Google will pay Apple $1 billion to power search in iOS for 2014

Apple has been pushing hard to scrub all traces of Google from its iOS cash cow (including dropping Google Maps in a controversial move), but it seems that Google is willing to pay big lumps of cash to stay on.

According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, the Mountain View-based company will give Apple $1 billion to stay the default search engine on iOS. Yes, Google is still the default search provider, even though the Google branding was removed from Safari in iOS v4.0.

The wad of cash was much smaller in 2009 – only $82 million. Why the change? The Google-Apple deal is per device and iOS devices have multiplied many times since 2009.

The price per device is going up too - $2 per iOS device in 2009, then $3 in 2011 and $3.2 last year. That number will rise further according to estimates, reaching $4 in 2017 with total payments expected to cross the $2 billion total mark the year after. Apple gets $0.75 of every dollar Google earns according to the numbers.

The other big recipient of cash under the Traffic Acquisition Costs heading is the Mozilla Foundation, who will be getting $400 million this year to keep Google as the default search engine on the Firefox browser.

The ever-growing Android has Google as the search provider of choice (naturally), so Google has a lot to win with Android gaining market share over iOS. Microsoft has similar deals for Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices.

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