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It has been revealed that Google pays Apple 36% of the revenue it generates from search advertising through the Safari browser.
As Bloomberg reports, the revelation came from Google's own economics expert, University of Chicago professor Kevin Murphy, during his testimony at the Justice Department’s antitrust trial. Google's main litigator, John Schmidtlein, "visibly cringed" when Murphy revealed the percentage.
This substantial percentage of revenue confirms the high price parent company Alphabet is willing to pay to ensure the Safari browser ships with Google as the default search engine. The antritrust proceedings already revealed that the company pays $18 billion a year to be the default search engine on Apple's devices. Now we know Apple also gets a chunk of the ad revenue from this browser deal.
Google knew this could happen and attempted to stop further public information disclosure last week in a court filing. The filing argued that, "further disclosure of the precise terms of the ISA [Information Services Agreement] would unreasonably undermine Google’s competitive standing in relation to both competitors and other counterparties."
Such information, made public or not, makes it more difficult for Google to argue it's the default search engine because it's the most popular/best option. If that is indeed the case, why then spend billions and gift Apple such a large share of ad revenue to be the default choice?