In a dramatic revelation, Apple has quashed Microsoft’s hopes of making Bing the default search engine across its ecosystem, emphatically stating, “there’s no price Microsoft could pay.” Despite Microsoft’s offer to give Bing to Apple for free, Apple Senior VP of Services, Eddy Cue, made it clear that Google remains the only viable option. This bold stance underscores Apple’s alignment with its users, who, like the company, favor Google over Bing.
It is indisputable that Google dominates the market for search engines. StatCounter reports that Google has an astounding 91.04% global market share, with Bing trailing far behind at just 3.86%. In the U.S. v. Google antitrust lawsuit, Judge Amit Mehta declared Google to be a monopolist due to its size and substantial capital expenditures, underscoring its dominance. Google’s contentious tactics, such as paying Apple billions to continue being the default search engine on Safari, have come to light as a result of this dispute. Google allegedly paid $26 billion in 2021 alone to guarantee this position on Apple devices.
Microsoft’s ambitions to replace Google were not without effort. The tech giant even considered selling Bing to Apple in 2018, but the plan was scrapped due to Bing’s inferior search quality. A study conducted by Apple in 2021 further confirmed Bing’s shortcomings compared to Google, although Bing did outperform Google in desktop user interface benchmarks.
In his antitrust trial testimony, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella accused Google of snuffing out Bing by striking an exclusive deal with Apple. According to Nadella, Microsoft was ready to pay even $15 billion a year for such a deal and stressed the effect it could have on the presence of Bing in the market. For a similar reason, that is, having doubts about Bing’s monetization capabilities and the jeopardy for its revenue by breaking ties with Google, Apple did not agree.
Event with Microsoft bringing AI to Bing, the fact that Apple remains tied to Google means that change will not come. It could alter search down the road, but currently, Google is still very much at the top—in Apple’s world.