Google pays Apple billions to keep its search bar on the iPhone

According to a court transcript from Oracle Corporation's copyright lawsuit against Google, the latter has been paying Apple a fat sum of money to keep its search bar on the iPhones. The court script revealed that Apple received a payment of $1 billion from Google in 2014 and that Google also has an ongoing revenue sharing deal in place with Apple. On January 14, during a federal court hearing, an attorney for Oracle said that Google shares a part of its revenue generated from Apple devices with Apple itself. Oracle has been in an ongoing tussle with Google regarding the use of its Java software on the company's devices, without paying Oracle its fair share.   

This revelation of a Google-Apple revenue sharing model goes directly against Apple CEO, Tim Cook’s criticism of Google’s ad-based business model. Although both Google and Apple have not commented on this development, a Google witness who was questioned in the case said that the revenue sharing deal between Apple and Google, at one time, stood around 34%. Google then requested the magistrate judge to redact this information from court transcripts as it may affect the company’s future revenue sharing deals with players other than Apple.

"The specific financial terms of Google's agreement with Apple are highly sensitive to both Google and Apple...Both Apple and Google have always treated this information as extremely confidential," said Google in a filing made on January 20. Since then, the ‘34%’ number and the information about the revenue sharing deal has been removed from electronic transcript record of the court.

Earlier an Oracle lawyer had also leaked that Google has made only $31 billion in revenue from its Android platform till date. As the case progresses, we may be in for more such revelations by Oracle.

Source: NZherald