Apple's Stock Price Falls After Exec Says It Is Considering Injecting Safari With AI
On Wednesday, Apple's senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, said that the company is 'actively looking at' bringing AI search options to its Safari web browser. Cue also said he believes that AI search engines will eventually replace standard search engines like Google. Cue's comments came as he testified in the remedies phase of Google's antitrust trial in Washington.
The Apple executive also shared that the number of Google searches made on Safari decreased for the first time ever this year. He attributed the change to the rise of AI search engines. 'That has never happened in 22 years,' he emphasized. (Safari was released in early 2003.) While Cue says that AI search technology isn't ready to be rolled out on Safari ('To date, they're just not good enough'), he did say that the company has already had conversations with OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic.
Last August, Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to some of its products, but Cue says he wanted to 'make sure we have the capability to switch if we have to,' in case another company distinguishes itself as a leader in AI search.
Share prices of both Alphabet and Apple fell—Alphabet's by around 8% and Apple's by around 2%—after Bloomberg reported on Cue's testimony.
Executives from a range of tech companies—including Yahoo, Microsoft, and OpenAI—are expected to testify during the remedies phase of this trial, which kicked off last month. Apple's testimony is particularly relevant to Google's fate because the search company pays Apple around $20 billion a year to be the default search engine on Safari. Under this agreement with Google, Apple receives a portion of Google's ad revenue from searches on Safari. During his testimony on Wednesday, Cue said he's 'lost a lot of sleep' over the idea of losing the revenue share.
Google is currently the defendant in two separate antitrust suits filed by the Department of Justice. Today's testimony was part of the trial that emerged from the Justice Department's 2020 lawsuit against Google. That suit alleges that Google illegally maintained a monopoly on search and search advertising markets. A central argument in the DOJ's case was that the exclusivity agreements Google struck with certain platform providers (like Apple) to become the default browser on their tools were illegally monopolistic.
Last August, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court of the District of Washington, DC, ruled against Google in the trial. While Google has said it plans to appeal the verdict, that action will have to wait until the remedies phase of the trial is complete.
Separately, a 2023 suit filed by the DOJ against Google argues that the search giant illegally monopolized the digital ad tech market. Last month, Google was found guilty of two of the three charges brought against it. Google also plans to appeal this ruling.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
26 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Ex-Soros Hedge Fund Picker Sun Leads Andon's Push Into US
Investment firm Andon Hong Kong Ltd. is opening an office in New York, led by Soros Fund Management alumnus Chuck Sun. The US operation will initially focus on hedge fund manager selection, an area in which Sun specialized at billionaire George Soros' family office. The firm manages money on behalf of Shenzhen-listed Andon Health Co., a Chinese maker of medical devices like blood pressure monitors and Covid test kits.
Bloomberg
26 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Ford Escalates Battery Job Warnings as Congress Mulls EV Cuts
Ford Motor Co. intensified its campaign to preserve clean energy manufacturing subsidies Monday, warning jobs at its electric-vehicle battery plant in southwestern Michigan could be at risk if Republicans in Congress pare back tax credits in President Donald Trump's multi-trillion dollar economic package. The $3 billion plant in Marshall, about 100 miles west of Detroit, is slated to produce 20 gigawatt-hours of lithium iron phosphate, or LFP batteries, and employ 1,700 people after it starts production in 2026. The 2 million-square-foot site, which is still under construction, has drawn intense political scrutiny since it was announced in 2023 because Ford is licensing the technology to build the batteries from China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd, the world's largest battery manufacturer.
Bloomberg
26 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Murati's Thinking Machines Raises Cash at $10 Billion Valuation
Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup launched by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, has raised close to $2 billion at a valuation of $10 billion before the investment, according to people familiar with the matter. Andreessen Horowitz led the funding round, with participation from Accel and Conviction Partners, among other investors, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. A spokesperson for Thinking Machines declined to comment. Representatives for the VC firms didn't comment. The Financial Times earlier reported some details of the funding.
