Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of services, claimed that the volume of searches on Google from Safari — the manufacturer's web browser — had declined in April. The statement, made during the lawsuit between Google and the US government, prompted a knee-jerk (and rare) reaction from the search engine.
"We are seeing continued growth in the total number of queries on Search," the company states. "This includes an increase in queries from Apple devices and platforms." This is in clear contradiction with Eddy Cue's comments.
The Apple CEO's short statement had a devastating impact on Google's stock price, which plunged 7.5% yesterday. The web giant had to regain control to avoid a further slide on Wall Street. It's also important not to instill the idea that Google is losing relevance and interest in the face of AI bots, which, from ChatGPT to Perplexity, are increasingly useful for online searches.
Apple is also considering integrating these AI search engines into Safari. However, Eddy Cue also made it clear during his testimony that he wanted to keep the agreement allowing Google to be the default search engine for Safari, on both iOS and macOS. An agreement that brings in a whopping $20 billion each year...
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