Court Unveils: Apple Earns 36% from Google’s Safari Searches

Previously disclosed court documents and testimonies have shown that Google reached agreements with Samsung and Apple to favorably position its search engine service in the market. It was further revealed in court that when users search via Apple’s Safari browser with Google set as the default search engine, Google allocates 36% of the advertising revenue generated during the process as payment to Apple.

According to Bloomberg, Kevin Murphy, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, testified that in the collaboration between Google and Apple, Google agreed to share 36% of the advertising revenue generated from searches conducted through the Safari browser’s default Google search engine as part of Apple’s ‘revenue’ from this partnership.

Google’s Senior Vice President in charge of search and digital assistant services, Prabhakar Raghavan, confirmed that in 2021, Google spent $26.3 billion to become the default search engine across multiple browsers, thereby securing traffic. Despite Google generating a substantial $146.4 billion in search advertising revenue that year, Raghavan emphasized the high cost of paying $26.3 billion for this privilege.

However, the exact amount of advertising revenue Apple has received from this collaboration remains unconfirmed. Given that Google’s total revenue last year was $279.8 billion, with the majority stemming from advertising, it is estimated that Apple may have earned tens of billions of dollars in ‘revenue’ from this partnership.

Google and Apple have not responded to inquiries about the details of this arrangement, but have previously stated that disclosing internal business details would unfairly harm Google and its partners’ interests and impact market competition.