Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that Google search engine is the best and the company accepts billions of dollars a year from Google so that Google can be the default search engine in the iOS’s Safari web browser.
Google will reportedly pay Apple a whopping $9 billion in 2018 to remain the default search engine for iPhone's Safari browser on iOS and according to Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall (via Business Insider), this number would only continue to grow, potentially leading to a payment of $12 billion in 2019.
"I think their search engine is the best. Apple has added controls to the Safari browser to keep companies like Google from tracking your browsing history to collect data about you,” Cook said in an interview with Axios.
"Look at what we've done with the controls we've built in. We have private web browsing. We have an intelligent tracker prevention. What we've tried to do is come up with ways to help our users through their course of the day,” added Cook.
While Apple has been stating its right to safeguard users’ data for years, but the gadgets it makes are also one of the platform that other companies use to pull up personal data for advertising.
As Google, Facebook face strong criticism from users over data privacy, Apple will be forced to think of new ways to mitigate those companies' effects on its own users.
Apple displaced Google to become the top brand in the world in 2018 while Facebook, fell to ninth place in the top 100 brands globally, an annual report by brand consultancy firm Interbrand said. Apple's brand value grew 16 per cent (year-on-year) to $214.5 billion.
