According to court documents filed Monday in Washington, Apple has requested to join Google’s upcoming antitrust trial, seeking to protect its lucrative search engine partnership worth an estimated $20 billion annually.
The iPhone maker emphasized it has no plans to develop its own search engine, regardless of the trial’s outcome. “Apple has committed to other growth areas and has no desire to incur significant costs in an area of substantial risk,” the company stated in its filing.
Apple argued that Google can no longer adequately represent Apple’s interests as it faces potential breakup measures. “Google must now defend against a broad effort to break up its business units,” Apple said in court papers.
The Department of Justice’s case, which Google lost in August, could fundamentally reshape online search. Prosecutors are pursuing remedies including forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser and potentially its Android operating system to restore market competition.
Google has suggested a remedy, in which it says that it would avoid exclusive deals, including the one with Apple, such as being the default search engine, in favor of not having to sell its Chrome browser as part of the ongoing antitrust proceedings.
Apple defended the existing partnership, arguing that removing Google as a search option would harm consumers who “overwhelmingly prefer Google’s product.” The company further contended that including Google without compensation would create “a perverse result in the market” by giving the dominant search provider an unfair advantage.
The filing comes as Apple seeks to protect what analysts estimate is nearly pure profit from its Google partnership, representing approximately 16% of Apple’s operating income for its fiscal year ending in September.
The case’s penalty phase is scheduled for April, where Apple hopes to call witnesses to testify. The outcome could potentially end the revenue-sharing agreements that have made Google the default search engine on Apple’s Safari browser.
