Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, is scheduled to spend Tuesday, September 26, testifying in a federal court case involving Google.
In the lawsuit, the US Department of Justice accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the search engine market by means of exclusive license arrangements. Specifically, the billions of dollars Google pays Apple to set its search engine as the default on the iPhone's browser and other settings are being looked at.
A Bernstein estimate puts Google's potential payment to Apple at $19 billion for the current fiscal year.
Apple's Negotiator With Google
According to CNBC, Cue serves as Apple's negotiator with Google. He is anticipated to testify that Google's product was the finest, which is why Apple made it the default search engine on the iPhone. According to a source familiar with Cue's planned testimony, he would also claim that Apple lacks a need to develop its search engine since Google already exists.
The Apple executive will also claim that the company shares income with other search engines, including Yahoo, Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia, and that Apple customers may choose the default search provider.
One of the most high-profile transactions in the tech industry has been kept secret for the last decade, but that might change if the witnesses testify. One of Google's largest expenses is the sum it pays Apple for default placement, while a sizable chunk of Apple's revenues come from advertising income collected from Google.
Advertising income, which includes the money Apple receives from Google, amounted to $78.1 billion in revenues for Apple's services division in fiscal 2022.
In 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Google's default search engine is the best.
Against Anti-Monopoly Laws
The justice department claims that by entering into exclusive arrangements with mobile phone manufacturers for its Android operating system and browser vendors for default placement, Google has violated anti-monopoly legislation. The government claims that this approach impedes the ability of new search engines to enter the market.
Before the trial began earlier this month, Google said it regarded licensing agreements as a common business practice that gets its products to customers and improves user experience. Google claims Android and Apple phone users may simply change their default search engines.
Machine learning executive at Apple John Giannandrea testified last week, as per Bloomberg's report. He discussed a new search engine setting in the most recent version of iOS. He previously worked on Google's search engine before joining Apple.
