Apple Argues No Need for Google Search Replacement on iPhones

The services chief of Apple Inc., who is scheduled to testify in Washington on Tuesday, intends to justify the profitable agreement that designated Google’s search engine as the default option on the iPhone. They will argue that this decision was in the best interest of consumers.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of services and the architect of the deal, takes the stand in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google, which the government says used its dominant position in search to prevent competition. Cue is going to say that he has always believed that Google makes the best search engine – and that is why Apple uses it as the main option in its most important devices – a person who knows his expected testimony.

Google pays Apple billions of dollars for this prominent position in products like the iPhone, making the deal particularly interesting to the government. The question is whether the search giant made inroads into Apple’s devices at the expense of competitors.

In his testimony, Cue plans to emphasize that Apple makes it easier for consumers to switch their primary search engine. The company also sees no need to develop its own search tool, because Google is clearly the best option, he says. It differs from the company’s approach in other areas: It competes with Google in mapping software and voice assistants, as well as operating systems for phones and computers.

Cue is expected to highlight that Apple has search arrangements with other companies that offer non-default options built into the Safari internet browser. This includes Microsoft Corp.’s Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. Similar to the deal with Google, Apple gets a share of the advertising revenue when users choose those search engines as their primary choice in Safari.

Apple and Google entered into their original arrangement in 2002. This made Google the default choice in the Safari browser that first launched on the Mac. The companies updated their agreement in 2005, 2007 and 2016, and Cue is expected to testify that several changes have been made in recent years.

Last week, Apple’s machine learning manager John Giannandrea also testified. The executive, who led search at Google before joining Apple in 2018, pointed to a new feature in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 — the latest iPhone and iPad software — that allows users to set a different default search engine for private browsing. This means consumers can more easily switch between Google and another alternative.

The case is US v. Google, 20-cv-3010, US District Court, District of Columbia.