Apple’s plans to add research options powered by AI to its Safari browser are a blow for Google, whose lucrative advertising activity is considerably based on iPhone customers using its search engine.
The news criticized the actions of Google-Parent Alphabet, which closed 7.3%, wiping around 150 billion dollars compared to its market value.
The iPhone manufacturer “actively considered” the reshaping of Safari, a source familiar with the affair told ReutersQuoting the framework of the Apple Eddy Cue which proposed testimonies in an antitrust case Wednesday against the domination of Google in online research.
CUE said that research on Safari has dropped for the first time last month due to users increasingly turning to AI, according to the source. The Apple stock closed 1.1%.
Google said it continued to see the growth in the overall number of research requests, including “total requests from Apple devices and platforms”, according to a statement published on the company’s blog.
“People see that Google Search is more useful for more their requests – and they access new things and new ways,” wrote society.
Google cited vocal and visual research features as contributors to the total growth in research volume. It was not clear if Cue used the same basis of comparison in his testimony during the analysis of the types of research.
However, Apple’s executive comments suggest that a seismic change in research is probably underway, threatening Google’s dominant research activities – an advertising destination for marketing specialists who has now become a target for antitrust regulators in the United States, which has filed two important lawsuits against society.
Google is the default search engine on the Apple browser, a coveted position for which it pays the iPhone manufacturer about $ 20 billion per year, or around 36% of its research advertising revenue generated via the Safari browser, analysts estimated.
The prohibition of Google to pay companies to be the default search engine is one of the remedies that the US Ministry of Justice has proposed to break its domination in online research.
“The loss of exclusivity in Apple should have very serious consequences for Google even if there are no more measures,” said Gil Luria, analyst of DA Davidson.
“Many advertisers have all their research advertisements with Google because it is practically a monopoly with almost 90%. If there were other viable alternatives for research, many advertisers could remove a large part of their Google advertising budgets,” said Luria.
Google is not defenseless.
Beginning as a RAN also in AI racing by criticism after the Buzzy launch of Chatgpt at the end of 2022, Google reached its deep pockets to finance its AI efforts and take advantage of its vast data.
The company has introduced an “AI mode” on its research page earlier this year, seeking to keep its millions of users to disappear towards other models of AI.
He recently expanded the IA glimpses – summaries that appear at the top of traditional hyperlinks to relevant web pages on a research request – for users in more than 100 countries, and added advertisements to functionality, increasing sales of research.
CEO Sundar Pichai said in a testimony during an antitrust test last month that Google hopes to conclude an agreement with Apple in the middle of this year to include its Gemini AI technology on new phones.
On Wednesday, Apple’s Cue also said that the company would add IA research suppliers, including Openai and Perplexity IA, as research options in the future, Bloomberg reported.
“(Apple’s plan) also shows how generative research sites, such as Chatgpt and perplexity, have come,” said Yory Wurmser, main advertising, media and technology analyst at Emarketer.
The fact that Google is ready to pay tens of billions of dollars to remain the default search engine shows how crucial agreements, Wurmser said.
For example, Chatgpt in April said it had seen more than a billion research on the weekly web of its research function. It has more than 400 million weekly active users, in February
