Apple is “actively looking at” integrating AI-powered search engines into its devices as searches on its Safari web browser declined for the first time last month — reports Bloomberg.
The news comes from Apple Senior VP of Services Eddy Cue’s Wednesday testimony in the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google parent Alphabet Inc., which is scrutinizing the two tech giants’ highly lucrative deal to make Google the default search engine in Safari. In 2022 alone, Google paid Apple a whopping $20 billion USD (about $27.84 billion CAD) for the right to be its default search provider.
During his testimony, Cue linked the drop in Safari searches to people turning to AI for answers. Google, however, denied claims of a search query decline.
“We continue to see overall query growth in Search. That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple’s devices and platforms,” Google said in a statement on Wednesday as its share price took a significant hit.
“More generally, as we enhance Search with new features, people are seeing that Google Search is more useful for more of their queries — and they’re accessing it for new things and in new ways, whether from browsers or the Google app, using their voice or Google Lens.”
Cue said he believes that Google should remain the default for search in Safari, but Apple plans to augment the web browser with AI search engines from companies like OpenAI, Perplexity AI, and Anthropic.
“We will add them to the list — they probably won’t be the default,” said Cue. He noted that the iPhone maker has specifically had some talks with Perplexity on the matter. In addition, Apple and Google are reportedly close to finalizing a deal to integrate the latter’s Gemini AI into iPhones.
“Prior to AI, my feeling around this was, none of the others were valid choices,” Cue continued. “I think today there is much greater potential because there are new entrants attacking the problem in a different way.”
The addition of AI search could represent a major departure from how Apple devices have operated since the first iPhone came out back in 2007. Instead of navigating the web by making searches through Google, users will have to choose from several AI options to guide them.
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Loving it…Google is engaging in Trumpism.