Microsoft reportedly tried to sell its Bing search engine to Apple as recent as 2018, revealed recently unsealed court filings that were shared as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google, reported CNBC.
Google, which is facing an anti-trust trial in a U.S. court for having an overwhelming monopoly in the search engine market, in its court filings, argued that it does have “competition” in the search industry.
According to documents made public on Friday, Google claimed that Microsoft approached Apple on at least six different occasions: 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020, to get the Cupertino giant to use Bing as the default search engine on its Safari browser for the iPhone.
However, each time, Apple turned down the offer, citing issues with Bing’s ability to compete with Google in quality and capabilities, suggesting that there is indeed competition, the search giant said.
“In each instance, Apple took a hard look at the relative quality of Bing versus Google and concluded that Google was the superior default choice for its Safari users. That is competition,” Google wrote in the filing.
In addition, the search giant wrote that when Microsoft reached out to Apple in 2018, highlighting advantages in Bing’s quality, the company’s goal was to either “sell Bing to Apple or establish a Bing-related joint venture.” However, Apple ultimately decided against any kind of deal.
“Microsoft search quality, their investment in search, everything was not significant at all. And so everything was lower. So the search quality itself wasn’t as good. They weren’t investing at any level comparable to Google or to what Microsoft could invest in. And their advertising organization and how they monetize was not very good either,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of services, according to the filing.
Apparently, the discussion between Apple and Microsoft never went beyond the early stages. Currently, Apple uses Google as the default search engine for its Safari browser. In 2021, Google reportedly paid $18 billion to Apple to remain the default search engine on iPhone devices.
