Google paid Apple $1 billion to remain the default search engine on iOS

It’s not a coincidence that Google is the default search engine on your iPhone browser: the company paid Apple $1 billion to make it so, according to a court transcript from Oracle Corporation’s copyright lawsuit against Google.

The search engine giant has an agreement with Apple, giving it a percentage of revenue that Google makes through the iPhones, according to a statement made by Annette Hurst, an attorney for Oracle at a Jan. 14 hearing in federal court.

Since 2010, Oracle has been battling with Google over claims that the search engine used its Java software to develop Android without paying for it. Google lost a bid to overturn the case at the U.S. Supreme court, and now the dispute has returned to U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco. Oracle may now seek damages over $1 billion since its expanded claims to cover newer Android versions.

While rumors have surfaced for years about how much Google pays Apple to be on the iPhone, the companies have never publicly disclosed this until now. The agreement reveals what lengths Google must go to in order to keep people using its search engine on mobile devices. It also discloses how Apple financially benefits from Google’s advertising business plan; Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook criticized that this information is an intrusion of privacy.

Hurst noted that when a Google witness was questioned during pretrial, information disclosed said that “at one point in time the revenue share [between Google and Apple] was 34 percent.” It was unclear from the transcript whether the percentage is the amount of revenue kept by Google or paid to Apple.

Attorney Robert Van Nest objected this information and tried to have the judge rid of the mention of 34 percent from the record. However, the judge later refused Google’s request to block the sensitive information in the transcript from the public.

“The specific financial terms of Google’s agreement with Apple are highly sensitive to both Google and Apple,” Google said in its Jan. 20 filing. “Both Apple and Google have always treated this information as extremely confidential.”

At approximately 3 p.m. PST, the transcript vanished from electronic court records with no indication that the judge ruled on Google’s request to seal it.

Via Bloomberg