TIL Google pays Apple about $12 billion every year to make Google the default search engine and to disable YT videos from playing in the background. According to the DOJ lawsuit, this is 15-20% of Apple's global income.

I was trying to estimate the value of Brave browser and its associated token when I came across these articles about what Google pays Apple.

2021 estimate of Google/Apple deal is actually $15 Billion per year:

https://gizmodo.com/google-will-continue-to-pay-apple-billions-to-keep-you-1847564608

Oct. 2020 US Department of Justice lawsuit:

"In exchange for this privileged access to Apple’s massive consumer base, Google pays Apple billions of dollars in advertising revenue each year, with public estimates ranging around $8–12 billion. The revenues Google shares with Apple make up approximately 15–20 percent of Apple’s worldwide net income."

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-monopolist-google-violating-antitrust-laws

2020 summary of DOJ lawsuit: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-was-sued-by-the-us-government-heres-what-that-means-for-you/

Further, Google also pays Firefox an estimated $400-450 Million per year, and Google's payment represents almost the entirety of Firefox's income. The Firefox user base has been steadily declining, losing about 1 million users per month over the last year, and it's approx. 200M user base currently represents an estimated 3.5% market share of the total browser market.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/15/21370020/mozilla-google-firefox-search-engine-browser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers?wprov=sfla1

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

Brave Browser added an average of 1.5 million users per month over the last year, doubling it's user base from 18M to 36M users. BAT currently has a market cap of just over $1B.

https://brave.com/36m-mau/