Bloomberg reported that Microsoft explored selling its search engine, Bing, to Apple in 2020, if the deal had gone through, Bing would have replaced Google as the default search engine on Apple devices.
The report said that Microsoft executives met with Apple’s head of services, Eddy Cue, to discuss a potential deal. However, the talks were “exploratory” and did not result in any progress.
According to Bloomberg, Apple did not move forward with the deal because of the money it earns from Google for keeping it as the default search engine on its devices, and because Apple was concerned that Bing would not be able to compete with Google in terms of “quality and capabilities.”
It is worth noting that Google has been the default search engine on Apple devices for many years as part of an agreement between the two companies, in return, Apple receives significant payments from Google, estimated by some reports to be around $20 billion annually.
The agreement between Apple and Google is currently under scrutiny due to an antitrust case between Google and the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Justice Department is using Google’s dominance on Apple devices as evidence of anti-competitive practices in the search engine market.
Apple has defended the use of Google as its default search engine by saying that it has not found a “viable alternative.”
Apple users can always change the default search engine to other options such as Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.
Bing has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to Microsoft’s collaboration with OpenAI and the addition of many artificial intelligence features.
