Google paid $18 billion for search engine deal with Apple in 2021

Google paid Apple $18 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine in Safari. Insiders report this to The New York Times. The search engine deal between Google and Apple was recently discredited due to an American antitrust case surrounding Google Search.

Two anonymous sources tell The New York Times that Google paid $18 billion to remain the default search engine in Apple’s Safari web browser. The company specifically did that in 2021; it is not known whether the tech giant paid the same amount to Apple in other years. To date, no specific amount has been announced that Google has paid to Apple. The two companies have not yet officially confirmed the amount of $18 billion.

The terms and effects of the Google-Apple search deal is one of the key points in an antitrust case against Google Search. The US Department of Justice sued Google for alleged abuse of power in the search engine market. The tech giant would hinder competing services by paying platform holders to be the default search engine.

The US Justice Department states that the tech giant maintains an anti-competitive monopoly with these agreements. The tech giant says its success with Search is not due to agreements with platform holders, but because its search engine is ‘the best’.

Spotlight and the Digital Markets Act

Internal Google documents seen by The New York Times also suggest that Google, among other things, tried to undermine Apple’s Spotlight function. In 2021, Apple improved that search function; Since that year, the feature has shown more extensive search results from the Internet, which users could also have found with Google Search. Google then introduced a similar feature in its Chrome app in the hope that users will switch to Chrome, writes The New York Times. The feature shows “quick facts” and “information from files, messages, and apps on the device,” just like Spotlight.

The tech giant is also said to have explored options to use the Digital Markets Act to its advantage on the iOS platform. The DMA is a European law that should promote competition on, among other things, mobile operating systems. Google is also said to have thought about ways to convince the EU that Spotlight as a search engine should fall under the DMA, the American newspaper writes.

Google response

“Competition in the tech sector is fierce and we compete with Apple on many fronts,” a Google spokesperson told The New York Times. “Today there are more ways than ever to search for information, so our engineers make thousands of improvements to Search every year to ensure we deliver the most useful results.” The company adds that Google offers default settings because they “matter,” but says users can easily adjust those defaults themselves.

An internal Google presentation on the impact of Apple Spotlight on Google Search, presented during the antitrust lawsuit against Google’s search engine. Source: US Department of Justice