Even though the most recent version of Apple's search assistant Siri is powered by Microsoft's Bing, that doesn't meant that Google isn't willing to hand over some serious cash to make sure it remains in the search bar on iPhones.
According to court transcripts from the ongoing copyright lawsuit between Oracle and Google, the company reportedly paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 to keep its services on Apple's devices.
There have been lots of rumors as to how much Google really pays Apple to include its search engine inside iOS devices, but Google hasn't publicly confirmed the exact figure.
According to Bloomberg, Oracle's attorney Annette Hurst revealed the $1 billion figure during a federal court hearing on Jan. 14, and stated that Google also gives Apple a percentage of the revenue its search engine generates on iOS devices.
Hurst said that a witness revealed during pretrial that "at one point in time the revenue share was 34 percent," although its not clear if the witness meant this percentage is the amount Google paid to Apple or kept. Still, the numbers show that the company has made sure it stayed on iPhone search bars at all costs.
It's also important to note that Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly criticized advertising-based business models that make money from user's personal data.
Google and Apple both declined to comment.
Both Google and Apple filed a request to block the information disclosed in the transcript from being available to the public. The judge presiding over the hearing later denied the request. The companies then asked to have the quote redacted and seal the transcript.
"The specific financial terms of Google's agreement with Apple are highly sensitive to both Google and Apple," Google's filed request submitted on Jan. 20 states. "Both Apple and Google have always treated this information as extremely confidential."
The transcript is no longer in electronic court records. The case is being tried in U.S. District Court, the Northern District of California (San Francisco). It was referred back there in June 2015 after Google lost an appeal to the U.S.Supreme Court in its software copyright lawsuit. which alleges Google's Android smartphone operating system infringes on copyrights of Oracle's Java software language.
Source: Bloomberg
Photo: Integrated Change | Flickr
