Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be Safari’s default search engine

Google’s Alphabet paid Apple US$20 billion in 2022 to be Safari’s default search engine according to newly unsealed court documents in the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, reports Bloomberg.

The DoJ has accused Google of having a monopoly on search. In its lawsuit against Google, the Safari search engine deal has been listed as evidence of that monopoly. The $20 billion deal isn’t likely to help Googles case.

That said, in February a class-action lawsuit against Apple and Google that suggested the company CEOs met in secret to collude on the suppression of the search market was dismissed by a judge in California. The lawsuit said that Google struck a deal making its search engine the default on Apple’s Safari web browser specifically to keep Apple from competing in the general search market. 

These payments to Apple, the lawsuit alleged, have “stunted innovation” and “deprived” users of “quality, service, and privacy that they otherwise would have enjoyed but for Google’s anticompetitive conduct.” California Judge Rita Lin has dismissed all claims made by the plaintiffs but left the opportunity for one claim to be amended for reexamination.