Google Struggles to Lessen Reliance on Apple Safari

Sometime in the next few months, a judge is expected to rule on the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google over its dominance of internet search. One of the biggest risks Google faces is the possibility that the judge will end the agreement making Google the default search engine on Apple’s Safari app for iPhones.

For several years, Google has been trying to protect itself against that possibility by trying to persuade iPhone owners to switch to either the Google or Chrome apps for their searches. While Google has made headway—lifting the percentage of searches done that way to the low 30s from 25% five years ago—that progress stalled in the second half of last year.