The recent antitrust case against Google has shed light on the company’s dominance in the search engine market. The 286-page opinion, written by Judge Amit Mehta, reveals the extent of Google’s control and the challenges faced by its competitors.
Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, testified that there is no meaningful alternative to Google as the default search engine in Safari. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to maintain this status, and Apple has calculated that it would cost $6 billion annually to run a general search engine (GSE) on its own.
The opinion highlights Google’s monopoly power in the search engine market. The company’s contracts with Apple, cell carriers, and device manufacturers ensure that it remains the default search engine on most devices. Google’s partners cannot afford to switch to alternative search engines, as they would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
• Google pays Apple a percentage of its net ad revenue, which amounted to $20 billion in 2022.
• Apple has calculated that it would cost $6 billion annually to run a GSE.
• Google’s contracts with its partners ensure that it remains the default search engine on most devices.