Comment by benoau
7 months ago
They're referring to the "Google Search Deal", where Google shares 36% of ad revenue with Apple in exchange for being default search provider across their devices, an amount approximately $20b/year for basically just not changing the default. Which was revealed in Google's antitrust trial, where the deal has been deemed illegal.
Interesting. So it doesn't have anything to do with the browser engine ban, since Apple presumably doesn't earn money from a Google search from Chrome on iOS regardless of whether it's powered by WebKit or Blink.
It does have a lot to do with the browser engine ban.
It means that if someone else comes up with a much better browser engine than Safari’s, iPhone users cannot use it so Safari remains competitive even though it may have a browser engine that’s lacking, since others are forced to use Safari’s browser engine and not their much better engine.