Google’s dominance in the search industry is the target of an ongoing Justice Department investigation, and its relationship with Apple is a key component of that case. A new report from Information Today we’ll focus on how Google is racing to reduce its dependence on Apple’s Safari browser ahead of the possible outcome of the antitrust case.
One aspect of the Justice Department’s case against Google is the company’s agreement with Apple to be the default search engine on the iPhone. Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to maintain that default status, something the Justice Department says stymies competition in the search engine industry. Notably, Apple is not named as a party to the lawsuit, but the case has prompted testimony from Apple executives such as Eddy Cue.
Today’s report explains that Google wants to increase iPhone users’ share of searches outside of Safari itself:
For several years, Google has tried to guard against that possibility by attempting to persuade iPhone owners to switch to Google apps or Chrome for their searches. While Google has made progress — it raised the percentage of searches done that way to 30% from 25% five years ago — that progress stalled in the second half of last year.
And that low 30% percentage is far short of Google’s goal of increasing the number of iPhone searches conducted through its own apps to 50% by 2030, according to three people who have worked on the effort.
The billions of dollars Google pays Apple each year come in the form of a revenue-sharing agreement, in which Apple gets a cut of the advertising revenue from Google searches performed on Safari. By driving users toward Chrome and Google apps, Google pays Apple less money. and makes it less vulnerable to regulation.
However, convincing users to use its own apps instead of Safari has been a challenge for Google. “It’s just very difficult to overcome the fact that Safari is pre-installed on Apple devices,” sources told Information.
The report also details that Google hired former Instagram and Yahoo executive Robby Stein to oversee the Safari rollback. As part of this, Google executives reportedly considered limiting its AI Overviews feature to its own apps. This would mean that Safari users wouldn’t see AI Overviews in search results, but people using Google’s own apps would. Google, however, “ultimately decided not to take that step,” the report says.
Earlier this year, Google hired Robby Stein, a former product executive at Instagram and Yahoo, who will take on the goal of shifting iPhone customers to Google’s mobile apps, according to current and former employees. Among his efforts is exploring how Google can use generative AI to make its apps more engaging, one of the people said.
Google executives considered making its new AI Overviews feature, which displays AI-generated answers to search queries, appear in its mobile apps but not in Safari, people who have worked on the product said. But Google ultimately decided against it.
The report makes clear that Google has been trying to phase out Safari for years, with little success. Whether or not that will change remains to be seen, but the real issue is the US Justice Department’s antitrust decision, which is expected to rule “sometime in the next few months.”
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