During the Justice Department’s antitrust trial against Google, a witness claimed Apple gets 36% of the revenue the company earns from search advertising made through Safari.
The information comes from Kevin Murphy, a University of Chicago professor (via Bloomberg). He disclosed this number while defending Google during the Justice Department’s antitrust trial in Washington.
With that, Apple snags more than 30% of Google’s search deal revenue by being the main Safari browser.
In a previous report of this trial, BGR wrote that Google pays Apple up to $20B a year to be the default iPhone search engine. So even though Apple is not on trial this time, if the DoJ states that Google is illegally maintaining its dominance over the search engine and search advertising markets, this could be a bad deal for Cupertino.
As previously reported, one of the main interests in the case is the Information Services Agreement between Apple and Google, which is being highlighted as an anticompetitive behavior. If Google loses its agreement with Apple, it might happen with other players, such as Samsung and Mozilla.
That said, theoretically, Apple could maintain its partnership with Google outside the US or partner with another search engine as its default.
For example, Apple considered acquiring Microsoft Bing a few years ago and even met with DuckDuckGo’s CEO several times to discuss making his search engine the primary option for private browsing, which could have been beneficial for users’ privacy, as DuckDuckGo is one of the browsers that advocate the most on that matter. Unfortunately, Apple scrapped these plans.
Apple hasn’t commented on this story so far. The final decision of the Department of Justice isn’t expected to come up until 2024. If we learn anything else, we’ll make sure to update this story.
BGR will keep following the latest steps on this trial.
