AI-based search options may come to Safari across Apple’s platforms.
At least that was what Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior VP for services, testified in the Ministry of Justice’s lawsuit against Alphabet Inc. The trial is over Google’s monopoly of search and whether it broke the antitrust law. One of the ways it is said to have done this is by paying Apple to maintain its position as a standard search engine in Safari (realistically the only web browser for over a billion iPhone users).
Last year, the court found that Google acted as a monopolist and claimed it “has served as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated section 2 of the Sherman Act.” Now, Google is in court again to discuss exactly what the means should be – will the alphabet/Google’s properties be broken apart? If so, how?
In his court appearance, Eddy Cue noted the Safari search agreement with Google and where things are on the way, according to a Bloomberg report. Cue said Apple “actively looking at” that changes the way search works in Safari to focus on AI-powered search engines. Searches actually dipped on Safari last month for the first time, he said, which he attributed to people who got their answers from AI. Cue said he believes that AI-based search products like those from confusion, anthropic and Openai will eventually replace the standard search from Google. He expects to add them as search providers to Safari in the future and add: “We will add them to the list – they probably won’t be standard.”
Cue said the products still need to be improved before it happens. He said it was a natural choice to make Google the standard search because the other search engines were valid choices. “I think there is much greater potential today because there are new participants who attack the problem in a different way,” he added.
Meanwhile, Google is moving ahead quickly to incorporate AI into its search results and will soon debut a new “AI mode” for its search. Generally, it seems that the public doesn’t like AI things that are deployed in search results and the only feedback we see is that “Google is ruining search” and that more people just get answers to things they need from social media instead.
Google had a chance to be AI partner for Apple Intelligence in iOS 18 instead of Openais Chatgpt. There was a “bake-off” between the two, but Google’s period sheets, he says, “had a lot of things that Apple would not agree on and did not agree with Openai.” Google is widely refined to become an opportunity for extended AI features in iOS 19, giving users a choice between chatgpt, gemini and maybe others.
The following section of Bloomberg’s story is bright:
Still, [Cue] believes that Google should remain standard in Safari and says he has lost sleep over the possibility of losing the income share from their agreement. He said Apple’s deal with Google today on regular search still has the best financial terms.
This description of the procedure makes it sound like CUE thinks that AI search, even if it is not good enough right now, is the future and will soon be better for most users. But billions of dollars google pay to be standard is too good to give up.