Apple received around $1 billion from Alphabet’s Google in 2014, according to a transcript of court proceedings from Oracle Corp.’s copyright lawsuit against Google. The search engine giant has an agreement with Apple that gives the iPhone maker a percentage of the revenue Google generates through iPhones and iPads, an attorney for Oracle said at a Jan. 14 hearing in federal court.
While it is no surprise that Google pays Apple, the amount paid is; the companies have never before disclosed the amount. The revenue-sharing agreement reveals the how far Google has to go to ensure people use its services. It also paints Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook in a hypocritical light as he has often criticized the advertising-based business model as an intrusion of privacy.
Annette Hurst, the Oracle attorney who disclosed details of the Google-Apple agreement at last week’s court hearing, said a Google witness questioned during pretrial information said that “at one point in time the revenue share was 34 percent.” 34% of all revenue related to search engine traffic on iOS platforms is quite significant.
Soon after this information was made public Google filed a request to seal the records, one that was backed up by Apple (both companies treat this information as highly confidential); the transcript has since been removed from electronic records.
Source: Bloomberg
