Apple plans to add AI-powered search options to its Safari browser. Google might suffer a serious setback as its profitable advertising business heavily depends on iPhone users using its search engine.
As the news did the rounds of Apple’s ambitions to integrate AI-powered search choices into its Safari browser, Google’s parent company Alphabet’s shares plummeted more than 7 percent at $152 per share on Wednesday. Cue said that Safari searches also fell for the first time last month due to users increasingly turning to AI. Apple’s stocks also fell 2 percent.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services was testifying in the Washington antitrust trial’s remedy phase over Google’s dominance in online search. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is weighing the Justice Department’s and Google’s proposals to make the internet search market competitive again. He is expected to give his ruling in August.
Cue mentioned that Google searches on Safari fell for the first time in history last month, indicating that AI technologies such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Microsoft AI are increasingly being used as search engines.
“That has never happened in 22 years,” he added.
Google pays Apple nearly $20 billion 36 percent of its search advertising revenue generated through the Safari browser to Apple to keep its search engine the default option, but the need for such a huge money may be questioned as people increasingly turn to AI.
A statement on the company’s blog showed that Google was still seeing an increase in the total number of search queries–“total queries coming from Apple’s devices and platforms”.
“People are seeing that Google Search is more useful for more of their queries — and they’re accessing it for new things and in new ways,” it read.
Google attributed the increase in overall search volume to both voice and visual search options.
Meanwhile, Google has tapped into its huge coffers to fund its AI research and utilise its vast data trove, despite being written off by critics in the AI race following the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
In another interesting revelation, Cue said, “You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now as crazy as it sounds.” He was hinting at how technology shifts like advancements in AI are changing the way we interact.