Google Disputes Apple VP’s Claim of Safari Search Traffic Decline

Google has issued a rare public statement seemingly contradicting Apple senior VP Eddy Cue’s courtroom testimony that Safari browser searches declined for the first time in April 2025.

Cue’s comments, made during the ongoing U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against Google, triggered a 7.51% 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.

The dispute centers around the $20 billion agreement making Google the default search engine on Apple devices. While testifying, Cue attributed the alleged search decline to users switching to AI services like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.

Cue added that he believes AI services will eventually replace conventional search engines like Google. As a result, Apple will need to add them as options in Safari in the future. Cue said the company had already held discussions with Perplexity about browser integration.