Apple’s future after Google’s antitrust indictment

MADRID, (Portaltic/EP). – The ruling against Google issued on Monday, which determines that the company is in breach of US antitrust laws, will redefine the agreement it currently has with Apple to introduce its search engine as the default in the products it manufactures.

The trial against Google, which is part of the Alphabet group, began in September last year, amid accusations by US authorities that its search engine had harmed competition by paying millions of dollars to be the default search engine on web and mobile browsers.

After analyzing a series of testimonies and actions in recent months that would prove this violation of the regulations, a US federal court ruled that the company has determined that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, an 1890 measure that prohibits monopolies in this country.

According to the ruling, reported by media such as The New York Times, Google exercises a monopoly because it “enjoys an 89.2 percent share of the overall search services market, which increases to 94.9 percent on mobile devices.”

This would be possible because collaboration agreements such as the one established years ago with Apple have allowed it to block potential rivals such as Bing or DuckDuckGo, according to the complaint filed during the Donald Trump administration that resulted in this ruling.

The victory against Google has been hailed as “a historic victory for the American people,” according to US Attorney General Merrick Garland. Meanwhile, Google’s President of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, has announced that he intends to appeal the court decision.

“This decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that it should not be allowed to be easily available,” said the executive of the firm, which will go to trial against the US Department of Justice again this autumn, specifically on 9 September, following an accusation of violating antitrust law in the field of digital advertising.

In this regard, it is worth remembering that the Information Services Agreement (ISA) that it has with Apple, in force since 2002, allows it to be the default search engine in the products manufactured by the Cupertino firm. This ruling, therefore, could modify the way in which Apple offers Google services on its devices.

At the beginning of October last year, Bloomberg reported that Apple had considered changing Google’s search engine to make DuckDuckGo the default search engine in Safari, in order to promote the private browsing that it offers.

Analyst Mark Gurman also said Apple was planning to expand the integration of its own “next-generation” search engine, known internally as Pegasus, although he acknowledged that its technology was not within the scope of the capabilities that Google can offer.

Gurman has now said that Apple’s push for artificial intelligence (AI) technology in services such as its digital assistant Siri shows that the brand has “been moving away from its reliance on traditional search.”

In this regard, he recalled that by integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT capabilities into its software and aiming to do the same with Google’s Gemini, “the company could steer consumers towards AI and Siri instead of the web browser.”

In this way, and in accordance with the recent ruling, the iPhone manufacturer could establish non-exclusive agreements with providers of AI-powered tools and chatbots, including Google, that do not come into conflict with the US Administration.

The journalist also suggested that, as an alternative to the default Google search engine, Apple could present different search engine options once users turn on their devices for the first time. This is what currently happens with the devices it sells in the European Union, which present alternatives during the initial configuration.

In this way, Google would continue to be an option to choose, although it would coexist with alternatives such as Microsoft Bing or DuckDuckGo, accessible from the start, since currently the process that must be carried out to change the default search engine is more tedious.