Am I crazy or are the people saying that getting the headline mixed up? Google is the one paying Apple fifteen billion dollars here, not the other way around. Why would Apple want off that gravy train? I’m sure they could make some search engine, but they’d have to be better than Google at monetizing it for it to be worth the effort.
I think the argument goes: Google is paying a massive $15B (or ca. 15% of Apple's profits) AND they are only doing that because there is more than $15B in value to them.
So if default iOS search has value in excess of $15B, Apple should just build their own and capture all of that value.
It's not an argument I agree with, and not one I think they will pursue.
Apple's P/E ratio is roughly 29. So, if you assume that the $15bn is pretty much all profit (for simplicity here remember), then the value of that for AAPL is roughly $35bn in market cap.
So it takes a really good reason to kick out Google from this situation.
> Apple's P/E ratio is roughly 29. So, if you assume that the $15bn is pretty much all profit (for simplicity here remember), then the value of that for AAPL is roughly $35bn in market cap.
Not sure where you get $35B from. 15B * 29 = $435B
