Google paid a large fee to Apple every year to maintain its status as the default search engine on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. Now, the latest report released by an analyst at investment bank Bernstein said that Google’s payment to Apple this year may reach 15 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 50% from last year’s 10 billion U.S. dollars.
Bernstein analysts predict in an investor report that Google’s Safari default search engine fee paid to Apple this year will increase to 15 billion U.S. dollars, and it will further increase to 18 to 20 billion U.S. dollars next year. This data is based on Apple’s public document disclosure and bottom-up analysis of Google’s traffic acquisition costs.
Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said that Google is likely to ensure that Microsoft does not bid higher than it. In the future, this fee may face two potential risks: one is regulatory risk, and the other is that Google thinks the deal is worthless.
