Apple’s Betrayal on Google Lights $175 Billion on Fire—Share’s Crater 10%

E Tu, Brute? 

So Google just got publicly humiliated, again, and this time it wasn’t by the DOJ, Trump, or even some half-baked AI startup with a Discord server and a dream. No, this hit came straight from Tim Cook & the Boys, a.k.a Apple, the company that’s spent the last decade quietly cashing Google’s checks while plotting its slow, surgical betrayal.

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of Services and now Google arsonist, took the stand and legit set $175 billion of Alphabet’s market cap on fire with a single sentence. The quote? Apple is “actively looking at” ditching Google as Safari’s default search engine in favor of AI-powered alternatives like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic, and Grok (Elon’s toy). Translation: the gravy train might be pulling into its final station.

Naturally, Wall Street reacted as if Google’s entire business model just got pantsed in the middle of Times Square (spoiler: It did)---with shares cratering nearly 10% before claiming back some losses. But by then, the damage was done. And $170 billion in market cap had been eviscerated as Apple might be done pretending Google is the only game in town. To put it bluntly: the house Google built, the one built on search monopoly money, default deals, and a chokehold on mobile traffic, just started cracking, and Cook’s team is whistling while they swing the sledgehammer.

(Source: New York Post) 

What’s more is that Cue didn’t stop at “we’re exploring alternatives’. He then went on to say search traffic from Safari users is already bleeding out. People aren’t googling like they used to. They’re running to AI bots. ChatGPT, Perplexity, whatever-the-hell startup with a transformer model and a decent UI. The point is, the default slot Google pays tens of billions to hold is losing value. The emperor’s still wearing clothes, but they’re threadbare, and Eddy just yanked at the seams.

Now, here’s the grotesque irony of this shindig: Google is currently in the courtroom getting grilled for monopolizing search by paying Apple off. And Apple, while testifying in that exact case, is now publicly explaining that they may not want to play with Google anymore (which is huge considering Google pays Apple somewhere between $15-$20 billion a year to be the default search engine on Safari). For instance, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is already integrated with Siri and now Eddy is hinting that they are already in talks with Perplexity. Bigly. 

(Source: Bloomberg) 

Meanwhile, Alphabet’s now stuck in the Innovator’s Dilemma from Hell. Their core product, search, is a $200 billion cash cow. AI answers are expensive to generate, hard to monetize, and don’t leave room for ten blue links with ads slapped on top. So if they pivot aggressively to AI, they cannibalize their own ad business. If they don’t, they get leapfrogged by the very companies they used to mock as irrelevant. It’s lose-lose with Sundar Pichai standing in the middle of a burning house holding a hose that sprays gasoline.

Of course, Apple walking away is not set in stone, but the smoke is starting to smell like fire. Which brings me to the real question here: if you’re Sundar, what the hell do you do? The guy is definitely sitting in a big swingin’ pickle here all while Apple just decided to play kingmaker. If Tim Cook can plug ChatGPT or Perplexity into Safari and say “look, we’re innovating,” while also potentially negotiating better terms with Google because of it? That’s called leverage. And Apple doesn’t just use leverage, they weaponize it. 

(Source: Giphy) 

In the end, Alphabet’s stock got absolutely rekt yesterday. And contrary to the exaggerated price action we’ve seen in the market over the past month, this one wasn’t exaggerated. It was a warning shot. Google has officially lost control of the narrative, the old gods of search are bleeding, and Apple just whispered to the world “What if we burn it down?”. Now obviously, only time will tell what will come from this, but it’s going to swing massive in either direction.

Meaning, keep your eyes on both stocks today and place your bets accordingly, friends. Until next time… 

P.S. Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you liked getting rekt. Let’s face it, retail investors get the short end of the stick all day everyday. It’s the smart money’s world, and we are just living in it–only useful when it comes to liquidity purposes in the market. Meaning, if you’re as pissed off as I was when I found out Milli Vanilli was lip syncing the whole time, then it’s time to go from investing blind, to investing smart. Luckily for you, the key is right here as a Stocks.News premium member. Click here to see exactly how our premium members are printing while others quake in the face of today’s market chaos. 

Stocks.News holds positions in Apple and Google as mentioned in the article.