Google has long paid Apple a huge amount of money to keep its search engine the default on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. In an attempt to keep Microsoft out of the way, the Mountain Viewers would be willing to substantially increase this year's pay , although this could trigger a series of problems with regulatory bodies.
According to Bernstein analysts, with data based on Apple's public filings and bottom-up analysis of Google's TAC payments, the search company would pay Apple $ 15 billion . This is a marked increase in relation to the 10 billion dollars paid in 2020. But that's not all, the sum could rise to 18,000 million dollars or 20,000 million dollars in 2022.
Analyst Toni Sacconaghi, quoted in the source's article, says Google is likely “paying to make sure Microsoft doesn't outbid .” In other words, the Mountain Viewers want to make sure that the Redmond people don't even intend to snatch the place of the default search engine, although, going forward, the picture could change.
Google's intentions are clearer in light of data provided by the United States Department of Justice. These were obtained after a lawsuit against the company for abuse of a dominant position. In October 2020 it was known that almost half of the search engine traffic comes from Apple devices, undoubtedly a very important flow of users for the company.
Will the agreement between Google and Apple?
Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash As for the unfavorable repercussions, Google's payment to Apple could put the company back in the sights of regulators . In the event of an adverse judgment, Bernstein notes, the Cupertino's gross earnings could be negatively impacted between 4% and 5%. However, they do not believe that this will happen immediately.
The other problem is that Google chooses to renegotiate the deal with Apple to try to pay less. In addition, in the worst case scenario, it could completely deactivate the agreement leaving the Cupertino with an important flow of money absent, but with the possibility of agreeing with another giant like Microsoft.
