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OpenAI is reportedly preparing legal action against Apple; it wouldn’t be the first partner to feel burned

Connie Loizos

OpenAI is so frustrated with Apple over a ChatGPT integration that failed to deliver the subscribers and prominence it expected that the company is now actively exploring legal action against the iPhone maker, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has enlisted an outside law firm to work through its options, which could include sending Apple a formal breach-of-contract notice without necessarily escalating to a full lawsuit (at least not immediately). Any legal move would likely wait until after the conclusion of OpenAI’s ongoing trial with Elon Musk.

Still, it’s a reminder of what a difficult partner Apple can be for major software companies. The iPhone is an enormously attractive platform for growth, but it’s fully under Apple’s control — and companies that build there are only guests. From Google to Adobe, there’s a long history of Apple showing guests the door when they seem as if they’re getting too comfortable.

TechCrunch has reached out to both OpenAI and Apple for comment.

The OpenAI partnership, announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2024, wove ChatGPT into Apple’s operating systems as an option within Siri and as part of the iPhone’s Visual Intelligence feature (allowing users to use their camera to analyze their surroundings and send photos to ChatGPT with related questions).

OpenAI, along with industry watchers, expected the deal might eventually funnel billions of dollars in new subscriptions its way and give the company prime real estate across one of the world’s most-used mobile ecosystems. Instead, Bloomberg reports, OpenAI has grown increasingly aggravated, complaining that the integration has been buried, its features hard to find, and that revenue from the tie-up is nowhere close to projections. “They basically said, ‘OpenAI needs to take a leap of faith and trust us,’” one OpenAI executive told Bloomberg. “It didn’t work out well.”

Apple, for its part, has its own grievances, including concerns about OpenAI’s privacy standards and, according to Bloomberg, irritation over OpenAI’s push into hardware, an effort led by former Apple executives, including ex-design chief Jony Ive.

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Either way, OpenAI is hardly the first partner of Apple to regret hitching its wagon to the company. Apple has a long history of embracing partners and then alienating them. The most famous case is Google Maps, which was a flagship feature of the original iPhone. It was so central to the device’s appeal that its removal in 2012 — replaced by Apple’s markedly inferior Apple Maps product — became one of the biggest tech fiascos of the decade, prompting a rare public apology from CEO Tim Cook.

The friction between the two companies had been building for years at that point, thanks to the rollout of Google’s Android phone a year after the iPhone’s 2007 debut; after Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt stepped down from Apple’s board in 2009, that rivalry only intensified.

Adobe has some scar tissue, too. Steve Jobs refused to support Flash on the iPhone and iPad, publishing a famous open letter in 2010 explaining why and effectively dooming the technology. Flash never recovered its footing on mobile.

Then there’s Spotify, which spent years arguing that Apple leveraged its control over the App Store to disadvantage rival music streaming services after launching Apple Music in 2015. The European Commission agreed, fining Apple nearly €1.8 billion in March 2024.

Sometimes these rifts can be overcome in the name of commercial interests. Google is now Apple’s AI infrastructure partner, having struck a multiyear deal in January to power the next generation of Apple Intelligence with Gemini models. Apple is paying Google roughly $1 billion a year.

In the meantime, OpenAI has had its own share of strained relationships lately. Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company — which accuses OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit founding mission and operating in bad faith — is currently at trial.

The company has also reportedly navigated tensions with Microsoft, its biggest backer and infrastructure partner, as it pushes for greater independence ahead of its own IPO ambitions.

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Connie Loizos
Loizos has been reporting on Silicon Valley since the late ’90s, when she joined the original Red Herring magazine. Previously the Silicon Valley Editor of TechCrunch, she was named Editor in Chief and General Manager of TechCrunch in September 2023. She’s also the founder of StrictlyVC, a daily e-newsletter and lecture series acquired by Yahoo in August 2023 and now operated as a sub brand of TechCrunch.

