Google has issued a rare public statement seemingly contradicting Apple senior VP Eddy Cue's courtroom testimony that Safari browser searches declined for the first time in April 2025.Cue's comments, made during the ongoing U.S.Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against Google, triggered a 7.51% drop in Google's stock price on Wednesday.
In a post to its blog The Keyword, under the title "Here's our statement on this morning's press reports about Search traffic," Google said: The dispute centers around the $20 billion agreement making Google the default search engine on Apple devices.While testifying, Cue attributed the alleged search decline to users switching to AI services like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.Cue added that he believes AI services will eventually replace conventional search engines like Google.
As a result, Apple will need to add them as options in Safari in the future.Cue said the company had already held discussions with Perplexity about browser integration.
