Apple boss defends iphone’s Google search

Apple chief executive Tim Cook has defended the company accepting billions from Google to make its search engine the iphone default, despite its commitment to privacy.

The boss of the world’s first trillion dollar company has previously criticised the likes of Google and Facebook for their advertising-supported practices, reliant on user data to make profit.

In a US interview, Mr Cook emphasised Apple had employed a range of measures to protect user privacy, but admitted the deal was not perfect.

“I think their search engine is the best,” he said.

“Look at what we’ve done with the controls we’ve built 0 Tim Cook says Google’s search engine is the best

in. We have private web browsing. We have an intelligent tracker prevention ... [but] it’s not a perfect thing.” The agreement makes Google search the default in a number of ways, including within Apple’s web browser Safari and for web searches carried out with voice assistant Siri.