In court docket testimony yesterday, Apple SVP Eddy Cue advised the decide that utilization of search in Safari fell for the primary time ever in April, suggesting users are turning to AI alternate options like ChatGPT as a substitute.

This led to Google buyers getting chilly toes on the search large’s outlook, with the corporate inventory dropping about 8% in response. Nonetheless, Google has now formally contested Cue’s feedback in a company blog post.

Google launched a brief assertion on its weblog that appears to run counter to what Cue mentioned yesterday. Google mentioned that it continues to see growing engagement with search, together with on Apple units.

Right here’s what Google mentioned in full:

We proceed to see general question development in Search. That features a rise in whole queries coming from Apple’s units and platforms. Extra typically, as we improve Search with new options, folks are seeing that Google Search is extra helpful for extra of their queries — and so they’re accessing it for brand spanking new issues and in new methods, whether or not from browsers or the Google app, utilizing their voice or Google Lens. We’re excited to proceed this innovation and sit up for sharing extra at Google I/O.

Whereas there isn’t sufficient element to totally clarify the discrepancy, maybe Cue was referring to utilization inside Safari and Google is suggesting that utilization by means of different means on Apple’s platforms — by means of Google’s apps within the App Retailer as an illustration — makes up for that hole.

It’s additionally price noting that Cue made his feedback within the context of a court docket listening to over whether or not the profitable Apple-Google search deal needs to be allowed to proceed, below the guise of whether or not Google has an anticompetitive monopoly on the search market.

Clearly, Apple desires that deal to stay in place, because it earnings tens of billions of {dollars} per 12 months from the enterprise. So, it’s in Cue’s pursuits to depict the deal as outmoded and more and more irrelevant, such that it’s not monopolistic in nature and may stay.

Cue additionally indicated that Apple can be including different AI-powered search suppliers like Anthropic and Perplexity to Safari as search engine choices within the coming months.