Google spends a huge amount each year to be the default search engine on iOS, but as that play draws scrutiny, the company is working to get iPhone owners using its apps, but is reportedly struggling to do so.
The business of being the go-to search engine on the iPhone is a huge one. According to recent reports, Google has spent as much as $20 billion to be the default search engine on iOS, and that’s a number that’s likely gone up since that data sourced from 2022. But Google is also under increasing antitrust pressure which threatens that arrangement.
According to a new report from The Information, Google is working to increase how many iPhone owners are using Google’s own apps in order to increase the number of searches that don’t rely on Google’s position as the default on Safari. Apparently, Google has managed to make some progress there, with a low-30% number of Google Search queries on iPhone coming from the company’s own apps, up from around 25% five years ago.
Google allegedly has a goal to move 50% of searches on iPhone to its own apps.
But, apparently, the company is struggling to increase that number. Google has found that it is “simply too hard to overcome the fact that Safari is preinstalled on Apple devices,” sources working on the project said.
As a means of pushing users to Google’s apps, the company was said to briefly consider locking AI-powered features such as AI Overviews to its own apps, not having them appear in Safari. The report says that Google “decided against that move.”
In a related effort, the report brings out that Google was working on a project where people might be able to upload short videos, similar in style to TikTok or YouTube Shorts, to the Google app to have the videos appear directly in Search. The project struggled to get off of the ground, though.
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