Apple By Lee Mathews Jan. 22, 2016 10:33 am
Google’s still the dominant player in the search game, however, there’s a price to be paid if you want to stay number one. Part of that price: the billion dollars they paid Apple to hang on to the iOS search bar back in 2014.
Some analysts estimate that there are around 75 millions iPhone users in the U.S. alone and another 85 million in China. Roll in iPads, the iPod touch, and broaden the scope to include every other country Apple sells its products in, and you get a pretty clear idea why Google was willing to pay such a high price to remain in the spotlight. They also used to be the main form of income for Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
A billion dollars sure is tons of money. How much? Apparently enough to allow a move that goes against comments made publicly (and with great conviction) by your CEO. It wasn’t that long ago that Tim Cook blasted Google for its use of data collection and analytics to squeeze profit from its numerous free products.
Cook said “we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose.” Maybe he figures that statement only applies to individuals… and not when you’re selling access to millions of your users to a company that does those things.
Oh, and doing it for seven figures. That probably helped soften the blow of dealing with a company that engages in such “unsavory practices.”