Google pays Apple top dollar to be the default Safari search engine

Summary

• Google paid Apple a hefty $20 billion in 2022 to keep its search engine as the default on Safari.
• The US Department of Justice views Google as a bully for paying huge sums to other browsers to maintain dominance.
• Google’s market share of 86.99% and its status as the default search engine on iPhones make it challenging for competitors like Microsoft’s Bing to compete.

A ton of information about Apple and Google’s supposed dealings came to light in November last year, when revelations from an antitrust lawsuit rocked the Mountain View, California-based company for allegedly running a monopoly over the search engine market. At the time, it was reported that Google pays the likes of Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox a hefty sum for maintaining its search engine as the default one. Reportedly, in 2021, the search giant paid Apple a 36 percent cut of revenue that it generated from being the default search engine on Safari, and wrote checks upward of $26.3 billion to Firefox, Safari, and other browsers.

Now, new information revealed in court documents on Tuesday, April 30, via Bloomberg, help us move away from vague sums to a concrete figure that Google paid Apple in 2022. A whopping $20 billion.

That huge sum is one of the reasons why the US Department of Justice thinks that Google is a bully, saying that Google pays other browsers so much money to maintain its default browser spot that other search engines, like Microsoft’s Bing, have no chance to compete. To put that into context, Google remittance to Apple in 2020 constituted 17.5% of the Cupertino, California-based tech giant’s operating income. In 2022, Apple’s operating income was roughly $119.437 billion, and Google’s $20 billion payment to the iPhone-maker makes up roughly 16.75% of it.

Why fight when you’ve already been crowned the winner?

Google Search holds 86.99% of the global search engine market share, and it’s been that way for a while now. However, Apple’s iPhones are very popular, especially in North America, with a 55.13% market share. Ensuring that the majority of smartphone users use Google Search for their needs serves as a goldmine for Google’s revenue via ads. The Android phone market largely defaults to Google anyway, so the tech giant has less to worry about on that front.

Microsoft, which operates the Bing search engine, has seen a recent rise in prominence, likely due to Copilot and Bing AI. However, it still doesn’t threaten Google Search in any way. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has tried to sway Apple in its favor, suggests Bloomberg, offering the iPhone-maker as much as 90% of its ad revenue to switch to Bing as the default browser on Safari to no avail. You can read more about Microsoft’s reported pitch to Apple, which includes hiding the Bing brand, via Bloomberg’s report.

If you own an iPhone and want to change your default Safari search engine, head to the Settings app, then scroll down and tap on Safari. Under Search, tap on Search Engine and select the desired one.