Title is misleading. Google didn't pay up front to keep the search bar, but rather agreed to share a percentage of the revenue generated, which ended up being $1B.
Oracle is really letting out Google secrets. First Android earnings, now this. Both said not to be public knowledge. Google going to go after oracle now?
Google also used to pay Mozilla to be the search engine there, until Yahoo outbid them.<p>It's amazing that Google search, which is quite useful, has negative market value as content. In the cable TV world, there are channels cable systems pay to carry, such as ESPN, and channels that pay to be carried, such as the Jewelry Channel. How did Google end up in the latter category?
Therefore the iPhone share of total search ad spend is about $3B. This link puts the overall market (inclusive of Android) at roughly $9B in 2014. That makes sense if you assume iOS to represent roughly 1/3 of devices.<p><a href="http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Account-More-than-Half-of-Digital-Ad-Spending-2015/1012930" rel="nofollow">http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Account-More-than-Ha...</a>
Bing powers Siri, and I assume now powers all of the internet search functions (unsure about Safari.) So I wonder if Microsoft paid this amount, or if Apple decided that less money made more sense so they could harm their competitor?
In a world so abundant of information, i think user attention is indeed a significant resource every major player should fight for. I guess the distribution of attention follows power law, that a few entrances take up most of the mobile use cases. For example, I use Uber, Wechat, GMaps much more often than the other apps. Search bar definitely is one of the most critical entrances.
I wonder how much Apple would pay for <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/</a> just to screw over Google.