The Google antitrust case — which seeks to make Google sell off its Chrome browser — has taken another very interesting turn. Apple has decided to step in to defend Google, or at least the deal the two companies made, because it believes the latter to be incapable of properly defending Apple’s interests.This is specifically about the agreement between Google and Apple where the former pays billions of Dollars each year for its search engine to be the default choice on Apple’s apps. In 2022 it was revealed that Google had paid Apple $20 billion to keep its search engine as the default across Safari.
This deal is understandably quite profitable for Apple: all it has to do is set the world’s most popular search engine as the default on its browser. While Google has to pay a ton of money for the privilege it is clearly well worth the investment if it keeps doing so. Prosecutors are arguing that this deal, in addition to other practices Google employs, are anticompetitive.
I seriously cannot imagine a Chrome browser that is not owned by Google. | Image credit — Getty Images
Apple argues that Google will be too busy defending other larger aspects of its business to pay this deal much mind during the trial. As such the company plans to bring in its own witnesses to court, likely to argue that the deal was an independent business decision.Google is currently throwing out various compromises like agreeing to split search engines between iPhone and iPad. The company also wants the courts to reduce the ban on this deal from 10 years to only three: citing the tech industry’s extremely fast-paced growth.This antitrust case is a massive one and seeks to make Google not only sell its Chrome browser but also to alter other aspects of its search engine and business model. There were plans to force Google to sell off Android as well but officials deemed that to be too aggressive. Google is also to be banned from re-entering the browser market after it sells off Chrome.Apple’s decision to defend Google is hardly a result of kinship between the two companies. It has everything to lose if this deal is dismantled because it will probably keep Google as the default search engine anyway.
This is a very spicy case and I’m quite anxious to see how it ends.
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