In 2018, Microsoft made an offer to sell its Bing search engine to Apple, as revealed in a recent court filing by Google. This document, part of Google’s antitrust case against the U.S. Justice Department, was unsealed last Friday.
The legal dispute, centered around whether Alphabet holds a monopoly in web search advertising, delves into crucial agreements Google maintains with Apple and Android phone manufacturers to secure exclusivity for its search engine. According to information presented during the trial in October 2021, Google expended over $26 billion to maintain its search engine as the default option. Throughout the case, Google has been striving to demonstrate fair competition.
In its filing, Google contended that Microsoft approached Apple multiple times between 2009 and 2020, proposing Bing as the default search engine for Apple’s Safari web browser. However, Apple consistently declined, citing concerns about Bing’s quality.
The Justice Department, in its own unsealed filing, disclosed that Microsoft has invested nearly $100 billion in Bing over two decades. Bing was launched in 2009 by the software giant, following previous search endeavors under the MSN and Windows Live brands.
As of now, Bing holds a 3% share of the global search market, according to StatCounter. In the fourth quarter, Microsoft garnered $3.2 billion from search and news advertising, while Google’s search and other revenue amounted to $48 billion.
Google’s filing stated that in 2018, when Microsoft approached Apple again, emphasizing improvements in Bing’s quality, it offered either to sell Bing to Apple or establish a joint venture related to Bing.
According to the filing, Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, expressed concerns about Bing’s quality and Microsoft’s level of investment compared to Google’s. Cue asserted that Bing’s search quality and monetization strategies were inferior.
Google mentioned that Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to Apple executives regarding the evaluation of Bing, although the contents of his remarks were redacted in the filing.
Representatives for Google and Microsoft were not available for immediate comment.
During the trial in October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that he had consistently explored the possibility of a default arrangement for Bing with Apple throughout his tenure.
Cue’s testimony suggested that if Apple hadn’t received substantial payments from Google, it would have developed its own search engine, as stated in the Justice Department’s filing.
In September, Bloomberg reported, based on unnamed sources, that around 2020, Microsoft executives engaged in “exploratory” discussions with Eddy Cue about potentially selling Bing to Apple.
