Apple speeds up work on its own search engine after DOJ questions its deal with Google

Apple has accelerated its work on a proprietary search engine, possibly because of regulatory pressure, per a new report from .

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Tuesday over the alleged annual payment of around $8 billion to $12 billion made to Apple to be the default search engine on its devices.

The payment allegedly makes up 15 to 20 percent of the iPhone maker’s profit. Apple’s devices were apparently behind 50 percent of Google’s search traffic last year. 

Although the Justice Department’s …