When you get a new phone, how much thought do you put into the apps that come pre-installed on it? No, we’re not talking about the Facebooks and Instagrams of the world, but Google’s own apps. You probably don’t pay much mind to them because, well, they come from the same company that supplied the operating system. It makes sense that they’re on the phone, right? Well, it might surprise you that Google paid $7.2 billion last year in part to get its apps onto your phone. It pays Android OEMs for things like prominent search bar placement and to make sure apps like YouTube and Chrome are included on the phone. It also pays to be the default option for built-in web search boxes on Apple’s Safari browser for both Macs and iOS. All of these costs are called “traffic acquisition costs” and they’re going up. Fast. The rapid increase in costs comes for a variety of reasons. Google is now paying three times the amount it did in 2012 to mobile-related partners like Apple for priority acce...