A recent court ruling against Google on antitrust charges has revealed details about the tech giant’s dominance in the search market. According to the 286-page document, Apple executives have admitted that there is no feasible alternative to Google as a search engine, even if offered for free by competitors like Microsoft Bing.
According to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, there’s no other alternative. During the trial, Microsoft tried to get the company to preload Bing in Safari, he said.
There’s no price that Microsoft could ever offer. I don’t believe there’s a price in the world that Microsoft could offer us. – They offered to give us Bing for free. They could give us the whole company.
Google pays billions to Apple annually to maintain its default search engine status on iPhones and iPads. The court found that this exclusivity arrangement has stifled competition and innovation in the search market.
BUT
Even the judge said:
Google understands there is no genuine competition for the defaults because it knows that its partners cannot afford to go elsewhere.
Why? Because, as The Verge quoted:
It’s not just Eddy Cue refusing to give Bing the time of day — all of these companies recognize Google as the only game in town. None of these “Fortune 500 companies” have a real choice in the matter.
Apple executives were quoted as saying that the cost of developing a search engine capable of competing with Google would be astronomical, reaching billions of dollars. This would lock out competitors and go hand-in-hand with Google’s monopoly.