Apple Inc is “actively looking at” revamping the Safari Web browser on its devices to focus on artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search engines, a seismic shift for the industry hastened by the potential end of a longtime partnership with Google.
Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue made the disclosure on Wednesday during his testimony in the US Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Alphabet Inc. The heart of the dispute is the two companies’ estimated US$20 billion-a-year deal that makes Google the default offering for queries in Apple’s browser. The case could force the tech giants to unwind the pact, upending how the iPhone and other devices have long operated.
Beyond that upheaval, AI is already making gains with consumers.
Photo: Bloomberg
Cue said that searches on Safari dipped for the first time last month, which he attributed to people using AI, adding that he believes that AI search providers, including OpenAI, Perplexity AI Inc and Anthropic PBC, would eventually replace standard search engines such as Google.
He said he believed Apple would bring those options to Safari in the future.
“We will add them to the list — they probably won’t be the default,” Cue said, adding that they still need to improve.
The company has had some discussions with Perplexity, he said.
“Prior to AI, my feeling around this was, none of the others were valid choices,” Cue said. “I think today there is much greater potential, because there are new entrants attacking the problem in a different way.”
The looming shift is a giant one for the iconic iPhone and a company with more than 2 billion active devices. Since Apple’s original smartphone launched in 2007, users have navigated the Web by making searches through Google. Now, consumers would enter a universe dominated by AI from multiple companies.
Apple currently offers OpenAI’s ChatGPT as an option in the Siri digital assistant and is expected to add Gemini, Google’s AI search product, later this year.
Apple also looked at Anthropic, Perplexity, China-based DeepSeek (深度求索) and Grok from Elon Musk’s xAI for this purpose, Cue said.
The agreement with OpenAI allows it to add other AI providers to the company’s operating system, including Apple’s own, he added.
Before ChatGPT was chosen last year as part of Apple Intelligence in iOS 18, there was a “bake-off” with Google, Cue said, adding that Google had provided a term sheet that “had a lot of things Apple wouldn’t agree to and didn’t agree to with OpenAI.”
Technology is changing fast enough that people might not even use the same devices in a few years, Cue said.
“You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as it sounds,” he said. “The only way you truly have true competition is when you have technology shifts. Technology shifts create these opportunities. AI is a new technology shift, and it’s creating new opportunities for new entrants.”
To improve, AI players would need to enhance their search indexes, Cue said.
However, even if that does not happen quickly, they have other features that are “so much better that people will switch,” he said.
“There’s enough money now, enough large players, that I don’t see how it doesn’t happen,” he said, referring to a switch from standard search to AI.
Still, Cue said he believed Google should remain the default in Safari, adding that he has lost sleep over the possibility of losing the revenue sharing from their agreement.
Apple’s pact with Google for regular search still has the most favorable financial terms, he said.
Last year, Apple and Google expanded their deal to include Google Lens integration as part of the Visual Intelligence feature on the latest iPhones. That allows a user to take a picture and use Google AI to analyze it.
Apple’s agreement with Microsoft Corp’s Bing — a non-default option in Safari — was recently amended to be a year-to-year arrangement, Cue said.
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