part of the same DOJ case.
The Apple-Google deal could be in real danger if the judge rules in the DOJ’s favor. Closing arguments for the year-long case are expected to take place between today and Friday. However, the judge’s final ruling isn’t expected till the end of this year.
