| I thought it was universally understood that Apple has been working toward ending its dependency on Google Search for about a decade. One can witness the firepower of Apple's fully armed and operational search engine today, which is hidden in plain sight: https://imgur.com/a/SThluBm. That said, Apple should not end its Google Search partnership until one of the following occurs: (1) it's strategically important for Apple to provide Safari's default search engine, (2) a government mandates that Google can no longer pay (or pay Apple) for the privilege of being Safari's default search engine, or (3) people stop preferring Google search by a wide margin. (1) Making Apple Search the default for Safari would cost Apple $20 million per year, but could open up a bunch of new revenue streams and potentially provide a much better search experience for Apple users (especially if Apple's GPT partner isn't Google). (2) If the EU mandates that Google can no longer pay-to-play in general, or can't do so with Apple in particular, no problem. Users will choose their search engine on a platform where Apple has a home-field advantage. (3) In the extremely unlikely event that Google goes from hero to zero in search, boom — Apple Search is ready. In summary, this is a terrible time for Apple to stop taking Google's money. They should wait until the GenAI players settle down, until the advertising part of the business matures and can capitalize on the change, and until governments stop looking for limbs to chop off. |
$20B is a 1/6th of their operating margin for very little effort.
[1] this was revealed in the recent anti trust trial