In 2022, Alphabet paid Apple $20 billion to make Google the standard search engine in Safari

Alphabet paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the main search engine in the Safari browser. This was reported by Bloomberg.

This became known from new court documents disclosed as part of the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google. This agreement is one of the key points in the investigation into the illegal monopolization of the digital advertising market.

Previously, both companies tried to hide the price of the deal. In the fall, Apple representatives said that they had received “billions” but did not give exact figures. At the same time, one of Google’s witnesses also accidentally disclosed that the company paid 36% of all search advertising revenue.

The agreement with Apple on the default search engine is one of the most important for Google and began in 2002. Back then, Apple did it for free, but later both companies decided to share the revenue.

As of May 2021, the company was paying $1 billion a month to keep the search engine as the default.

At the same time, court documents also revealed that Microsoft repeatedly tried to convince Apple to use Bing by default in Safari and even offered the company 90% of its advertising revenue.

Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also said in court that the company was ready to make concessions, including hiding the Bing brand, so that Apple would make its search engine the default in Safari.