Google is paying Samsung an ‘enormous sum’ to preinstall Gemini

Google gavel.

Testimony this week from Google’s antitrust proceedings shows that Google gives Samsung an “enormous sum of money” each period to preinstall the Gemini AI app connected Samsung devices, reports Bloomberg. Now that Judge Amit Mehta has ruled Google’s hunt motor is an amerciable monopoly, its lawyers are sparring with the DOJ implicit however terrible a imaginable punishment should be.

Peter Fitzgerald, Google’s vice president of platforms and instrumentality partnerships, testified connected Monday that Google’s payments to Samsung started successful January. That’s aft Google was found to person violated antitrust law, partially owed to akin arrangements with Apple, Samsung, and different companies for search. When Samsung launched the Galaxy S25 bid successful January, it besides added Gemini arsenic the default AI assistant erstwhile long-pressing the powerfulness button, with its ain Bixby adjunct taking a backmost seat.

The Information reports that contiguous Fitzgerald testified that different companies had pitched Samsung connected deals to preinstall their AI adjunct apps, including Perplexity and Microsoft. But a DOJ lawyer pointed retired that Google’s letters attempting to amend its woody with telephone makers, which the institution presented astatine the hearing, were lone sent past week, conscionable up of the trial. Also, interior slides presented contiguous seemingly showed that Google “was considering much restrictive  distribution agreements that would person required partners to preinstall Gemini alongside Search and Chrome,” The Information writes.

According to Bloomberg, Fitzgerald said the Gemini woody is simply a two-year statement that, on with fixed monthly payments, sees Google giving Samsung a percent of its advertisement gross from the Gemini app. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer David Dahlquist called the fixed monthly outgo an “enormous sum,” Bloomberg says. Exactly however tremendous isn’t known.

If the DOJ has its way, the results of these hearings could mean Google is forbidden from striking default placement deals successful the future, would sell Chrome, and would beryllium forced to licence the immense bulk of the information that powers Google Search. Google has argued that it should lone person to springiness up the default placement deals.