Apple wil to give evidence in the antitrust case that the US Department of Justice is pursuing against Google. The DOJ wants to break up Google, force the company to make key search and user data available to potential rivals, and demand that Google stop payments like those made to Apple.
Google reportedly pays Apple around $20 billion a year to be the default search engine on the iPhone, for example. For Apple, 20 billion is about 16 percent of reported operating income for the fiscal year.
Apple says excluding Google as a search option on its devices could harm consumers who “overwhelmingly prefer Google’s product.”
Apple also indicates that it does not want to invest in search engines itself because it wants to concentrate on other areas and does not want to sell search advertisements because that is not part of its core activities. “Search is evolving rapidly due to recent and ongoing developments in artificial intelligence. “That makes it economically risky to spend the enormous resources it would take to design a search engine,” the company says.
Source: www.emerce.nl
