Google

Google has for years made billions of dollars worth of payments to Apple in return for being the default search engine on Apple devices. A court ruling yesterday appears to have declared those payments illegal under antitrust law.

But while that would be a setback to the company’s impressive Services revenue, in the scheme of things it wouldn’t amount to much more than a blip …

A federal judge today ruled that Google’s deals with Apple and other companies to be the default search engine violated antitrust law. As reported by Bloomberg, Judge Amit Mehta concluded that these agreements reduced competition in the search industry, giving Google an unfair advantage.

Reddit is now blocking all search engines except Google from indexing its site as it effectively implements a paywall for AI training.

Back in February, it was revealed that Google was paying Reddit more than $60M a year to get access to user posts to help train its AI models …

Google’s dominance of the search industry is the target of an ongoing Justice Department investigation – and its relationship with Apple is a key component of that case. A new report from The Information today focuses on how Google is racing to reduce its reliance on Apple’s Safari browser ahead of the potential outcome of the antitrust case.

Apple’s ad transparency tools aren’t sufficient to investigate issues like paid influence, says a new report, which also scored the effectiveness of 11 other tech companies’ tools.

Five companies – including social network X and Microsoft’s Bing search engine – scored close to zero, while Apple got a yellow rating indicating “big gaps” in the information provided …

On Sunday night, Bloomberg reported that Apple is in talks with Google about licensing its Gemini technology to power some AI features coming to the iPhone. A new report from The New York Times today echoes those claims, citing “three people with knowledge of the discussions” between Apple and Google.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that for age-restricted apps, age verification should be Apple’s job. He’s now been joined in this view by the new head of trust and safety at Match, the company behind leading dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish.

Yoel Roth – who formerly had the same role in Twitter – said that Apple and Google are in a better position to accurately assess the age of their smartphone users …

The long-awaited Reddit IPO is finally official, as the company formally notified the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of its plans to take the company public on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol RDDT.

Reddit has also revealed that the controversial $60M/year deal to provide access to user-generated content to an AI company was with Google …

Yesterday saw an Epic Games victory in its court case against Google, a jury finding that the Play Store was indeed operated in an anti-competitive fashion.

This is despite the fact that Epic mostly lost a near-identical case against Apple back in 2021. The differing conclusions in the two cases puts Apple back under pressure …

Update: Apple issued the following statement to 9to5Mac:

Apple is committed to transparency and we have long been a supporter of efforts to ensure that providers are able to disclose as much information as possible to their users. In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information and now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests

Apple has confirmed that foreign governments have been carrying out what has been described as “push notification spying,” stating that the company was not previously allowed to disclose the practice.

Governments have been serving both Apple and Google with secret legal orders to hand over details of the push notifications sent to iPhones and Android smartphones …

An analysis of LinkedIn profiles in the tech industry reveals that the most popular destination for former Apple employees is Google.

Unsurprisingly, it also shows people making the switch in the opposite direction, though Apple employees are most likely to have come from Intel, Microsoft, or Amazon …

Apple and Google should be held legally responsible for gatekeeping app downloads by teenagers, suggests Facebook and Instagram developer Meta.

The proposal to shift legal responsibility comes as social media platforms face increasing legal battles from parents and lawmakers alike …

Apple and Google will be made responsible for paying Japanese sales tax on apps and in-app content sold by developers based outside the country, the government has said.

There are two different routes the companies could take to comply with the new policy …

As the Justice Department’s antitrust trial against Google unfolds, we’re learning more about the secretive agreement between Apple and Google over Safari’s default search engine. It turns out Google gives Apple a 36% cut of its search ad revenue generated through Safari.

AAPL’s share price dropped by 11% since the company’s last earnings report in August, losing more than $400B in market capitalization. The fall is discussed a couple of days ahead of Apple’s next earnings report, on Thursday.

A new report notes that this is the first time in eight years that the company’s share price has dropped between WWDC and fiscal Q4 earnings report …

As the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google continues, more details about the company’s relationship with Apple have emerged. This time, testimony from Google CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed that Google once pitched Tim Cook on building a version of the Google Search app that would come pre-loaded on every iPhone.

Update: Google wanted to keep the sum confidential, but a judge just ordered that the total sum paid – across Apple and other platforms – should be disclosed in the ongoing antitrust case. More at the bottom.

A new report says that the growing size of the Google payment to Apple to remain the default search engine on Apple devices concerned senior execs at the search giant – and they wanted to use EU law as a mechanism to reduce it …

While the Department of Justice has accused Google of a range of anti-competitive behaviors, the judge in the case has said that the Apple search payment is “the heart” of the matter.

The implication is clear. If that deal is illegal, then Google will lose the case, and the company may have to be broken up. Conversely, if the court finds that the payment was legal, then Google likely wins, as the other charges are comparatively minor …

The Google search payment – the annual amount Google pays to Apple in return for being the default search engine in Safari – reportedly makes up 14-16% of the Cupertino company’s total profits.

With that payment now threatened by the antitrust case against Google, Bernstein analysts look at what that could mean for Apple …