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Words about possible disappearance of the iPhone were not the only high-profile statement by Apple CEO Eddy Cue in the Google trial. He also managed to reduce the value of Alphabet.
Shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet fell by more than 8% on Wednesday, May 7, after Eddie Cue said that Google’s search traffic on Apple devices fell for the first time in more than two decades last month. Apple’s senior vice president of services, said at an antitrust trial in Washington that Google is losing ground to artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
His assertion that such a decline «had never happened in 22 years» shook Wall Street and reduced Google’s market capitalization by more than $170 billion in a single trading session.
This testimony was given during a key trial in which District Judge Amit Mehta is to determine remedies for Google’s previously declared illegal search monopoly A case that has been ongoing since 2020 exposed Google’s practice of paying Apple tens of billions of dollars annually to remain the default search engine in Safari and the iPhone.
Investors were even more concerned by Q’s suggestion that Apple may soon offer artificial intelligence-based alternatives as the default search options on its devices. This statement heightened fears that Google’s advertising revenues could be at risk.
In turn, Google denied the allegations of a decline in search traffic in Safari. The company released a public statement:
«Here’s our statement on this morning’s search traffic press releases. We continue to see overall growth in Search queries. This includes an increase in the total number of queries coming from Apple devices and platforms. Overall, as we enhance Search with new features, people are finding Google Search more useful for more of their queries, and they are accessing it in new ways, whether it’s from their browsers, the Google app, voice, or Google Lens. We are excited to continue these innovations and look forward to sharing more at Google I/O».
As the statement suggests, Google may soon make public some indicators of the search engine’s performance. It can also be assumed that the new tools for searching for companies include artificial intelligence tools.
Sources: Google, TechXplore