Google pays Apple $1 billion to be search default

It seemed like an impressive win for Mozilla when the new three-year, $900 million deal with Google was announced. The Foundation derives the bulk of its funding from that search deal and in return Google gets billions of search hits. But that deal may pale in comparison to what Google pays Apple.

According to one analyst, they could be coughing up as much as $1 billion to be the default search engine in Safari on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems. There’s plenty of number-crunching that went on to arrive at this figure, but there’s many reasons to believe it’s at least in the ballpark. No phone has been more sought-after than the iPhone since its debut, and the same is true of tablets and the iPad.

Business Insider brings a little hyperbole into the equation, saying that if the iPad continues to grow that it’ll surpass PCs in 5 years — at which point an Apple switch to another search provider could be devastating for Google. They base this speculation on the recent news that iPhoto has dropped Google Maps as a location provider, which some feel is an indication that Apple no longer needs Google at all.