An opportunity went up in smoke for Apple when Microsoft pitched it to acquire its Bing search engine in 2018, according to court documents from Google’s antitrust lawsuit. However, the Cupertino giant passed on the chance to have its own search engine, reportedly believing that Bing was riddled with search quality issues. Microsoft has also attempted to persuade Apple to make its search engine default in the Safari web browser, but the company has been met with a similar response.
Apple has been pitched six times by Microsoft over acquiring Bing, to no avail
In a court filing, Google stated that Microsoft tried selling Bing to Apple six times in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020. Since there were quality issues with the search engine, Apple declined a boatload number of times.
“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.”
There were also talks where Microsoft attempted to establish a business relationship with Apple by setting up a joint venture and running Bing. Sadly, that deal did not materialize either. Microsoft likely believed that the potential partner would finally start showing adequate interest if Bing’s search result quality started improving, which the company claims that it did, but the talks did not bear fruit.
At this time, Bing has a measly 3 percent global market share, according to StatCounter, with Microsoft making $3.2 billion in revenue from search and news advertising in the fourth quarter of 2023. On the other hand, Google was raking in the dough, with its revenue reaching $48 billion in the same period. However, with Microsoft heavily invested in OpenAI and its chatbot ChatGPT, the integration of its own AI-powered chatbot and co-pilot may take away the market share from Google, but it goes without saying that it is going to be a tough road ahead.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, thought that Bing’s search quality and Microsoft’s investment in the engine was insufficient and could not be compared to Google in any manner. It is possible that Apple continued to downplay the potential partnership with the software giant because it would have been a waste of an investment to take on Google, especially when the latter was paying Apple billions to keep its search engine default on iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
“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.”
Cue also states that if Google did not pay Apple billions, the California-based giant would have proceeded to build its own search engine. However, since the deal between the two technology behemoths was best suited for Apple, there was little motivation to make a search engine from scratch.
News Source: CNBC
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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