When an economic professor revealed how much Google pays to be Apple’s dominant search engine, Google’s main litigator visibly cringed
According to new details revealed in Google’s search antitrust trial on Monday, Google pays Apple 36% of its search advertising revenue from Safari. The mere mention of the number, which Google and Apple have attempted to keep secret, caused Google’s lead litigator, John Schmidtlein, to cringe visibly. As reported by Bloomberg.
“Like the revenue share percentage itself, they are a commercially sensitive part of the financial terms of an agreement currently in effect,” Google stated in a filing last week, hoping to keep the true figure hidden from public scrutiny.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, testified in October that the company does not have a monopoly in search, but is simply better than competitors.
In contrast, Kevin Murphy, a University of Chicago economics professor, revealed that Google pays more than a third of its advertising revenue on Safari as part of a deal to be Apple’s default search engine.
In October, the court learned that Google paid $26 billion to be the default search engine on multiple phones and browsers in 2021, with $18 billion going to Apple.
According to Google’s court filing last week, the Department of Justice did not even want to unseal this number. Murphy, who was summoned by Google to defend the multibillion-dollar search agreements, appears to have let this one slip. Murphy claimed that these agreements were commonplace in the search industry.
According to Reuters, Murphy stated:
“The payments that Google makes reflect that competition.”
It’s common knowledge that Google and Apple split revenue, but not to this extent. In his testimony, Pichai stated that the search engine strived to provide users with a “seamless and easy” experience, even if it meant paying exorbitant fees to do so.
Court documents released this month reveal the top 20 queries for which Google earns the most money, including “iPhone,” “Auto insurance,” “Hulu,” and “AARP.”