
Alphabet’s Google gave $26.3 billion to other companies in 2021 to become the default search engine on the web and mobile phones. Bloomberg News says that a top executive of the company has testified about this during the Justice Department’s antitrust trial regarding Google’s search and advertising control.
The amount paid by Google for default status has more than tripled since 2014, according to Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior executive responsible for both search and advertising, the report said.
The Bloomberg report quoted Raghavan as saying that Google’s revenue from search advertising in 2021 was $146.4 billion, while paying for default settings was its biggest cost. According to a CNBC report, Google may pay Apple $19 billion this year to become the default search provider on Apple devices.
Google has previously said its revenue share agreements are legal and that it has invested in keeping its search and advertising businesses competitive. On the issue of default search engine, the company has argued that if people are dissatisfied with the default settings, they can and do switch to another search engine.
Google had objected to disclosing the payment figures, saying they would harm the company’s ability to negotiate contracts in the future. Justice Amit Mehta, who is overseeing the case, ruled that the figures should be disclosed, the report said.