-Google paid $26 billion (KSh 3.9 trillion) to ensure its search engine was the default for mobile devices and web browsers
-This became evident during the Justice Department’s antitrust trial
Many people have been curious about how much money Google spends on maintaining its enormous revenue streams.
It has recently come to light that the company spent $26 billion (KSh 3.9 trillion) to make sure its search engine was the default on web browsers.
The sum is equivalent to Kenya’s fiscal year 2023/24 budget.
Google senior executive Prabhakar Raghavan claims that since 2014, Google has paid more than three times as much for the default position.
Raghavan is in charge of advertising and search.
In 2021, the company’s advertising revenue was $146.4 billion.
Similarly, its largest expense was the payment for the default setting.
The corporation claims that it invested to maintain the competitiveness of its search and advertising businesses and that the revenue share arrangements are lawful.
It has also maintained that users can and do change to a different search engine if they are unhappy with the defaults.
Google had objected to the figures being made public, claiming that doing so would negatively impact the company’s future contract negotiation position.
The report also stated that Judge Amit Mehta, who is presiding over the case, ruled that the figures ought to be made public.
In the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice and a group of state attorneys general have argued that Google has unlawfully kept its monopoly on general search by using its supremacy to bar competitors from important distribution channels, like Apple’s Safari web browser.
The $26.3 billion sum does not represent payments to any one corporation. Although Apple most likely represents the largest recipient,
“Google pays billions of dollars each year to distributors—including popular-device manufacturers such as Apple, LG, Motorola, and Samsung; major U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers such as Mozilla, Opera, and UCWeb—to secure default status for its general search engine and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s counterparties from dealing with Google’s competitors,” the DOJ complaint reads.
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