Cook wanted Apple and Google to be 'deep, deep partners'

Google pays to be the default search in Safari for iOS

Apple CEO Tim Cook talked to Google CEO Sundar Pichai about the tech giants working together in 2018, Google's ongoing antitrust trial revealed, with notes revealing a willingness on both sides to make the deal work.

Google has paid Apple billions of dollars to be the default search in Safari, and the Justice Department's antitrust trial against Alphabet has delved deep into the relationship between the two companies. In one piece of evidence shown in court on Monday, it seems the two were very comfortable with the deal, and could've done more.

Multiple passages were briefly shown in court, according to The Verge, with little time to accurately transcribe them completely. The stretches that did get copied down indicate that the two CEOs of Apple and Google intended to deepen the work between the firms.

The notes, stemming from Google, revolved around a two-hour meeting in 2018, with Cook and Pichai in attendance alongside other executives.

In the noted sections, it is said that "Tim's overall message to Google was I imagine us as being able to be deep deep partners; deeply connected where our services end and yours begin and sees no natural impediment to us doing more together."

Cook knew there was a past between the companies but "doesn't feel encumbered by it and wants to figure out how we work more deeply together." Cook also said this would also involve sharing "information better," and apparently stressed this point a few times.

The Apple CEO also apparently told Pichai "we can take this slowly," with "no regrets over how we have handled things to date."

In another note, the Google CEO expressed that the company would "love to see the iPhone numbers grow and will work in good faith to answer the queries you send us."

One last note from an unknown speaker states "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company. There is a reluctance on both parts about sharing things. It would be great to hurdle over that."

"We've been back in a good stead for awhile; build a Google app that really builds a great experience (Sundar). We could extend the terms of the deal," the last of the typed notes reads.

While it is unclear exactly who said what, or whether they are direct quotes from the conversation or summed-up points, the notes do at least show there was a lot of good faith between Apple and Google at that 2018 meeting.

The trial continues.

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35 Comments

mikethemartian 1320 comments · 18 Years

About 5 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQj1kPmQXwE

gatorguy 24188 comments · 13 Years

Evidence of precisely what I've been saying about the relationship between Apple and Google. They haven't been the enemies some here would like to believe they are for years, working together in many areas.

Some fans might hate, be silly, and be destructive, but the two companies respect each other and have for a long time. I know that's not what some of us want to hear as it ruins long-time perceptions of Apple vs Google.

Kierkegaarden 179 comments · 1 Year

Two large companies with competing products and services, and on friendly terms — is this a bad thing?

InspiredCode 403 comments · 8 Years

Frankly Google iOS apps are awful. They look way too much like Android apps often using UX that doesn’t make sense on iOS.

auxio 2728 comments · 19 Years

gatorguy said:

Evidence of precisely what I've been saying about the relationship between Apple and Google. They haven't been the enemies some here would like to believe they are for years, working together in many areas.

Some fans might hate, be silly, and be destructive, but the two companies respect each other and have for a long time.

While I dislike Google's fundamental business model, and think they've put some people with very questionable ethics in charge (e.g. Andy Rubin), which has caused them to choose the low road (cloning + litigation) rather than the high road (licensing/purchasing) to obtain existing technology they need for their products, I certainly respect a lot of technology they've created just as I'm sure people at Apple do. Just like Apple, they hire brilliant people and enable them to do amazing things.

I just wish that, at a fundamental level, their business was driven by purely that technology advancing humanity and making the world a better place. It would be interesting to count the man hours they've spent analyzing and developing technology to better gather information about people and process it for the purposes of making their advertising business more lucrative. And looking at places where they could have made their services more efficient and easy to use, but didn't because it would mean they get less data from people. Though it's certainly not as bad as social media companies using psychology to keep people locked in and addicted to their services.

Anyway, nothing is black and white. There are great people at both Google and Apple, I just personally don't believe surveillance Capitalism is a good path forward, and I think the ethics Jobs imparted at Apple have kept it off that path as much as possible.