Apple sued over cosy search partnership with Google

A class action lawsuit against Google and Apple has been filed today in a California court.

According to the lawsuit, reported by PR Newswire, the two technology companies have violated US competition laws on a number of counts through a series of agreements.

For example, it is alleged that Apple agreed not to develop its own search engine – something it was reported to be working on in August and October of 2020 – provided it continued to be paid to make Google’s search engine the default option in Safari.

It’s long been known that Google pays large sums to Apple each year, but the latter has also allegedly agreed to actively discourage potential competitors.

The people behind the lawsuit hope that the end result will be that the two technology giants will split into a number of smaller companies. Given that both Google and Apple can afford the best lawyers, it is unlikely that this will happen, but there may well be some form of settlement.

This article originally appeared on Macworld Sweden. Translation (using DeepL) and additional reporting by David Price.