Google lost the lawsuit, Apple lost 15% of its profit!

Google lost the lawsuit, and Apple also became a loser.

On August 5th local time, a U.S. court ruled that Google's search business violated U.S. antitrust laws, with the plaintiff, the U.S. Department of Justice, winning the case. This case is the largest antitrust case in the United States in over twenty years, potentially overturning Google's dominant position in the search market for decades. As a key partner of Google, Apple is also significantly affected.

The U.S. Department of Justice accused Google of paying over a hundred billion U.S. dollars to companies like Apple each year to maintain its default search engine position. Court documents from the U.S. antitrust case show that under the agreement, Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 alone, making Google the default search engine on Safari browsers on iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

This substantial income is of great significance to Apple, as losing this revenue would impact approximately 15% of the company's pre-tax profits. Analysts at Evercore ISI, Amit Daryanani, stated in a report that this revenue ($20 billion) almost entirely belongs to pre-tax profits, and without this income, Apple's pre-tax profits would face a 15% earnings headwind. Daryanani added that this is a case he believes could pose a substantial risk to Apple.

The judgment by U.S. Federal Judge Amit Mehta, who presided over this case, clearly stated that Google's agreements with companies like Apple were anti-competitive. The case began in 2020 when the U.S. Department of Justice, along with attorneys general from 52 states and jurisdictions, jointly sued Google, accusing Google of paying billions to companies like Apple and Samsung, tech peers, smartphone manufacturers, and wireless carriers in exchange for setting Google search as the default choice on phones and web browsers.

However, it is currently uncertain what penalties Google will face and the specific impact of this ruling on Google's cooperation with Apple. A previous article by Wall Street News mentioned that if Google is found to have violated antitrust laws, Judge Mehta will schedule another hearing to determine the penalties against Google.

On August 5th, Google has already announced plans to appeal. Google's Global Affairs Chief Kent Walker stated, "The ruling acknowledges that Google provides the best search engine, but the conclusion is that we should not be allowed to easily acquire it." Therefore, the media believes that it may take several more years for this lawsuit to be resolved.

Analysts speculate that the U.S. court may rule that Google cannot be set as the default choice on phones and web browsers, which could mean that tech companies like Apple and Samsung will lose shared advertising revenue and agreement revenue with Google. Daryanani mentioned that the most likely outcome is that the judge will rule that Google no longer pays for default settings, or companies like Apple must actively prompt users to choose their desired search engine instead of providing a default option.

Could Apple's AI Replace Google Search Engine?

According to data provided by American judge Mehta, in 2020, Google occupied nearly 90% of the search market, reaching as high as 95% on mobile devices, while Microsoft's Bing only accounted for about 6% of search queries.

After Google's defeat in the lawsuit, foreign media reported that executives at Microsoft Bing were very excited, claiming that Bing might replace Google as the default search engine for Apple's system.

Whether Bing can capture Google's market share is currently unknown, but some analysts believe that with the arrival of Apple Intelligence & Siri, Apple can guide users to use artificial intelligence and Siri instead of web browsers.

Renowned leaker Mark Gurman stated that for Apple, Google's defeat jeopardized a source of revenue that has helped boost sales in recent years. However, Apple has already moved away from relying on traditional internet searches. As Apple improves its Siri digital assistant and integrates AI chatbots into its software, Apple is betting that AI technology will eventually dominate.

Gurman mentioned that this will give Apple the opportunity to reach new non-exclusive agreements with AI providers, including Google, without conflicting with the U.S. government. However, it may still take Apple many years to generate substantial profits from artificial intelligence.

According to recent reports from the tech media Techcrunch, Apple plans to launch a smarter Siri this fall. Siri will be integrated into the generative AI product "Apple Intelligence." With the help of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Siri will be rejuvenated, greatly enhancing user experience from intelligent search, contextual understanding, to cross-app automatic operations, and more...

On July 29th, Apple released the first version of iPhone AI, Apple Intelligence. However, the new software was initially only released in the developer beta of iOS 18.1. Apple's Siri has been completely revamped into Apple Intelligence & Siri, with features including writing tools for rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing; Siri can switch between text and voice, answer thousands of questions about how to use iPhones and other Apple devices; emails have an urgent email section and provide full text summaries; can search for photos in everyday language, make movies using photos after entering text, transcribe voice to text, and generate summaries, and more