Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirms company pays Apple over $10 billion a year for Search

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the company pays Apple 36 per cent of Safari search revenue. Basically, it is paying to be the default search engine on Apple devices. Pichai confirmed this during the ongoing antitrust case in the US filed by Fortnite game publisher Epic Games.

The details were revealed by a Google expert during the Washington DC antitrust trial. It was later confirmed by Pichai, according to a CNBC report. Epic Games attorney accused Google for paying Samsung less than half of what it pays to Apple for the same thing. Pichai revealed that this was ‘possible’. He stated, “It is like apples and oranges” and emphasised on the diverse nature of agreements. However, he added that Google still “competes fiercely with Apple”.

The Epic Games attorney also asked Pichai about the exact amount it pays to Apple to which Pichai revealed that it was over $10 billion. The Epic Games attorney pushed back by stating that it was $18 billion.

Pichai had recently visited Washington DC to take the stand in a case where Epic Games had alleged that Google had stifled the competition and innovation by abusing the power of its dominant search engine.

Pichai had stated, “We enable more affordable smartphones." He said Google gives Android to Samsung and other smartphone manufacturers for free in exchange for putting the company's search engine and other services, such as its Play Store, on the devices. He added that it "is very different from what Apple does."

Google has been facing two lawsuits for the anti–competitive practices in the US Justice Department. The company also faces allegations from Epic for illegally maintaining a monopoly over app distribution through its Google Play Store.

In addition to this, Pichai had also announced that Android has not excelled in the tablets department. During the trial, Pichai said, “One time we launched a tablet which didn’t have all the compelling apps that Apple had, and it was listed as a shortcoming and affected our success in the market.” Back in 2019, it was reported that Google had scrapped two tablets and had reassigned employees working on tablets to other projects.

Currently, Google has one tablet called Pixel tablet and a foldable smartphone called Pixel Fold.

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