Apple seeks to defend Google’s billion-dollar payments in search case

Apple has asked to participate in Google’s upcoming U.S. antitrust trial over online search, saying it cannot rely on Google to defend revenue-sharing agreements that send the iPhone maker billions of dollars each year for making Google the default search engine on its Safari browser.

Apple does not plan to build its own search engine to compete with Alphabet’s Google, whether or not the payments continue, the company’s lawyers said in court papers filed in Washington on Monday. Apple received an estimated $20 billion from its agreement with Google in 2022 alone.