The technology world is absolutely ruthless when it comes to competition, but seemingly no company has emerged victorious more than Google in the search engine wars.
Social media platforms, streaming sites, and now AI chatbot software all give you plenty of alternatives vying for your attention at all times, yet Google remains - and has remained for a long time - broadly the only destination that people go for their queries.
Google has consistently placed at the top of global website rankings for many years now, and is often the gateway people use to many of the other most-viewed sites across the web, but that could seemingly all change now following a shock statement from a key Apple executive.
Google's stock price tanks after shock Apple statement
As reported by the New York Post, Apple's senior vice president of services Eddy Cue recently testified as part of Google's ongoing antitrust lawsuit which could threaten the ownership of Chrome.
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Cue outlined that Apple are "actively looking at" AI-powered search engine options that would in theory replace Google as the default option on all iPhones, which has mad major ramifications on the stock market position of Google's parent company Alphabet.
In the last day alone Alphabet's stock price has dropped by 7.51%, falling $12.40 down to $152.80, indicating that investors see Cue's comments as a major threat to Google's dominance on the search industry.
Google previously paid Apple a staggering $20 billion fee in 2022 to remain the default search engine option for the Safari browser on all iPhones, iPads, and Macbooks, but it appears as if Apple is exploring alternative options that could break that agreement in the near future.
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"We'll include them in the lineup - though they likely won't be set as the default," Cue explained, hinting towards a preference for AI-driven search alternatives like ChatGPT, Anthrophic, and Perplexity - the latter of which Apple have held preliminary talks with.
Apple claims that AI is the future of search
Cue also revealed that Apple has noticed an overall decline in search engine usage for Safari users, indicating that users have instead migrated to AI alternatives that are also now available within iOS 18.
Google previously lost out on the opportunity to be Apple's official partner for Apple Intelligence, which went to OpenAI and ChatGPT instead, as their terms "included a lot of things Apple wouldn't agree to and didn't agree to with OpenAI."
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On top of the bombshells that he has dropped already, Cue also offered a wild prediction that "you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as that sounds."
While it might seem self-destructive to make a prediction that seemingly eliminates your own company's most successful product, it's part of a larger argument that rapid changes in technology could leave devices that are considered essential now obsolete in the near future.
In essence, this is a signal from Apple that they're willing to embrace rapid change, and a move away from Google and towards AI search functions could be a key part of that.