Apple has issued a motion of intervention in the DOJ vs Google antitrust case, specifically in the remedies side to help Google fight the default search agreement it has with Apple. Why is Apple doing this? Primarily because Apple wants its $20 billions from Google and Apple does not yet want to enter the general search engine space.
I read through the PDF filing and read a lot of the early news coverage to understand why Apple is stepping in. Here are quick bullet points I came up with on why this is happening.
- Apple wants its $20 billion annual from Google
- Apple thinks Google won't properly defend the deal, saying "Google can no longer adequately represent Apple's interests."
- Apple does not plan to build its own general search engine (more on why below)
- Google might end up not having to pay Apple anything for having Google Search on its devices
- The current deal goes through 2026 with an extension to go through 2028
- Apple already can pick a different search provider for its private browser
- Apple says it doesn't always have to use Google Search in its deal and hasn't over the years
So why doesn't Apple want to make its own general search engine? Apple offered three reasons:
- It's committed elsewhere and has other business interests
- It would require thousands of new employees and billions of dollars
- AI is changing search in a big way and Apple wants to see where it all falls before it decides if it goes into this space
- Runing a search engine will likely go against Apple's privacy policies around collecting user data
So, Apple will try to help Google defend this part of the remedies' outcome from its antitrust case.
Here are some of the previous times we covered this topic:
- Google Is A Monopoly, Federal Judge Rules (What's Next)
- DOJ: Force Google To Sell Chrome, Restrict Android & Ban Default Deals
- DOJ May Breakup Google As Remedy To Monopoly Ruling
- DOJ May Break Up Google: Separating Android & Chrome; Maybe Ads
- Google Offers Its Required Remedies In DOJ Antitrust Case
- Document: Apple Maintains A Search Index Of Billions Of Websites
- Report: Microsoft Tried Selling Bing To Apple But Search Quality Issues Held It Back
- John Giannandrea Leaves Google To Join Apple
- Apple Search Engine Four Years Away, At Least
- Can Apple Search Compete Against Google Search?
- Apple Lists Its Search Ranking Factors
- AppleBot Confirmed: Apple To Get Into Web Search?
- Apple Search? Apple Starts Crawling The Web?
Forum discussion at X.
Update on January 28th: The court says no to Apple, more details over here.
Update on January 31st: The Verge reports Apple asks court to halt Google search monopoly case.
