Samsung receives millions of dollars from Google to pre-install Gemini on Galaxy phones
To guarantee that Gemini comes pre-installed on Galaxy devices, Google and Samsung have reached a multi-million dollar agreement. A portion of the advertising revenue made by the AI application is also included in the contract, along with fixed monthly payments. As the Department of Justice looks to contest Google's hegemony in the search and advertising markets, this information was made public in an antitrust case that the company filed in Washington.
The two-year agreement, which started in January, entails a monthly payment for every Samsung device that comes with Gemini by default, according to Bloomberg. Samsung will also get a share of the advertising revenue from the use of Gemini, according to testimony from Peter Fitzgerald, Google's vice president of device platforms and partnerships.
Fitzgerald attested that Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI had extended offers to Samsung to incorporate their AI applications into the Galaxy. Though it is still free to add other AI services if it so chooses, the South Korean company chose to enter into the deal with Google. Although the precise sums were not revealed, the prosecution called them "enormous" at the beginning of the trial.
In order to make Google the default, the Justice Department is now requesting a court order that would forbid such payments to manufacturers. This would affect Google's search engine and artificial intelligence apps like Gemini. Prosecutors contend that Google's growth into new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, has been made easier by its dominance in the search market.
The tech company may undergo a sea change as a result of the antitrust trial in Washington. Since Chrome is regarded as a crucial gateway to Google's search engine, the Justice Department has asked a judge to order Google to sell it. The United States thinks that sharing search data or selling off the web browser would bring competition back to the market.