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They can do it, but is it going to make them money? Google's $20b/year payment made up 20% of their income in 2023. 20% of their income was just free money, and their dev team doesn't have to do anything for them to get it.

Would Apple or their shareholders accept a minimum 20% loss in income, plus whatever the expenses would be to build a Search and Ad platform, plus the continued expenses of maintaining and updating it?

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Google is paying Apple $20 billion for $60 billion worth of traffic. Apple said it would cost $6 billion per year to build and run a search engine. I don't think it would take much of an ad platform to pull in enough money to make it work for Apple and their shareholders.

It all comes down to whether or not Apple sees search as a key part of their phones and so far they haven't. FWIW, I think they're right - it's not a key part the same way Maps is, for example.

$100B was Apple's net income, not gross. Revenue was ~$400B, so we're talking about 5%, not 20.

Still, 20% of their net income is guaranteed free money. I doubt there are minimal (if any) expenses on Apple's side to maintain the status quo of Google being the default search engine.

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