Google has contradicted Apple senior VP Eddy Cue’s courtroom testimony from Wednesday that Google searches in its Safari browser have declined. Google’s rebuttle came in a rare public statement from the search giant.
Cue’s comments came during his testimony during the U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against Google and they caused a .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:
We continue to see overall query growth in Search. That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple’s devices and platforms. More generally, as we enhance Search with new features, people are seeing that Google Search is more useful for more of their queries — and they’re accessing it for new things and in new ways, whether from browsers or the Google app, using their voice or Google Lens. We’re excited to continue this innovation and look forward to sharing more at Google I/O.
Apple’s senior vice president of services Eddy Cue on Wednesday said Apple is “actively looking at” reshaping Safari around AI search. Cue’s comments came in his testimony in the U.S. Justice Department lawsuit against Google which focuses on the $20 billion deal Google pays Apple to be the default search engine in Safari on Apple devices.
Cue noted that searches on Safari dipped for the first time in April 2025, which he said was due to users switching to AI services. He said that he believes AI services like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude will eventually replace conventional search engines like Google. That means Apple will need to provide them as search options in Safari in the future. Cue said the company was already in discussions with Perplexity.
