Why Apple is trying to save Google

Google is in antitrust court, fighting to preserve the search engine business that has made it so historically successful. At a few different moments through the various stages of the trial, high-powered executives from Apple have taken the stand — and largely taken Google’s side. Just this week, Apple’s Eddy Cue made the case that Google is actually in a hugely competitive market, is no longer the unstoppable force it once was, and should be largely left alone.

If it seems odd that Apple and Google would be aligned, here’s a number to keep in mind: 20,000,000,000. That’s how many dollars Google pays Apple every year, as part of a revenue-sharing deal that makes Google the default search engine in Safari. Even as Cue talks about Google searches going down in Safari, and how AI might cannibalize search and the iPhone and everything, it’s important to keep that $20 billion paycheck in mind.

On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay, David, and The Verge’s Richard Lawler discuss Cue’s testimony, what it means that Google searches are going down in Safari, and whether the whole “AI chat will replace search” thing is actually real. We also talk about some of the other antitrust news of the week, from Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s comments in the Meta trial to the quickly changing App Store marketplace.

After all the monopoly talk, we turn to gadgets. Meta is working on adding facial recognition to smart glasses, which is either awesome or terrifying and actually probably both. Apple’s rumored foldable phone could be coming next year, and it might make the iPhone lineup very complicated. And Microsoft has a couple of new Surfaces, which look really nice. But we still have a couple of questions.

Finally, in the lightning round, it’s time for another edition of Brendan Carr is a Dummy. Because Brendan gonna Brendan. After that, we talk about the latest in robot lawnmowers, some new Netflix updates, and a very important update on party speakers.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first on antitrust things:

And in gadgets:

And in the lightning round: