Epic v. Google: Sundar Pichai confirms Google paid Apple 36% of the search revenue generated on iPhones, saying the total payment “was well over $10B” in 2022
Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, testified on Tuesday for the second time in two weeks to defend his company against monopoly claims.
New York TimesNico Grant
Context & Ripple Effects
The testimony turns a long-running default-search partnership into a quantified revenue-sharing arrangement. It follows disclosure that Google paid Apple$1B to retain iPhone search placement in 2014, showing how the commercial importance of that placement grew over time.
The arrangement was also under pressure before this testimony: Pichai had discussed bundling a Google iOS app as Apple flagged slower growth in the revenue-share deal. The new disclosure matters because it makes the economics of default distribution central to the monopoly arguments.
First-order effects
Apple’s compensation is shown to be tied directly to the search advertising revenue generated on iPhones, while Google retains the distribution it pays for.
The disclosed 36% share and more-than-$10B 2022 payment give litigants and the public a concrete view of the cost of Google’s iPhone default position.
Second-order effects
The disclosure strengthens Apple’s leverage in future default-search negotiations: the value of its distribution is no longer merely inferred from the existence of a deal.
Other device distributors can point to the arrangement when negotiating for Google defaults, especially given evidence that Google also paid Samsung to preload key services.
Third-order effects
If default-search payments remain a focus of monopoly cases, platform owners’ control of user entry points may become harder to treat as a routine distribution expense rather than a source of gatekeeper power.
The underlying tension is durable: search providers need privileged access to users, while platform operators can monetize that access; litigation may determine how freely those arrangements can persist.
The trend: This is one data point in the growing scrutiny of how platform gatekeepers convert default placement into recurring revenue shares from digital-service providers.
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On Tues, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified again, this time in San Francisco, to confront claims brought by the video game company Epic Games that his company broke the law, wielding monopolistic power over app developers on Android's Google Play Store https://www.nytimes.com/..…
During Pichai's testimony, a lawyer representing Epic said Google paid Apple “at least $18 billion” under its default-search agreement in 2022. The Times previously reported Google paid Apple about $18 billion in 2021. Story updated below.
Pichai didn't say what that amounted to in dollars but acknowledged Apple got the majority of the $26.3 billion Google set aside for revenue-share payments in 2021
This misses the point—if you're “the best” in a world with no completion, what does “the best” even mean? Was Standard Oil a legitimately better oil company? You need regulation for competition. The notion that we get balanced competition from a “free market” (lol) is somethin…
“US v. Google raises the question of how antitrust law handles a company becoming dominant due to offering a far superior product, especially if the DOJ wins” No, it doesn't. It's not about becoming dominant. It's about breaking the law *while* being dominant. It's not unique.