So I’m testing the new Safari 4 browser that Apple announced today at their Worldwide Developers Conference. Billed as the fastest browser in the world, with its perfect 100% score on the Acid 3 test, Safari looked like a browser worth ckecking into. After all, everyone wants to surf the Internet at blazing fast speed.
Part of my setup for Safari included adding the bookmarks I had in my FireFox browser. I added them manually instead of importing them because I don’t have many bookmarks. This was going along smoothly until I tried to add Google Search. Instead of adding Google to the bookmarks, Safari popped this message on me.
Google is the only search engine Safari does this to. I was able to add Yahoo Search and Bing without any notices. Why is Apple trying to prevent you from bookmarking the Google website? The answer is simple.
MONEY!
When you do a search on Google.com, Google gets all the money from those sponsored results on the right side of the page. However, if you do what Safari recommends and do your Google search by using the Safari search field, Apple gets a cut from the revenue generated by those sponsored links. So, anything Apple can do to make you use their search field instead of going to Google means more money for them.
This is how Firefox makes most of its revenue. The Google search box built into the FireFox browser makes over $75 million a year. However, FireFox doesn’t warn their users when they try to bookmark Google. That’s too bad really. If Firefox is making $75 million a year with their Google search box, imagine how much they’ll be making if they do what Apple does and tell users to do their searches with the browser search field instead of at Google.com?
Pretty evil, Apple. I’m impressed.