You can contact or verify outreach from Connie by emailing connie@strictlyvc.com or connie@techcrunch.com, or via encrypted message at ConnieLoizos.53 on Signal.
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Apple says Epic lawsuit shouldn’t reshape App Store rules for all developers

Sarah Perez

In Apple’s seemingly never-ending lawsuit with Fortnite maker Epic Games over App Store commissions, the iPhone maker is once again fighting a court’s ruling. Its latest tactic? Saying that Epic Games’ beef with Apple over its fee structure shouldn’t lead to an injunction that applies to all developers that publish on the U.S. App Store, including other tech giants like Microsoft and Spotify, which weren’t a part of this particular litigation.

“Epic never brought a class action and never attempted to show that enjoining Apple’s conduct against all other developers — like Microsoft or Spotify, who have nothing to do with Epic — was somehow necessary to provide relief to Epic,” reads Apple’s new petition, which asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review the lower court ruling.

In the same document, Apple also argues against the Ninth Circuit’s civil contempt order over Apple’s compliance with the injunction. The court had ruled that Apple must give developers the right to include links in their apps — links that could direct users to alternative payment options outside of Apple’s own system — if they chose to do so. Apple did permit this as required, but charged fees on those outside purchases, leading to the contempt order.

The Ninth Circuit said that charging fees of 27% on external payments defeated the purpose of allowing them — which, well, it did. But Apple is pushing back on specific legal grounds. Its new argument focuses on whether a federal court can hold a party in civil contempt for violating the “spirit” of an injunction when the injunction itself was written in a way that left room for interpretation and said nothing about commissions (i.e., it didn’t specifically prohibit fees on external purchases, so technically, Apple believes it did nothing wrong).

Apple has seemingly infinite money to fund its legal battles. The company has been fighting Epic’s original 2020 lawsuit for over five years now with no end in sight.

Epic Games criticized Apple’s latest move as “one last Hail Mary to delay a conclusion to this case and avoid opening up the gates to payment competition for the benefit of consumers.”

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rejected Apple’s request to pause additional proceedings until the court could determine whether the sanctions were justified.

This week, Epic Games announced that Fortnite was back in the App Store globally (save for Australia), because it believes the court is on its side and will not allow Apple’s fee structure to stand as is.

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Sarah Perez
Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.

You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal.

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AI

Six search engines worth trying now that Google isn’t really Google anymore

Amanda Silberling

Google is about to look really different, and if you’re not a fan of the AI Overviews feature, then you’re not going to like what’s coming.

At the Google I/O 2026 keynote this week, the company announced that it is overhauling Search to embrace a conversational, AI-driven approach, even inviting users to enlist AI agents to automatically notify them if, for example, their favorite band were to go on tour.

“This is the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago,” said Elizabeth Reid, leader of the Search organization at Google.

Now, when you search on Google, you’re given the option from the start to use AI mode. Even if you opt not to use AI mode, you might get a search result with an AI Overview, which will now include a chat box for you to ask follow-up questions. Once you open the chat box, Google begins to look more like ChatGPT than the search engine that’s ingrained itself into our lives for decades.

This announcement didn’t elicit the reaction that Google would’ve hoped for. Instead, many users see this as yet another example of a tech company squeezing AI agents and chatbots into everything it can, making it impossible to navigate the internet without encountering a chatbot. Especially after the rocky rollout of Google’s AI Overviews — remember when Google told people to stare into the sun? — users are not eager for another adjustment.

Image Credits:Google

On Google’s video announcing the Search updates, one commenter wrote, “this is the best advertisement for letting people know it’s time to get a different search engine.”

They make a good point. The new Google Search, which Reid describes as “AI search through and through,” is sure to alienate users. Generative AI aside, some users have also grown weary of Google for its sheer dominance — a U.S. District Court ruled in 2024 that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search.

