GoKawiilIn a filing made today appealing the antitrust ruling against its search business, Google argues that its long-running deal with Apple reflects lawful competition, not anticompetitive exclusion. Here are the details.
A bit of context
In August 2024, the Department of Justice won its antitrust case against Google, with the court finding that the company had illegally maintained monopolies in general search and search advertising.
From Judge Amit Mehta’s conclusion:
After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
The case then moved to the remedies phase, where the court considered what restrictions should be imposed on Google’s search business, now that it had been found to be a monopoly.
One of the most closely watched questions throughout the proceedings was what would happen to Apple’s search agreement with Google.
The terms of the deal became clearer during the case: Apple set Google as the default search engine in Safari on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, in exchange for 36% of the search advertising revenue generated through Safari.
In practice, as court documents revealed, Google paid Apple around $20 billion in 2022 alone.
When the remedies phase concluded, Judge Mehta allowed Google to keep paying Apple for default placement in Safari, but imposed new limits on those agreements.
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