Camera Vilde M. Horvei / Tek.no
When you open the Safari browser on a Mac or iPhone, Google helps you find what you’re looking for. This is because Google pays Apple to be the default search engine on all their devices.
Now it has emerged that Google paid a staggering $20 billion to be Apple users’ “first choice” when searching online.
And that only for 2022, reports Apple Insider. It also appears that the sum increased sharply in previous years.
Today, the sum corresponds to around NOK 221 billion, or roughly the same amount as the budget for operating the entire public health service in Norway.
Originally, the arrangement was a collaboration between Apple and Google, at no cost to either party.
Apple didn’t want “Bing”
The information comes out in a lawsuit the US competition authorities have brought against Google. They should also have been confirmed via witness statements from Eddy Cue, a high-ranking executive at Apple with responsibility for the company’s services.
Other details are also revealed in the court documents:
Like Microsoft trying to take over as the standard search engine with its Bing by offering Apple 90 percent of the advertising revenue as compensation.
Microsoft is also said to have offered to sell Bing to Apple in 2020.
Apple, as we now know, was not interested.
Which search engine do you prefer?
Google is shrinking
Recently, Bing has gone from being a search engine many shadows away, to a service more people want to test.
Last year, Bing became the first search engine with AI-based search results, which, among other things, helped you find information with a more natural language, and without visiting the source websites to find answers.
According to Statista, which measures the use of various search engines, Bing had a market share of 10.5 percent in January. Two years earlier, in 2022, the proportion was down to 7.6 per cent. In the same time period, Google’s market share fell, which is still by far the world’s most popular search engine with almost 82 percent of the market. At its peak, Google had a share of almost 92 percent of all web searches.
Today, Bing is the only significant rival to Google. Smaller options include services like Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, the latter of which focuses on delivering search results without tracking you.
How to change search engine
If you want to change the default search engine, you can do so by going to “Settings” and “Search” from Safari on Mac.
On the iPhone, you will find the choice under “Settings”, “Safari” and “Search engine”.
