Microsoft considered selling its Bing search engine to Apple in a deal that would have replaced Google as the default search offering on Apple’s devices, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
- The talks took place around 2020 between Microsoft executives and Eddy Cue, head of Apple services. Citing people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg said the exploratory talks never reached an advanced stage.
- Apple and Google first reached a deal on search in 2002. The deal expanded over time to new devices, including the iPhone, and Google now pays Apple an estimated $15 billion a year to be the default search engine on the more than 1 billion iPhones and other Apple devices in use globally, Insider reported this year.
- Microsoft launched Bing in 2009 as a rival to Google, but today it accounts for less than 10% of searches.
- In an antitrust trial against Google that opened this week, the Justice Department argues that the Apple deal is evidence that Google unfairly dominates the search market. Cue defended the deal in testimony, saying there is no other search engine worthy of replacing Google.
- Previously: Microsoft Bing will become ChatGPT’s default search engine in latest OpenAI collaboration
