According to Tech Crunch, Google is paying a ‘ton’ of money to remain the default search engine on Apple’s iOS.

Google is highly dependent on Apple, with the majority of its revenue coming from search result pages and ads, controlling roughly 18% of the smartphone market.

Most users update iOS every few months, so default settings of consumer iPhones change, making Google spend more money, frequently, to keep up-to-date with its traffic.

According to a Bernstein Research analyst, Google could pay as much as US$3billion a year to remain the default option in Safari.

Tech Crunch also noted that when Apple found out Google was competing with Android, the company removed the YouTube app from iOS and worked on Apple Maps instead – so the “multinational tech company isn’t afraid of saying no to Google when it comes to iOS features”.

Written by Leah Alger