Two years after Apple Inc. dropped Google Maps as its default service on iPhones in favour of its own app, Google had regained only 40% of the mobile traffic it used to have on its mapping service, a Google executive testified in the antitrust trial against the Alphabet Inc. company.<\/p>\n
Michael Roszak, Google\u2019s vice president for finance, said Tuesday that the company used the Apple Maps switch as \u201ca data point\u201d when modelling what might happen if the iPhone maker replaced Google\u2019s search engine as the default on Apple\u2019s Safari browser.<\/p>\n
In a June 2020 email to his then-supervisor, Roszak shared data on how Apple\u2019s switch affected Google Maps usage on iPhones.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost two years later we were at ~40% of the prior peak (and assumed the actual loss was greater since Apple Maps usage was also growing across this time),\u201d Roszak wrote in an email introduced in court.<\/p>\n
The chart Roszak included in the email that showed Google Maps usage on iPhone was redacted from the public version of the document.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department alleges that Google has illegally maintained a monopoly over online search by paying billions of dollars to ensure its search engine is the preselected option, known as the default, on web browsers and smartphones.<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s largest contract is with Apple, which set Google as the default on Safari in exchange for a share of the revenue that the search engine earns through advertising.<\/p>\n
The exact amount of money Google pays Apple for its default status isn\u2019t public.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department said in its opening statement that Google paid between $4 billion and $7 billion for the default on Safari in 2020 \u2014 a statement that led to an objection by Apple\u2019s lawyers the next day since that is a public estimate and not the actual figure.<\/p>\n
Roszak said Tuesday that he wasn\u2019t aware of any data that Google keeps on how many users change the search default on their browser or mobile phone.<\/p>\n
The Apple Maps example was \u201cone data point we have used\u201d to estimate how iPhone owners might react to a change in the search default, he said.<\/p>\n
Michael Roszak, Google\u2019s vice president for finance, said Tuesday that the company used the Apple Maps switch as \u201ca data point\u201d when modelling what might happen if the iPhone maker replaced Google\u2019s search engine as the default on Apple\u2019s Safari browser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":484531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[12911,605,12467,167,2272,48152,84517],"class_list":["post-508606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-antitrust","tag-apple","tag-apple-maps","tag-google","tag-google-maps","tag-iphones","tag-us-justice-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508610,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508606\/revisions\/508610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}