• Cupertino considers alternatives to Google Search.
• Change likely won’t phase Safari, but Firefox on shaky ground.
• AI companies set to centralise information gathering, search, and presentation.

Apple is openly exploring the possible integration of AI search into the Safari browser rather than its current use of “traditional” search engines, for which it currently has a financial agreement that sets Google Search the default engine for new installs.

Apple executive Eddie Cue was giving testimony at the ongoing antitrust case brought against Google, when he implied that search volumes on the Safari browser had fallen recently. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, currently pays around $20 billion a year to Apple for Safari to default to using Google when users search the web. Reuters claims the figure is roughly 36% of the income Google receives from advertising revenue generated on Safari.

Google stock lost over $150 billion in value in the wake of the remarks, as markets reacted. Google might stand to lose over $55 billion a year in revenue should Apple change its search provider regardless of whether any new search technology was AI-based or not.

Google searches for answers

The antitrust hearing against Google is considering whether it has unfair market advantage in search and advertising, with several potential remediations available to the court, should the company be found to be practising unfair competition. Speculation has included possible forced sales of the Chrome browser, the Android operating system, and/or the Google advertising networks. Agreements between Google and other browser authors that make Google Search default are also in the firing line.

A ruling enforcing the latter would leave the Firefox browser in particular in a perilous state – Mozilla received around half a billion dollars in search revenue from search engines in 2024 (the majority from Google), representing 85% of the organisation’s income. Apple’s other income streams would help buffer it from the removal of Google income.

The fall in search traffic on Safari is due to an increased use of AI search tools independently from the built-in browser search mechanisms, such as users heading to AI search websites or using third-party apps to query AIs.

While Apple has not released specific plans for pursuing an alternative to its current arrangement with Google, the news has been enough to throw greater attention on the court proceedings against Google. The company is investing heavily in its Gemini AI. As of now, users of Google Search can use Gemini to get search results offered to them as parsed by the AI without the ‘burden’ of clicking through to originating sites, assimilating information, and making personal judgements based on context and potential veracity.

Future ramifications

The court has already heard from lawyers representing the US Department of Justice, who warned that Google may continue to dominate search, albeit in the form of Gemini. “This court’s remedy should be forward-looking and not ignore what is on the horizon,” David Dalhquist said during his opening statement to the court in Washington DC.

Apple’s shot at AI, Apple Intelligence, has been slow to fruition, and has used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to provide some responses to queries to Apple Intelligence on the latest model of iPhones that ship with the feature. It is possible that Apple envisages using its search query technology (home-grown or outsourced) in place of Google Search.

Given that companies such as OpenAI remain unclear as to their future revenue models of their nascent AI implementations, replacing ‘traditional’ search engines for device and OS manufacturers may be a source of meaningful income. However, the current use model of AI – which summarises web page contents without the user visiting the source sites (and their advertising presentations) – centralises information in the hands of large AI companies, who may well become both search and presentation mechanisms of answers to most online queries.

Methods of content ‘ranking higher’ on the internet therefore will be dictated by AI companies, potentially including Apple, rather than by the currently-dominant Google Search.