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Apple Plans AI-Powered Search on Safari, Poses Threat to Google

IT Services

Business Honor
08 May, 2025

Safari may drop Google as default, signaling big change in search landscape.

Apple will introduce artificial intelligence (AI) search features on its Safari web browser, something that could significantly challenge Google's current dominance in internet searching. Google currently pays Apple roughly $20 billion a year to be the default search engine for Safari. Apple is now looking forward to other potential, including AI search providers like OpenAI and Perplexity AI.

The shift is as Apple observes trends altering with users. Apple executive Eddy Cue explained that Safari searches declined for the first time in the previous month when increasingly more people began using AI to carry out searches. He offered the information while observing a U.S. antitrust trial investigating Google's dominance in search.

After the news, Alphabet, the parent of Google, lost 7.3%, erasing almost $150 billion from its market capitalization. Apple stocks also dropped by a modest 1.1%.

Google responded by saying that search activity across Apple devices is still growing. Among the factors contributing to the overall growth in search volume were voice and picture search capabilities. As devastating as it might seem, experts still think that losing Apple device default positioning will prove to be disastrous for Google, which has around 90% of the world search market share.

To keep pace with the new feature, Google has also been building its own AI capabilities. Google introduced an "AI mode" to search and extended AI Overviews, which display summaries at the beginning of search results. Ads have also been added to the feature to continue generating advertising revenue.

Apple's action is a testament to how far technology has come in terms of search with AI. Sites like ChatGPT are already logging more than 1 billion web searches per week. With Apple doubling down on AI-driven search, it can potentially redefine the way users discovers information—and upend Google's decades-long dominance in the process.