The judge makes an important change to the Google-Apple default search deal and others like it
On Friday, Judge Mehta finalized the restrictions he placed on Google as a result of his August 2024 ruling that found Google's search unit to be a monopoly. One of the rulings made by the judge must have been a hard one to make. Even though Google's search business violated U.S. antitrust laws, the company will be allowed to continue paying companies to be the default search engine on certain devices.
Google reportedly pays Apple $20 billion a year to be the default search engine for the Safari browser on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. The deal is structured like a revenue sharing agreement. In 2023, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai testified under oath that Google pays Apple 36% of Safari's search revenue from those devices. There is a new development based on Judge Mehta's finalized restrictions.
A committee will help decide which rivals will receive search data from Google
The judge is now preventing Google from entering into any more deals similar to the one it has with Apple to provide the default search tool on its devices "unless the agreement terminates no more than one year after the date it is entered." So, no more multi-year contracts will be allowed for these deals. This is potentially big because with the promise of new negotiations taking place every year, a deep pocketed company like Microsoft could out bid Google and become the default search engine on Apple iPhones, iPads, and Macs via Safari.
Judge Amit Mehta has left the door open for a Google rival to become default search engine on Apple devices. | Image credit-The Famous Info
The ruling also affects deals that involve generative artificial intelligence products, and any "application, software, service, feature, tool, functionality, or product" that deals with genAI or large language models (LLM).
In his August 2024 ruling, Judge Mehta said that Google was forced to share certain search data to qualified competitors. This data includes a one-time snapshot of Google's Search Index. This is the huge database consisting of URLs and web pages collected by Google. With this data, competitors, including AI rivals like OpenAI and Perplexity, can deliver a competitive search engine without having to start from scratch.
The judge said on Friday that a a technical committee will decide which companies Google must share its search data with. Mehta said that "members shall be experts in some combination of software engineering, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, economics, behavioral science, and data privacy and data security. To prevent any call about a conflict of interest, committee members cannot have worked for Google or any of its competitors during the six months before and for one year after sitting on the panel.
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Google is lucky that it doesn't have to divest itself of Chrome
Google also must share user-interaction metrics consisting of Queries (What users type into the search box) and Clicks (Which links users click on in the search results). This information could help Google's search rivals deliver better performing results closing any gap between their search engines and Google's search engine. The Queries and Clicks allow
the rival search firms to train their algorithms to generate better and more relevant results.
Google has said in the past that it will appeal the ruling that its search unit is a monopoly. That is the right thing for a company in the same position to do. But Google has to be aware that big tech firms have had to deal with animosity from lawmakers and the media. As a result, the company is lucky that it wasn't forced to spin off Chrome. At one time there was even talk that Google could be forced to divest its Android unit. Overall, if 2024 was rough for Google, the company has been lucky in 2025.
Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
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