In late 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai floated a daring concept to Apple CEO Tim {Cook}. {Cook} had simply advised Pichai he needed to be “deep, deep companions, deeply related the place our providers finish and yours start,” based on notes from the assembly. Pichai responded with a proposal: What if Apple preinstalled a Google Search app on each iOS machine?
Precisely what that might have seemed like — a full-blown app, a local widget, some reinvention of the Highlight characteristic — is tough to say. However Pichai’s case to Apple, revealed through the CEO’s testimony within the US v. Google antitrust trial at the moment, was easy. Google had seen that the Google app and widget had been in style on Android and drove individuals to do extra looking out. Extra Google searches on Apple gadgets would imply extra income for Apple, because of the 2 corporations’ wildly lucrative search agreement. Everyone wins. Pichai even posited that Google would promise to keep up the built-in Google service for 20 years.
Apple, after all, didn’t go for the deal. The corporate famously doesn’t preload third-party software program on its gadgets, and Apple’s Eddy Cue said in his own testimony on this case that Apple seemingly by no means would. (It did form of as soon as embrace Google Maps and YouTube, however these had been technically Apple-made apps and had been removed in iOS 6. Nonetheless, these is perhaps an fascinating mannequin for what Google was proposing.) However given the unprecedented scope of the deal between the 2 corporations and the ramifications each side feared if it fell aside, Pichai clearly thought it was value a shot.
In 2018, Pichai mentioned in testimony, Apple was involved a couple of decline in income development from their rev-share deal. Google’s general income was rising a lot sooner than the income Apple was getting from the partnership, executives complained — what offers? Google responded with a couple of concepts about what is perhaps inflicting the discrepancy. The listing included Siri Strategies, a newish Apple product that aimed to assist customers get the place they had been going sooner for some queries fairly than sending all the things to Google. However Google additionally identified, based on notes shared after the assembly by partnerships government Don Harrison, that “Google will not be answerable for the quantity or kind of site visitors acquired by Safari; Apple is.”
That’s when Pichai made his case. “When discussing the right way to encourage search,” Harrison’s emailed notes learn, “[Pichai] spoke about the truth that that is what we do — individuals belief us to get this proper and belief us with the content material of what they’re looking for — and weaved in them contemplating us constructing an app or different expertise that individuals affiliate with us and connect with us (vs. flowing by Siri/recommend.) Tim listened however didn’t react to this particularly apart from noting we had completely different strengths.”
When requested about these emails in court docket, Pichai mentioned he was merely looking for methods for everybody to get what they needed. “We mentioned one of many issues that works properly on Android, which drives elevated utilization, is a Google Search utility. So I proposed that we may construct a Google search utility for iOS… and we might be dedicated to supporting the product for a few years.”
Pichai’s testimony coated numerous floor, from his idea of attorney-client privilege to Google’s feisty authorized response to Web Explorer 7’s launch in 2005. However it was the Apple deal, as at all times on this case, that appeared to linger over all the things.
Replace Oct. thirtieth, 3:30PM ET: Up to date to notice that Google Maps and YouTube had been as soon as preinstalled apps on iPhones. Which was bizarre.