After the US Department of Justice and eleven US states sued Google over allegations of monopoly abuse in search and search ads, the New York Times now reports that Google is set to pay Apple up to $12 billion annually using it Google Search Engine is the default in Safari.
Pressure on Google is growing
After the 64-page indictment launched one of the largest antitrust proceedings in the US for several decades, the pressure on the world’s largest search engine operator continues to grow.
As the New York Times reported in a current report (Paywall) on October 25, citing inside information, Google and Apple are said to have agreed as early as 2017 that Google default search engine, as before, would be the standard in the Safari browser and on all devices Apple stays.
For this purpose, Apple is to receive around eight to twelve billion US dollars annually from Google, which, according to the newspaper, would make up around 14 to 21 percent of Apple’s annual profits.
Practices could be banned
Mozilla has signed a similar agreement, albeit on a much smaller scale, with the Alphabet subsidiary: The financially troubled developer receives 400 to 450 million US dollars from Google every year.
Such contracts would not only be financially attractive for partners; Failure to accept them would also have negative consequences, is one of the central charges in the report (PDF) of the US House of Representatives.
Due to the details of the deal with Apple, these practices are currently the focus of the investigation, the New York Times added. These could also jeopardize the revenues of Apple and other companies, because Google could be banned in the future from making such payments and entering into such agreements, it is said. Google search engine don’t have any other options right now.
Mozilla had already expressed concern about this.