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The earth-shaking antitrust lawsuit against Google is still ongoing. During the court battle, a ton of tea has been spilled about the inner workings of Google and how it stays at the top of the search market. Among the revelations, we found out that Google had once suggested pre-loading Search on iOS.
We already know about Google’s and Apple’s close partnership. A partnership mostly held behind closed doors, it sees Google paying Apple $18 billion each year to make Google the default search engine on iOS. In fact, each respective company’s CEO (Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook) meets each year to talk about the deal.
Google wanted to pre-install Search on iOS
This is a tight-knit deal, and it’s been going on for some time, as the case revealed. Well, in 2018, Pichai suggested to Cook that Google Search be pre-installed on iOS devices. Also, the company would support the app for – get this- 20 years. Cook declined the offer, as iPhones don’t come with third-party applications built-in.
Had this deal gone through, it would have meant a ton of revenue for Google. Most people go onto the web to search for something. Well, instead of going to Safari or any other browser, people’s first destination would be the Google app. So, more people would have navigated right to the Google app and cut out the middleman; they wouldn’t go to the browser where they could possibly use any other search engine.
During the case, as you can imagine, this didn’t sit well with folks. Many could see it as an anti-competitive move. Cementing Google Search inside of the most popular series of phones on the planet would mean that other search engines just wouldn’t have a chance.
Right now, Google is in hot water as it is, so it’s fortunate for the company that this didn’t go through. However, it’s still interesting to imagine how things would have been.
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