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Google's Payments To Apple Reached $20 Billion in 2022, Antitrust Court Documents Show (yahoo.com) 27

Alphabet paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser, according to newly unsealed court documents in the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Google. From a report: The deal between the two tech giants is at the heart of the landmark case, in which antitrust enforcers allege Google has illegally monopolized the market for online search and related advertising. The Justice Department and Google will offer closing arguments in the case Thursday and Friday, with a decision expected later this year.

Google and Apple had hoped to shield the payment amount from public disclosure. At the trial last fall, Apple executives testified that Google paid "billions," without specifying a number. A Google witness later accidentally disclosed that Google pays 36% of the revenue it earns from search ads to Apple. Court documents filed late Tuesday ahead of the closing arguments mark the first public confirmation of the figures by Apple's senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue. Such numbers aren't disclosed by either company in their securities filings. The documents also revealed the importance of the payments to Apple's bottom line. For instance, in 2020, Google's payments to Apple constituted 17.5% of the iPhone maker's operating income.

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Google's Payments To Apple Reached $20 Billion in 2022, Antitrust Court Documents Show

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  • For science, I would like to see what happens if Google doesn't re-up the agreement for a year. What would Apple do?

    • Fire its CEO.

    • if Google doesn't re-up the agreement for a year. What would Apple do?

      If you think about it the "agreement" is basically a bribe from Google to keep Apple from competing with them and entering the search business: "You can spend billions trying to catch up to us or we can pay you billions to use our tech instead."

    • It would make its own search engine, which might be devastating for Google. Google's page rank patent is expired. Yes, they have improved since then .. but pagerank alone is sufficient to make a passable search engine.

  • by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday May 02, 2024 @10:56AM (#64442456)

    This is like sending coals from eastern Newcastle to western Newcastle.

    • People want to see their 401k's go up, and whoever's in charge of making sure $BIGNUM goes up this quarter at google wants their bonus. There is no single individual who personally owns the $110B google has lying around.
  • Why is it anybody's business if Google thinks it's worth $20 to Google to be listed as the Default Search?

    So long as the User can change it (which they can, easily), how is that a Conspiracy?

    • It was a secret agreement, so calling it a conspiracy seems like a reasonable, but inflammatory way of describing it

      The huge dollar sum suggests that Google might be more interested in harming competitors than making a profit on each year's Apple device searches. But I don't know for much Google makes off Apple users . . . maybe you'd be fool not to be the highest bidder if you had $20b and a search engine.

      • It was a secret agreement, so calling it a conspiracy seems like a reasonable, but inflammatory way of describing it

        The huge dollar sum suggests that Google might be more interested in harming competitors than making a profit on each year's Apple device searches. But I don't know for much Google makes off Apple users . . . maybe you'd be fool not to be the highest bidder if you had $20b and a search engine.

        Still am having a huge bit of trouble determining a Victim or Damages.

        As far as "Secret": There have been multitudinous articles, etc. about this Agreement for multitudes of years. The Amount is of no moment. Big Companies == Big Bucks.

        So?

      • How is it "secret" when we have known about it for years - and every year we get reports about the new amount. Worst kept secret ever.

        And don't get me started about the fact that Mozilla brags about their deal with Google, because that's their major source of income. And nobody bats an eye.

    • It's money wasted in my case. I immediately switched to DuckDuckGo. Took about ten seconds.

      • It's money wasted in my case. I immediately switched to DuckDuckGo. Took about ten seconds.

        My point exactly.

        Who's the Victim? What are the Damages?

  • in 2020, Google's payments to Apple constituted 17.5% of Apple's operating income.

    Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world, selling luxury hardware -- and this much of their income is from ads? No wonder everyone and their mom is trying to shove ads wherever they can.

    • in 2020, Google's payments to Apple constituted 17.5% of Apple's operating income.

      Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world, selling luxury hardware -- and this much of their income is from ads? No

      FTFY.

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