Feb 26, 2024 11:17:00

Google's court filings reveal that ``Microsoft was trying to sell Bing to Apple in 2018''

In September 2023, the economic newspaper Bloomberg

reported that ``Microsoft was considering selling Bing itself to Apple around 2020,'' but Google said ``Microsoft is considering selling Bing to Apple in 2018.'' '', they claim in documents filed with the court.

Google says Microsoft offered to sell Bing to Apple in 2018
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/24/google-says-microsoft-offered-to-sell-bing-to-apple-in-2018.html

Microsoft tried to sell Bing to Apple in 2018, according to Google court filings - 9to5Mac
https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/24/microsoft-sell-bing-to-apple/

The US Department of Justice is suing Alphabet, Google's parent company, for violating antitrust laws in the Internet advertising market. Documents that Google filed with the court in early February 2024 as evidence in this lawsuit were made public on February 23. In this document, Google claims that ``Microsoft offered to sell its search engine Bing to Apple in 2018.''

The filing states, 'Microsoft pitched Apple to make Bing the default search engine for Safari on six occasions: in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020. Apple rejected the proposal citing Bing's quality issues.'

According to Google, Apple thoroughly compared and considered the quality of Bing with Google search for each of the six proposals. And each time, it seems that they concluded that ``Google search is a good default choice for Safari users'' and rejected Microsoft's proposal.

In addition, Microsoft is said to have proposed selling Bing to Apple in 2018 or establishing a Bing-related joint venture between Microsoft and Apple. However, Eddie Cue, Apple's vice president of services, said, 'Microsoft's search quality, investment in search, etc. all just don't matter. That's why the bar for everything is lower. So the quality of search. 'And Microsoft's investment in Bing doesn't reach the level of investment that Google has in Google Search. Their advertising organization and monetization methods are also not very good.' Apparently he refused.

According to Google, about 100 billion dollars (about 15 trillion yen) has been spent on Bing, which was launched by Microsoft in 2009.

CNBC, which first reported the contents of the documents submitted by Google to the court, has asked both Google and Microsoft for comment on this matter, but as of the time of writing, neither has received a response.

According to the statistical tool Statcounter , the search engine share as of January 2024 is 1st place is Google (91.47%) and 2nd place is Bing (3.43%). According to CNBC, Microsoft's search and news advertising sales in the fourth quarter of 2023 (October to December) were $3.2 billion (approximately 480 billion yen), while Google's sales in the same field were 480 billion dollars. It is said that it was 100 million dollars (about 7.2 trillion yen).