The world is privy to speculations that Google paid Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine on their devices. However, the details of that contract have never been made public. Turns out, according to a recent class lawsuit filed in California, the agreement harms both competing search engine providers and businesses who advertise with Google.

According to a study by The New York Times, the annual cost might range from $8 to $12 billion. It even goes so far as to argue that Apple and Google should really be divided up into smaller corporations for breaking antitrust rules in the United States.

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This action is extremely interesting because, if it proceeds to the discovery stage, we may finally discover how much Google pays Apple each year to be the default search engine on its devices.

The idea that both businesses are actively working together to restrict any possible competitors in the search engine market through acquisitions and covert means is the most alarming part of this merger. There’s a possibility that Google will share a piece of the advertising money generated by its search engine on Safari mobile, which doesn’t seem unreasonable given that Apple’s devices are generating that traffic.

Even with the clearly various charges in this current lawsuit, there have been concerns for some time that antitrust officials may consider Apple’s partnership with Google anti-competitive. While rumors about an Apple Search Engine have been circulating several times, if Apple were to create its own search engine, it would have been in breach of its current contract with Google.