It is no secret that Google pays Apple billions of dollars to remain the default browser on Safari across all Apple devices. Given the revenue that iPhones and iPad users generate for Google, it is understandable as to why the company is ready to shell out the moolah to secure the deal. Now, Apple’s former lawyer Bruce Sewell in an interview has revealed that the negotiations with Google over the default search engine in Safari took almost four months.

The interview was conducted by a student of the Columbia University earlier this year, though it is being discovered only today. Sewell says that during the negotiations which lasted four months, they — he and Tim Cook or Eddy Cue and general counsel Kent Walker– were meeting Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai “almost every single day.”

“And then with myself and either Tim [Cook] or Eddy Cue who was my counterpart on that deal. They’d be at Google or we’d be at Apple almost every day, it’s just one example there are a lot of those kinds of negotiations or lawsuits that just completely suck up all your time.”

Sewell was Apple’s general counsel for almost a decade — from 2009 to 2017 before retiring and being replaced by Katerine Adams. As the head Apple lawyer, he managed a legal team of 900 people with a budget of just under $1 billion. Sewell reported directly to Tim Cook and noted how Apple’s CEO has a crazy work schedule. Cook would send him a barrage of emails early morning so the first thing Sewell would do after getting up was to check his email.

“Tim is a little crazy in his work schedule,” Sewell said.

“From 4:00 a.m. to 5 a.m., there’s a there’s a lot of activity, so my first thing when I got up around 6:30 a.m. would be to check my email and see all the stuff that Tim had left for me, the little cookies he’s left for me,” Sewell continued.

[Via CNBC]

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