Apple’s relationship with Google may be inflicted by various legal maneuvers between the two, but it is also a profitable one. One analyst estimates that Apple pulls in as much as $1 Billion per year in profit from the search giant via a search agreement between the two companies.
In a recent report from Morgan Stanley titled “The Next Google is Google,” analyst Scott Devitt estimates that Google pays Apple roughly $1 billion per year in order to position its search engine as the default option on iOS devices.
One billion dollars may not be considered a huge amount for a company such as Apple, which pulled in $13 billion in profit just in their last quarter, but it is pure profit, with little to no effort on the Cupertino company’s part.
For Google’s part, the $250 million per quarter amounts to a good investment to keep a huge mobile platform using Google as its search engine by default. Google received 80% of its mobile ad revenue in the period of 2008 – 2011 from iOS devices.
Google also pays other companies to keep Google as the default search option. Devitt estimates that Google will pay $300 million to Mozilla in order to keep Google as the default search engine on their Firefox web browser and mobile operating system.
