Apple Wants to Help Google Defend Search Engine Deal Worth Billions

Apple wants to defend its multi-billion dollar search engine deal with Google, which is in danger because Google has been found guilty of violating antitrust law. Apple has asked the court handling Google's lawsuit with the U.S. government for an emergency stay [PDF], so that Apple has time to intervene and plead its case before a remedy is decided on.

Google Logo Feature Slack
The U.S. Department of Justice sued Google for anti-competitve behavior in the search market way back in 2020, and after a lengthy legal battle, the DoJ won. A main component of the lawsuit was Google's deal with Apple, which sees Google pay billions annually to be the default search engine for Safari. The court decided that the agreement between Apple and Google violated antitrust law, and is a major reason Google has been able to maintain its search engine monopoly.

The U.S. government asked the court to bar Google from entering into contracts with Apple, among other restrictions, and that will cost Apple a lot of money. In 2022, for example, Google paid Apple $20 billion. Apple already asked the court to allow it to be more involved in the case as remedies are decided on, and the court denied the request due to timing. Apple appealed the decision, and is asking for a stay while the appeal plays out.

Apple says that because its deal with Google is at stake, it deserves a right to participate, and without a stay, it will "suffer clear and substantial irreparable harm."

Apple will be unable to participate in discovery and develop evidence in the targeted fashion it has proposed as this litigation progresses toward a final judgment. If Apple's appeal is not resolved until during or after the remedies trial, Apple may well be forced to stand mute at trial, as a mere spectator, while the government pursues an extreme remedy that targets Apple by name and would prohibit any commercial arrangement between Apple and Google for a decade.

In addition to prohibiting deals between Apple and Google, the U.S. Department of Justice also has more extreme remedies in mind, including forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser and uncoupling Android from other products like Google Search and the Google Play Store. Google has a lot to defend against, and will prioritize Chrome over its deal with Apple.

When initially asking to take a larger role in the case, Apple said that Google "can no longer adequately represent Apple's interests" because of the wide scope of the case. Unsurprisingly, the DoJ does not want Apple involved in the remedies portion of the trial, which is set to start in April.

If the court decides that Google can't pay Apple to be the default search engine on Safari, Apple would still have to offer Google Search as an option in some capacity, but would not be able to continue to collect money for doing so.

Popular Stories

iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon: New Features for Your iPhone and Release Date

Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1. Release Date Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
iOS 26

6 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 26.1

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:22 am PDT by
Apple is about to drop iOS 26.1, the first major point release since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least six notable changes and improvements to look forward to. We've rounded them up below. Apple has already provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 26.1, which means Apple will likely roll out the update to all compatible...
maxresdefault

Apple TV 4K Could Still Launch Before 2025 Ends: All the Rumored Features

Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors. ...
iOS 26

Apple Seeds iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS Tahoe 26.1 Release Candidates

Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:07 pm PDT by
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1, tvOS 26.1, watchOS 26.1, and visionOS 26.1 updates for testing purposes. The RCs betas come a week after Apple released the fourth betas. The new betas can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software...
M6 MacBook Pro Feature 1

M6 MacBook Pro: Release Date, Pricing, and What to Expect

Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
macos tahoe

Here Are Apple's Release Notes for macOS Tahoe 26.1

Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:21 pm PDT by
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of macOS Tahoe 26.1, which means the update will likely see a public launch next week. The release candidate includes notes on what's in the update, so we have a full picture of the new features that Apple has included. macOS Tahoe 26.1 adds AutoMix support over AirPlay, improved FaceTime audio...
iPhone Car Key Kia

Another Vehicle Brand Gaining iPhone Car Keys Support

Tuesday October 28, 2025 5:27 am PDT by
Apple is preparing to bring support for its digital car key feature to Jetour vehicles, according to evidence uncovered on Apple's backend by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris. Introduced in 2022, Car Keys allows an iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock a vehicle through the Wallet app. A digital version of a car key is stored in Wallet, and unlocking can be done by holding an Apple Watch or...
iPhone 17 Pro Cosmic Orange

8 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's iPhone 18 Pro

Thursday October 30, 2025 4:42 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. One thing worth...
ipad mini 7 feature blue

OLED iPad Mini: Release Date, Pricing, and What to Expect

Wednesday October 29, 2025 7:13 am PDT by
Rumors are stoking excitement for the next-generation iPad mini that Apple is reportedly close to launching. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released over a year ago? Read on to find out. Processor and Performance Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to...

