Back in 2020, Microsoft held exploratory discussions with Apple about a possible sale of Bing to the Cupertino firm. Bloomberg reports that if the deal had gone through, Bing would have replaced Google as the default search engine on Apple’s devices.
Microsoft executives met with Apple services chief Eddy Cue to discuss a potential acquisition, but the talks were merely exploratory and went no further. The report says Apple did not pull the trigger on the deal due to the money that it earns from Google, as well as concerns that Bing did not match up with Google in “quality and capabilities.”
Google has long had a deal with Apple, making it the default search engine on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year for the privilege. Apple’s search deal with Google has been under scrutiny this week due to the antitrust trial between Google and the U.S. Department of Justice. The DoJ has pointed out Google’s dominance on Apple devices as evidence that the company enjoys a search engine monopoly.
Eddy Cue this week testified in the trial, where he explained why Google is the iPhone’s default search engine. “We make Google be the default search engine because we’ve always thought it was the best,” Cue said. The Apple VP went on to say that Apple has not changed search engine providers because there is no “valid alternative.”
Although Google is the default search engine on Apple devices, users have the ability to change their default search engine to Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Ecosia as an alternative with a few taps of a finger or clicks of a mouse.