Google is reportedly having a hard time getting iPhone owners to use its apps

Google spends a huge amount each year to be the default search engine on iOS, but while that strategy draws scrutiny, the company is working to get iPhone owners to use its apps — but is reportedly having a hard time doing so.

The business of being the go-to search engine on the iPhone is huge. According to recent reports, Google has spent as much as $20 billion to be the default search engine on iOS, and that’s a figure that’s likely grown since the 2022 data was published. But Google is also under mounting antitrust pressure that threatens that deal.

According to a new report from InformationGoogle is working to increase the number of iPhone owners who use Google’s own apps in order to increase the number of searches that don’t rely on Google being the default in Safari. Apparently, Google has managed to do this. some There has been a lot of progress in this area: only about 30% of Google search queries on the iPhone come from the company’s own apps, compared to about 25% five years ago.

Google reportedly aims to move 50% of iPhone searches to its own apps.

But the company is apparently having a hard time increasing that number. Google has found it “simply too difficult to overcome the fact that Safari is pre-installed on Apple devices,” according to sources working on the project.

As a way to push users to use Google apps, the company is said to have briefly considered blocking AI-powered features, such as AI Overviews, in its own apps, so they wouldn’t appear in Safari. The report says Google “decided not to take that action.”

In a related effort, the report reveals that Google was working on a project where people could upload short videos, similar in style to TikTok or YouTube Shorts, to the Google app so that the videos would appear directly in Search. However, the project struggled to get off the ground.