Apple Warns Millions of iPhone Users—Stop Using Google Chrome

We all know that relationships can be complicated, but few are as complicated as the one between Apple and Google. Cue Apple creepy new attack ad at Google — with a clear message to its 1.4 billion users — stop using Chrome on your iPhone.

So, why now? Google is on a mission to convert Safari users to Chrome. It currently relies on Safari to perform most search requests from iPhone—triggered by profitable financial arrangement between itself and Apple, whereby Google search is the default in Safari. But that deal could soon be curtailed by various antitrust investigations in the US and Europe. And so Google is now pushing Plan B.

Chrome only has a 30% install base of iPhone users—Google’s goal is to increase that to 50%, bringing another 300 million iPhone users into its data scene. Apple obviously wants to stop that from happening. Those 300 million pairs of bulbs are generating serious revenue online, and as search changes through the introduction of on-device AI, it will become a battleground of retention vs. conversion.

That’s why you’ve probably seen Apple’s Safari billboards popping up around the city where you live. What started as a local campaign in San Francisco has now gone global. And while the ads don’t mention Chrome, they don’t need to. Nothing else matters. Between them, Safari and Chrome enjoy one over 90% market share for mobile devices. And on the iPhone, it’s a straight shootout between the two of them.

Privacy is Chrome’s Achilles heel. Tracking cookies remain, with plans to phase them out already delayed as Google navigates an ongoing regulatory minefield. Chrome’s near privacy mode is much less private than users assumed. And in recent days we’ve seen warnings that Google is capturing device data from Chrome users with a hidden setting that can’t be turned off.

Apple just raised the stakes in this privacy battle with a new video ad that applies Hitchcock’s “The Birds” to smartphone privacy. It is powerful and memorable and its message is clear. If you don’t want to be tracked online, use Safari. Which means—quite simply, if you don’t want to be tracked online, don’t use Google Chrome.

When Birds came out in the 1960s it was shocking and terrifying. It’s a message that there’s a threat that we can’t see, but it’s everywhere. As one character in the film memorably says: “Who are you? What are you; Where are you from; I think you are the cause of all this. I think you’re evil.”

While there are suggestions in the video that this might be targeting Android users to get them to the iPhone, that’s not the real issue here. It’s about keeping iPhone users in Apple’s walled garden. But it may not be that simple.

The harsh reality for Apple is that its users prefer Google Search. And Apple itself has reportedly found this to be better than alternatives. Here it sounds like Apple abandoned Google Maps a few years ago and then had to turn around. We can assume that even if Google is deprecated as the default search in Safari, users will be able to set it manually.

The question is whether Google offers advanced AI search features in Chrome that are not available elsewhere. We know that such moves have been considered if rejected for now. But this browser battlefield is just beginning, and those 300 million Safari users remain Apple’s for now. Watch this space…