Top Rated Comments

Blackstick Avatar
10 months ago
Tl;dr, Apple stands to lose a lot of money from Google per year if the case doesn’t go their way.

Funny thing is, this money is about one single line in the Safari code.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sw1tcher Avatar
10 months ago
Apple wants to defend its multi-billion dollar search engine deal with Google...
This is stating the obvious. Why would Apple want to give up the ~$20 billion per year? That's free money.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Google for anti-competitve behavior in the search market way back in 2020, and after a lengthy legal battle, the DoJ won.
The old DoJ won. The new DoJ which is undergoing a leadership change could drop the case, hence all the moves by the big tech companies and their CEOs over the past few months
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jz0309 Avatar
10 months ago
I can understand Apples desire, but, on the other hand, Google dominance in search is not healthy and it’s all ad and tracking based.
Popcorn out, will be interesting to watch
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
vantelimus Avatar
10 months ago

I wonder what the ROI on that $20B is, that's sick.
If probably costs Apple a couple thousand dollars on administrative minutia per year. So, ROI is on the order of magnitude of 1 billion percent. Of course, that plummets to an order of magnitude of only 100,000% once expensive lawyers get involved. IOW, the numbers here are crazy.


I switch everything to DuckDuckGo, honestly though I usually just ask GPT first now. I guess the next thing will be 'default LLM' for Apple Intelligence.
Your observation that you use GPT is the key one here. We are in the process of having search engines replaced by a new technology. Even if we grant that Google has had a monopoly by dint of this deal with Apple -- which I do not -- that advantage is now being eliminated by market competition from AI.

This is a key issue with antitrust in the age of exponential technology growth. By the time governments identify, build, and prosecute a case against a monopoly, the conditions of the market may have changed to the point that the intervention is either unnecessary or ineffective. The government can only act after a monopoly has been established for a long enough period of time that it doesn’t appear to be just a temporary fluctuation in the market. Nowadays, due to the pace of growth, by the time the government can act and prosecute, technology has already advanced to a point that the monopoly is being broken by competition from innovative competitors.

We've seen this multiple times now. AI started to replace search engines even while the DoJ argued against search-engine monopolies. Internet Explorer had already been eclipsed by Firefox, with Chrome on the rise by the time the EU forced Microsoft to allow a different default browser, not to mention that desktop browsers were rapidly being eclipsed by mobile-computing browsers. In more recent years, Facebook was seen to be a rising monopoly in social media, particularly after its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. By the time the government started considering action to break up Facebook, TikTok was already disrupting the market.

Ultimately, antitrust enforcement in the digital age risks being either too late to matter or unnecessary altogether. If legal action cannot match the speed of technological change, market forces become the only truly effective check on monopoly power.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gaximus Avatar
10 months ago
It would be stupid of them NOT to want to help.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
9081094 Avatar
10 months ago

This is stating the obvious. Why would Apple want to give up the ~$20 billion per year? That's free money.
Imagine if Apple put all that money to work or maybe even a fraction of it…

Siri would have brains; iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS and all the other OS-es Apple will come up would be state of the art and stable available in all languages at the same time.

Their pro software like Final Cut Pro, motion, logic etc. would get regular updates and the choice for moviemakers.

Their consumer software like pages, numbers, keynote, iMovie would get regular updates and enjoy a greater audience.

It’s a pity Timmy is more focused on paying dividends to shareholders instead of making great products again.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)