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A new report suggests that the world’s most popular web browser, Google Chrome, is making its way to the iPhone this year.
The news comes from a group of analysts at Macquarie Capital, who sent out a email note titled: “The Browser Wars Part Deux; Google Chrome Browser for iOS is Coming,”
The note said the app will be available very soon and they even reckon Google might have already submitted the app for approval from the Cupertino tech giant.
The analysts in question believe this move by Google will be the next chapter in the browser wars, but with this battle taking place in the mobile space.
Web browsers are inherently free; but companies like Google do make money from them. Google, and others, pay browser companies a percentage of revenue gained from search requests using Google’s search box.
For example, if you search for a holiday in the search bar in Safari and then select an ad, Google will pay a percentage of the revenue made from that interaction. So Apple gets money from Google and Google gets money from the advertiser.
Apparently, Google currently pays anything from 50% to 60% of revenue made from searches on the mobile version of Safari.
This generates quite a sizeable amount of revenue for Google, but if Apple was ever to drop the Google search from Safari then the search giant would lose a lot of revenue. The move to make Chrome available on the App store is thought to be a preemptive step to move users from Safari to Chrome and secure the revenue it might lose if Apple did dump Google.
Google applied a similar strategy four years ago when it originally launched Chrome. Back then, Google would pay Microsoft and Mozilla a cut of revenue – fast forward four years and Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers around – and it would like to do the same with mobile browsing.
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