Apple’s top services executive, Eddy Cue, told a Washington, DC courtroom on Wednesday that the greatest threat to Google’s search dominance isn’t Bing, DuckDuckGo, or even federal regulators it’s AI. Specifically, generative AI systems, which Cue described as the first serious disruptors to Google’s supremacy in decades, could do what antitrust lawsuits may not: upend the search status quo.
But in the same breath, Cue defended Apple’s lucrative partnership with Google, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) argues is a key pillar of Google’s illegal search monopoly. The case, now in its remedies phase after a 2023 ruling found Google in violation, pits entrenched tech alliances against a rapidly shifting AI landscape.
Cue testified that in April 2025, for the first time in 22 years, Apple saw declining search volume through Safari a trend he attributed directly to users turning to AI chatbots for information. That shift, he suggested, is more threatening to Google’s dominance than traditional search competitors like Microsoft’s Bing.
“There’s much greater potential [with AI] because there are new entrants that are attacking the problem in a different way,” Cue said.
Still, the DOJ isn’t convinced that AI alone can fix the anti-competitive structure of today’s market. Judge Amit Mehta is weighing proposals to force Google to share its search data with rivals or even spin off the Chrome browser, versus Google’s own proposal to soften but not scrap its default search deals.
While Cue champions AI as the future, he remains staunchly protective of Apple’s $20 billion-a-year deal with Google for default search placement on Safari. He admitted that without such deals, Apple would lose both control over default settings and the revenue share that comes with them even though users would likely still seek out Google on their own.
Cue even acknowledged that the Google deal disincentivized Apple from building its own search engine, echoing Mehta’s prior assessment. But he argued that Apple “can’t do everything,” and that building a search engine isn’t worth the resources when Google already does it so well.
“It just seems crazy to me,” Cue said, suggesting the idea that Apple could suffer financially for an antitrust penalty meant to hit Google.
Despite the optimism, Cue admitted that AI-powered search tools still fall short of replacing traditional engines. The problem? No large language model (LLM) has yet built a full-scale, reliable search index like Google’s. However, he predicted this barrier may fall soon, as LLMs learn to work effectively with smaller, more focused indexes.
Ironically, the DOJ’s proposed remedies like syndicating Google’s index to others could accelerate this shift, boosting AI search challengers just as they’re gaining traction.
