The trial comes amid Apple potentially losing out on roughly 20 billion dollars a year for keeping Google as the default search engine in its iPhone browser, which is a remedy being considered, writes Reuters.
Many already using AI for search
Cue also said in the trial that search traffic in Safari had dropped for the first time in history last year, and he thinks the reason is that many more people are using AI tools rather than the classic ten blue links of Google.
— Prior to AI, my feeling around this was, none of the others were valid choices, Cue said about the Google deal, and added — I think today there is much greater potential because there are new entrants attacking the problem in a different way, according to Ars Technica.
Apple is already having conversations with OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic, says Gizmodo — and Cue opined that «we will add them to the list,» but «they probably won’t be the default» as «to date, they’re just not good enough»
Read more: Reuters, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, Bloomberg (Paywalled).