Google contests Eddy Cue’s claim that Apple users are searching less

In court testimony yesterday, Apple SVP Eddy Cue told the judge that usage of search in Safari fell for the first time ever in April, suggesting users are turning to AI alternatives like ChatGPT instead.

This led to Google investors getting cold feet on the search giant’s outlook, with the company stock dropping about 8% in response. However, Google has now formally contested Cue’s comments in a company blog post.

Google released a short statement on its blog that seems to run counter to what Cue said yesterday. Google said that it continues to see increasing engagement with search, including on Apple devices.

Here’s what Google said in full:

We continue to see overall query growth in Search. That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple’s devices and platforms. More generally, as we enhance Search with new features, people are seeing that Google Search is more useful for more of their queries — and they’re accessing it for new things and in new ways, whether from browsers or the Google app, using their voice or Google Lens. We’re excited to continue this innovation and look forward to sharing more at Google I/O.

While there isn’t enough detail to fully explain the discrepancy, perhaps Cue was referring to usage inside Safari and Google is suggesting that usage through other means on Apple’s platforms — through Google’s apps in the App Store for instance — makes up for that gap.

It’s also worth noting that Cue made his comments in the context of a court hearing over whether the lucrative Apple-Google search deal should be allowed to continue, under the guise of whether Google has an anticompetitive monopoly on the search market.

Obviously, Apple wants that deal to remain in place, as it profits tens of billions of dollars per year from the enterprise. So, it is in Cue’s interests to depict the deal as outmoded and increasingly irrelevant, such that it is not monopolistic in nature and should remain.

Cue also indicated that Apple would be adding alternative AI-powered search providers like Anthropic and Perplexity to Safari as search engine options in the coming months.