Paying over a third of all revenue generated from searches on Apple’s platform. That’s incredible. Not a lawyer so I have no idea how this will work out legally, but I have a hard time parsing such an enormous pay-share as anything other than an aggressive attempt to stymie competition. Flat dollar payments are easier to read as less damning, but willingly giving up that much revenue from the source suggests the revenue of the source is no longer the primary target. It’s the competitive advantage of keeping (potential) competitors from accessing that source.
I mean, 30% is what Apple charges for regular apps and all in-app purchases/subscriptions too.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For the DOJ—which has made the Google-Apple deal the center of its case alleging that Google maintains an illegal monopoly over search—this detail confirms how valuable default placements on iPhones are to the search leader.
Previously, sources told The New York Times that Google paid Apple approximately $18 billion in 2021 for the deal, but the exact amount of revenue sharing remained unknown until Monday.
The DOJ’s trial also recently revealed that Google paid $26 billion in total for default contracts, which are ostensibly responsible for driving up its search advertising revenue that is right now rapidly climbing.
In total, across all those default deals, Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint estimated in a post on X that it’s possible that Google derives “at least $90 billion of its current annual revenue.”
"We’re continuing to focus on making AI more helpful for everyone; there’s exciting progress and lots more to come,” Pichai said in a statement reported by Search Engine Land.
Judge Amit Mehta, presiding over the antitrust trial, has said that the Google-Apple default deal is the “heart” of the DOJ’s case against Google.
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