Apple service chief Eddy Cue appeared in court today, testified in the antitrust trial between the U.S. Department of Justice and Google, answering questions about the deal to use Google as the default search engine on iPhone, iPad and Mac devices.
A report revealed today by The Verge that Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to make it easier to set Google as the default search engine on Apple devices. Much of this trial took place behind closed doors, and officials did not disclose how much Google paid Apple.
In his testimony, Eddy Cue said the most recent deal between Apple and Google dates back to 2016, and when asked why Apple chose Google as its default search engine, Eddy Cue said “there was no effective alternative to Google at that time.”
“We made Google the default search engine because we always thought it was the best, and we chose the best one and allowed users to change it easily”, said Eddy Cue .
Eddy Cue acknowledged that Apple doesn’t allow changing the default search engine in the iPhone’s first boot settings, but the decision was made to get users up and running as quickly as possible.
