Information that Google spent $26.3 billion to monopolize the search engine was revealed on October 27th during an antitrust trial against Google in a US federal court, in which evidence was presented by the Department of Justice and a number of state attorneys general.
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| Google spends tens of billions of dollars to become the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers. |
This money wasn't paid by Google to any single company, but Apple likely received the largest share. Research firm Bernstein estimates that Google may have spent around $19 billion annually on Apple to be the default search engine on Apple products.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit, Google spent billions of dollars annually on distributors – including well-known device manufacturers like Apple, Motorola, LG, and Samsung; carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers like Mozilla, Opera, and UCWeb – to secure its market position. In many cases, this prevented partners from doing business with Google's competitors.
For its part, Google says users can switch their default search engine with just a few clicks.
According to documents released in court, Google's search division generated over $146 billion in revenue in 2021, while the cost of acquiring search traffic exceeded $26 billion. Statistics from 2014 show that Google's search engine achieved $47 billion in revenue and spent approximately $7.1 billion on search engine ranking. This means the division's revenue tripled between 2014 and 2021, while costs to partners nearly quadrupled.
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