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If you’re curious about alternative search engines, you’re in the right place. Here are some places to start (or, embrace chaos and see where Open Web Engine takes you).

Kagi

Before we were annoyed by Google’s AI Overview, we were annoyed by ads. Ads are non-negotiable for Google — that’s how Google Search makes money. But if a search engine were to operate without ads, could it still make money?

That’s what Kagi is trying to accomplish. For $5 per month — or $10 for unlimited searches — you can access an ad-free search engine without AI overviews.

Kagi isn’t just ad-free Google. The search engine also lets users customize their search experience by letting them filter certain websites and refine search results with “lenses.” If you’re in school, for example, you can use Kagi’s academic lens to find journal articles about a topic, rather than blog posts.

If you find Google’s AI Overviews useful from time to time, then you can use Kagi’s AI-powered “Quick Answer” feature to summarize an answer to your search and include links to its sources. But if you don’t want these AI summaries, guess what? You don’t have to generate them.

DuckDuckGo

Maybe you don’t want to pay to search stuff online. That’s understandable. DuckDuckGo offers a free search engine that makes money by selling ads, but unlike Google, it doesn’t collect user data in the form of search, browsing, and purchase history. Instead DuckDuckGo chooses what ads to serve based on the topic of your search — so if you search for concert tickets, you might see an ad for SeatGeek.

Like many alternative search engines, DuckDuckGo has an interface that’s reminiscent of Google — and like Google, it can display an AI-generated answer to a question in your search results. But if that bothers you, DuckDuckGo allows you to completely opt out of AI features in the settings menu.

Startpage

While DuckDuckGo has its own separate search index from Google, Startpage is a proxy for Google.

This means that Startpage acts as a middleman between you and the tech giant. When you search for something on Startpage, the company strips personal data like your IP address from your query, sends it to Google via the cloud, and returns the information to you. So, it’s Google without Google knowing who you are. The downside is, well, it’s still Google. At least Startpage lets you turn off AI features.

&udm=14

What if you took Startpage and made it simpler? The search engine &udm=14 is named for the string of characters it appends to all of your searches on Google.

If you add &udm=14 to your Google searches, you’ll get the same Google results, only without an AI overview. But doing that yourself after every search is pretty annoying. That’s why &udm=14 does it for you automatically.

The developer even put the code on GitHub so you can run your own version of &udm=14 if that’s your thing.

If you’re concerned about privacy, then you’d probably opt for Startpage over &udm=14, but both will basically get you AI-free Google.

Brave

Brave offers both a browser and a search engine. Since the browser is built atop Chromium, which is the same open-source base as Google Chrome, you can use Chrome extensions within the Brave browser. So, if you don’t want to use Google Chrome, but you can’t function without your LastPass plug-in, Brave could be for you.

In terms of search, Brave allows users to apply certain third-party “Goggles” (not Googles!) to their searches, which curate the results. These include “News from the Right,” “News from the Left,” “Tech Blogs,” and some other more niche options, like “Hacker News/1k short,” which prioritizes common domains referenced on Y-Combinator’s Hacker News forum, but without the 1,000 most popular domains, so it omits more mainstream sites. Then, there’s “No Pinterest,” which is pretty self-explanatory (and funny).

And yes, Brave does let you toggle AI features on and off. There’s no reason you can’t do this, Google.

Ecosia

Like Brave, Ecosia also offers both a browser and a search engine, and it’s also built atop Chromium, meaning that your Chrome plug-ins should work on Ecosia too. As its name suggests, Ecosia’s main draw is that it’s supposed to be more eco-friendly than other search platforms.

Ecosia makes money from ads, but it donates about 80% of its income to tree-planting initiatives around the world. Tree-planting can sometimes be a red flag for greenwashing, but Ecosia works with communities involved in local reforestation efforts, publishes monthly financial reports for transparency, and blogs about the actual impact of its efforts.

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Amanda Silberling

Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.

You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal.

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