Microsoft was considering selling search engine Bing to Apple

On Apple Macs and iPhones, the default search engine is set to Google. This is because Google pays a high license fee every year, but Google's competitor Microsoft is also said to have been negotiating with Apple to adopt its search service ``Bing''. And the American economic newspaper Bloomberg reported that Microsoft was considering selling Bing itself to Apple around 2020.

Apple Pitched by Microsoft to Buy Bing for Search in 2020 - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-28/microsoft-discussed-selling-bing-to-apple-as-google-replacement

Apple leverages idea of switching to Bing to pry more money out of Google, Microsoft exec says | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-microsoft-bing-search-engine-eee462713c9ab59f6f3e886940c11a88

Anonymous sources told Bloomberg that Microsoft executives met with Apple's head of services, Eddie Cue, to discuss a potential Bing acquisition with Apple. However, this discussion was only at the stage of exploring the matter, and the discussion did not progress as it was.

Microsoft launched Bing in 2009, at which point Google already dominated the search engine market. Google first entered into a search engine agreement with Apple in 2002, with Google spending between $15 billion and $20 billion annually in license fees to remain the iPhone's default search engine. (approximately 3 trillion yen).

Google pays an estimated 1 trillion yen or more to be Safari's default search engine - GIGAZINE

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Google for violating antitrust laws, saying, ``Google is blocking out search engines such as Bing and Yahoo!, and inhibiting innovation.'' I'm criticizing it.

In a lawsuit held in federal court in Washington, D.C., on September 27, 2023, Mikhail Parakhin, head of advertising and web services at Microsoft, said, ``Apple has made Google the default search engine for Macs and iPhones. 'We were never serious about replacing it with Bing, but we did leave open the possibility of using Bing as a 'bargaining chip' to get higher license fees from Google.' I testified.

In fact, the default search engine in Safari has always been Google, but until 2017, Bing was used for web searches with Siri and 'Spotlight' searches on iPhone and Mac.

It turns out that Microsoft's Bing will be used for Spotlight search that appears when you swipe down on the iPhone screen - GIGAZINE

Apple claims, ``We were concerned about whether Bing could compete with Google in terms of quality and functionality,'' and Mr. Cue also stated in the lawsuit that ``At the time, Bing was an effective search engine that could replace Google.'' 'There was no such thing,' he testified.

A service executive says he had 'never thought about' the possibility of Apple ending its contract with Google - GIGAZINE