It showed up in a big legal fight about the search company being too controlling.
Google has been giving Samsung a lot of money each month to put the AI app Gemini on its phones, says a Bloomberg report. This info is part of a bigger antitrust case against Google.
Google's Peter Fitzgerald said in court that they started paying Samsung in January. They have a deal for at least two years.
Fitzgerald explained to Judge Amit Metha that Google pays Samsung a fixed amount each month plus a share of what they make from ads in the Gemini app. We don't know how much, but DOJ lawyer David Dahlquist called it a "huge amount."
This case began with claims that Google was unfairly controlling the search engine market. Testimonies have shown that Google paid companies like Apple and Samsung to make sure it was the default search engine on their devices.
Judge Mehta said this was against antitrust law. He's listening to more testimonies to figure out how to fix this issue. This is where we learned about the Gemini deal.
In another case about Epic Games, it came out that Google gave $8 billion from 2020 to 2023. This was to make sure Samsung phones used Google Search, the Play Store, and Google Assistant by default. Later, a judge in California said Google can’t keep other markets and payment methods out. Now, Google is trying to fight that decision.
And... if Google really wants to throw around huge money to get more people to use its new AI app, why not share some with the folks stuck using all that extra stuff? Just a thought.
