It seems that Google has no problem distributing money to make sure it remains the chosen search engine. Documents displayed the company offers financial incentives to smartphone makers to keep their app store in the center and pays developers to offer their games on Google Play. The company also pays Apple a hefty sum to remain the default value of the company’s Safari browser—This year, it is estimated to be about $ 15 billion.
This number comes from Bernstein analysts, who waits Google will fork so much to preserve your status on Apple devices. The quantity it is likely to increase to about $ 20 billion by 2022. These estimates are based on the patterns of the latest available financial documents of the two companies. And unless something changes significantly next year, Google is likely to continue to pay many billions to stay ahead of iOS users.
Jane Horvath, Apple’s senior director of global privacy, dit earlier this year that the company breaches Google because is the most popular search engine. I Safari allows you to switch from Google to another search engine if you wish.
It seems that Apple and Google have a kind of symbiotic relationship as a result of this agreement. Google’s large payment technically corresponds to Apple’s services division, that has it certainly helped Apple increase that revenue line over the years. This is useful as the company has diversified its business beyond hardware.
Considering the word “antitrust” floats for Google as a wandering fruit analysts point out that this deal can be considered a regulatory risk. If considered a test of Google’s anti-competitive practices, Bernstein analysts estimate it would cost Apple a potential 4-5% reduction in gross revenue. Google could also decide to stop paying Apple altogether, but analysts believe this will not happen, as Google “is likely to pay to ensure Microsoft doesn’t overdo it.”
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Google still gets most of its revenue from advertising revenue. The company published a record profit of $ 61.9 billion, led by the search, which earned $ 7 billion alone. But it’s not clear exactly how much Safari brings to Google’s end result and if it pays billions from Apple it’s really worth it when the alternative is … Bing.