More information about Google’s payments to phone manufacturers is drawn out from CEO Pichai during his testimony on Monday.
The U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial is bringing out more information every day about the inner workings and deals made between the Alphabet subsidiary and other firms that have allowed Google Search to remain the default search engine on certain devices, websites, and platforms. Just yesterday we learned from Google CEO Sundar Pichai that the company floated an idea to Apple about preloading Google Search on iOS.While Pichai was on the stand yesterday, he stated that Google has been using the search revenue share program as an incentive to help manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, and Motorola promote their devices and maintain them over time. When the judge asked Pichai how this worked, the executive said that some revenue-sharing payments to Android manufacturers are dependent on having some of their devices receive the latest Android security updates. Pichai added that for some of its manufacturing partners, „more effort goes into developing the next version, and updates are costly… so sometimes they make tradeoffs.“Some manufacturers don’t push out security updates every month to their Android phones which at first blush makes this look like Google is incorporating gangland-style tactics to get the security updates pushed out more often.
