Report: Google paid Samsung a lot of money to push Gemini in One UI

Google is in the midst of several antitrust lawsuits stressing that the company has taken unfair steps to become a monopoly. It has been accused of paying companies to use its products and software instead of the competition, and now it has been reported that the search giant paid Samsung “an enormous sum of money” to push Gemini in One UI. This transaction has been in the form of monthly payments said to continue for at least two years. 

According to a Bloomberg report, the VP, Global Partnerships, Platforms & Ecosystems at Google, Peter Fitzgerald, revealed that Samsung was paid a lot of money on a monthly basis to ensure Gemini was pre-installed on the South Korean company’s devices. This included payments for each device that the AI assistant was pre-installed on, as well as a percentage of revenue from the ads present in the app.

Furthermore, this contract is reportedly for at least two years and Samsung did accept these payments to install Gemini as a default app, despite having some form of its own AI assistant. The Galaxy S25 series comes with Gemini built-in as the default assistant that can be activated by pressing the power button, just like on Google Pixel devices. This allows Samsung phones with Gemini to get all the updates that are pushed to the AI assistant like real-time conversations, Visual AI, and more. 

The hearing that took place on Monday, April 21, is said to be the last till the final decision in September.