There is this particular saying that goes, “Money talks, bullshit walks”. Well, it looks like the former certainly has a strong presence with the latest bit of information revealed. We are singing to the tune of $1 billion that Google paid to Apple in order to maintain their Google search engine presence on the iPhone hardware. This bit of information came from a January 14 court hearing which involves Oracle’s lawsuit against Google, which involves copyright dispute concerning Google borrowing Oracle’s Javascript technology in order to develop Android handsets. The documents revealed that Apple was paid a cool $1 billion by Google a couple of years ago in order to maintain its presence as the iPhone’s preferred search engine. Revenue gained will be shared, although there are no details on the split ratio.
Apple and Google have both lobbied the court in order to strike the details of their search deal from court documents, with Google citing that it was “highly sensitive.” Google claimed that such information might prevent similar deals with other companies from happening if it were to be revealed to the masses, which does suggest that Google has also done the same for other platforms. It does make you wonder about the morality of things when it comes to large corporations, doesn’t it?
Filed in . Read more about Apple and Google. Source: bloomberg