In 2021, Google invested over $26.3 billion, as revealed by evidence in the US v. Google antitrust trial, to maintain its position as the default search engine across various browsers, phones, and platforms.
According to The Verge, the statistic was revealed when Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s head of search, was cross-examined by the US Justice Department.
Following a disagreement over “whether the figure should be redacted” between the tech corporation and Judge Amit Mehta, the $26.3 billion sum was made public.
The newspaper said late on Friday that “Mehta has begun to push for more openness in the trial in general, and this was one of the most significant new pieces of information to be shared openly.”
This week, Google released its most recent quarterly financial report, stating that its $44 billion in search and other advertising sales were up 11%, driven once again by growth in the retail sector.
Direct response and brand advertising drove YouTube’s $8 billion in quarterly advertising sales, a 13% increase.
The company’s whole advertising division, which also produces YouTube commercials, turned a little under $90 billion in profit last year.
According to the research, this implies that Google is forfeiting around 29% of its earnings and 16% of its search income to those distribution agreements.
According to a recent story by The New York Times, Google will have to pay around $18 billion in 2021 for the agreement that makes it the default search engine in all Google products, including Apple Safari.
On October 30, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai is scheduled to testify in the US v. Google antitrust lawsuit. In this testimony, he will provide his perspective on how Google’s search engine is effective because it innovates on its own and does not work with large corporations.
In the current antitrust trial, which is being filed by the US Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general, Pichai is scheduled to testify.
