Microsoft’s Bing or DuckDuckGo probably won’t disrupt Google’s dominance in search, said Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue – but AI services easily could.

Cue was returning to a courtroom in Washington, DC where he last testified in the Justice Department’s trial against Google’s search monopoly in September 2023. During the current remedies trial on Wednesday, Cue said that in the time since, well-funded generative AI upstarts have made such significant advancements that they could ultimately disrupt that monopoly – perhaps more effectively than the court could.

Cue was also, however, there to defend a significant source of Apple’s revenue: the payments Google offers for default search engine placement on Apple’s Safari browser.

After the 2023 trial, Judge Amit Mehta found that Google illegally monopolized the online search market, in part through agreements like the Safari deal. For the last two and a half weeks, Google and the DOJ have pitched Mehta on what he should (or shouldn’t) do to fix the problem. The DOJ says Google should be forced to share valuable search data with competitors and spin off its Chrome browser, while Google (which plans to appeal the …

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