One word in the Google antitrust ruling was worth $20B a year to Apple

For more than a year now, there have been debates about whether Google’s payment to Apple to be the default search engine in Safari would be outlawed.

While it had seemed likely this would be the case, what we got was a compromise ruling. It turned out that the difference between Apple earning $20 billion a year and $0 hinged on a single word …

It had seemed likely both companies would lose

The ruling just over a year ago was very clear: Google’s deal with Apple to be the…