Sources: Google and Samsung are in talks about giving Google products more prominence on Samsung phones, including more control over search
- Google Assistant, Play app store may gain more prominent roles — Samsung seeks other revenue sources as handset demand drops
Context & Ripple Effects
This July 2020 report reads differently now that litigation has confirmed what the talks produced: per court filings in Epic v. Google, Google agreed to pay Samsung $8 billion over four years to make Search, the Play Store, and Assistant the defaults on Samsung devices — exactly the 'more control over search' Bloomberg's sources described here.
The leverage runs both ways. Samsung was hunting for new revenue as handset demand fell, but it had already tested walking away — sources reported it ran an internal review of replacing Google with Bing before suspending it, citing business relations with Google (per the Journal). The talks captured here are Google converting that dependence into a formal, paid arrangement rather than losing shelf space.
First-order effects
- Samsung gains a direct revenue stream from Google at a moment when its own description notes handset demand is dropping, while Google secures deeper default placement for Assistant, Play, and search across Samsung's Android fleet.
- Google's services get more prominent real estate on Samsung phones, building on earlier cooperation like bringing Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and Play into Bixby.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's Bing loses its clearest path into Samsung's default slot — the suspension of Samsung's Bing review, attributed to concerns about the Google relationship, shows how expensive switching away from Google had become even before payments were disclosed.
- Apple-side pressure compounds the effect: Google had already been shifting staff toward its own hardware out of fear of Apple pulling Android users, so locking down Samsung distribution protects the ecosystem on both fronts.
Third-order effects
- Paid default placement hardens into the structural business model of mobile search — the same mechanism later exposed in Epic v. Google — which puts both companies' arrangements in the crosshairs of regulators examining whether defaults were bought rather than won on merit.
- If handset makers increasingly monetize their software surface through platform deals, the phone becomes a distribution asset auctioned among search and app-store providers rather than a differentiated product in its own right.
The trend: Mobile search distribution is consolidating around cash-for-defaults deals between Google and Android OEMs, with Samsung's pricing power rising even as its independence narrows.