Publicly, they fiercely compete, and in secret, shared interests and agreements bind them. This is the relationship between Google and Apple, and seemingly, Google pays the iPhone maker billions in an attempt to dominate the global search advertising market and eliminate any competition.
Apple and Google
We are all aware that Google pays a significant amount annually to be the default search engine on Apple devices, but that's not all. Unintentionally revealed during his testimony in the antitrust case overseen by the Department of Justice, Professor Kevin Murphy of the University of Chicago disclosed that the company pays approximately 36% of the search engine advertising revenue generated through the Safari browser.
This indicates that every person using Safari to search through Google's search engine means more billions for Apple. Therefore, Google wants users to rely on the Chrome browser on their phones and devices instead of Safari, to dominate the browser market entirely and also reduce the amount it pays to its competitor Apple.
How much does Google pay Apple annually?
Through a simple calculation, we can estimate approximately how much Google pays Apple annually as follows: Google's total revenue from search advertising was about $279.8 billion in 2022.
Since Google pays 36% of the search advertising revenue through Safari, this means more than $20 billion during 2022. Don't forget to add the $18 billion they pay to be the default search engine on Apple devices. This means that Google pays about $38 billion annually to the iPhone maker, whose revenue was nearly $400 billion last year.
Finally, Google is under further scrutiny by regulatory authorities regarding antitrust, facing accusations of using its resources to maintain dominance in the browser and search engine market on various devices through secret agreements that hinder fair competition.
Source: Bloomberg