- Apple CEO Eddy Cue explained why the company didn’t build its own search engine.
- Google has a deal with Apple to be its default search engine, and Apple wants to keep it that way.
- The CEO explained Apple’s reasons in a filing related to the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google.
Apple says it plans to stick with what it knows best, and that doesn’t include building its own search engine.
In court papers filed this week in Washington, D.C., Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, listed reasons why the iPhone maker might not want to create its own search engine.
The request was filed in connection with the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google, which says Google illegally monopolizes the search engine market. One of the key pieces of evidence presented by the Justice Department at trial was a revenue-sharing agreement between Google and Apple that makes Google the default search engine on Apple’s Safari browser on all of its devices. Google has been paying Apple for this default search engine status since 2002. Google’s payments have increased significantly over the years, rising to about $20 billion in 2022.
Apple had requested to participate in the trial to defend its partnership with Google. Reuters I mentioned. In a filing this week, Cue explained the motivation behind the deal, including why Apple would use Google’s search engine rather than create its own.
He gave three main reasons:
- Developing a search engine “would cost billions of dollars and take many years,” Q said in the filing. This will shift staff and capital investments away from other growth areas of the company, he added.
- Research is “evolving rapidly” alongside artificial intelligence, and investing in it now would be “economically risky,” Keogh said.
- Search engines require a platform to sell targeted ads, and that’s not a core part of Apple’s business, Keogh said. Apple also doesn’t have the staff or operational infrastructure needed to build a successful search advertising business, he said. He said that would conflict with Apple’s “long-standing privacy commitments.”
Keough said the Justice Department incorrectly assumed that without reaching an agreement with Google, Apple would create its own search engine. That’s unlikely, regardless of the outcome of the case, Keogh said. He warned that if the Department of Justice blocks the revenue-sharing deal between Google and Apple, it “will hamper Apple’s ability to continue to provide products that best serve the needs of its users.”
Cue also highlighted the revenue-sharing agreements Apple has with other search engines. These include deals that give Yahoo! Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia provide access to Apple users’ search queries in Safari.
In 2018, Apple considered buying Microsoft’s Bing search engine or investing in a multibillion-dollar deal to allow Bing to complement some of Google’s dominance on Apple devices. CNBC reported In 2023. But the deal, which could have tarnished Apple’s relationship with Google, ultimately did not happen, according to the report.