Those who follow the technological news know that the Google it’s no standard Safari search engine by chance: the Mountain View giant pays Apple a billion-dollar sum annually to make it happen – the last time we talked about it, in 2018, it was a hefty $ 9 billion, referring to that year alone. A British regulator, however, does not welcome this agreement.
According to the Reuters, a UK Competition and Market Authority (Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA) classified the agreement between Apple and Google as a barrier for search competitors to strengthen in the market. According to the agency, Apple received «the substantial majority» of the £ 1.2 billion paid by Google to maintain its search engine as a standard on British devices.
The agency’s report mentions Google’s competitors, such as the Bing, The Yahoo it’s the DuckDuckGo – all of them, according to the investigation, also make periodic payments (much smaller, of course) to Apple to be included as a search engine option in Safari. The CMA stated the following:
Considering the impact of standard pre-installations and services on mobile devices, as well as Apple’s significant market share, we believe that the company’s current agreements with Google create a significant barrier for rivals to enter and expand the market, affecting competition between search engines on mobile devices.
Apple and Google did not comment on the case, but the CMA report may have more serious consequences for companies – which, as we already know, are already being investigated for alleged monopoly practices in the United States and the European Union. Let’s follow.
via MacRumors
