According to Bloomberg, as early as 2020, Microsoft had considered selling its Bing search engine to Apple. If the merger goes through, Bing will replace Google as the default search engine on Apple devices. Microsoft executives met with Apple services chief Eddy Cue to discuss a potential deal, but the talks were tentative and made no progress.
According to Bloomberg, the reason why Apple did not move forward with the deal is because Apple makes money from Google and Apple is worried that Bing will not be able to compete with Google on "quality and functionality."
Google's search engine has long been the default search engine on iPhones, iPads and Macs, and Google pays Apple billions of dollars every year for it. Driven by Cue, Google and Apple last signed an agreement in 2021. As of 2020, Apple's annual fees from Google are US$4 billion and US$7 billion respectively. Apple's deal with Google has been in the spotlight this week amid an antitrust trial between Google and the U.S. Department of Justice, which cited Google's dominance of Apple devices as evidence of Google's monopoly on the search engine.
Eddy Cue had to testify this week to explain why Google became the iPhone's default search engine. Cue said: "We made Google the default search engine because we have always believed it was the best. He went on to say that Apple did not choose another search engine provider because there were no 'effective alternatives.'"
Although Google is the default search engine on Apple devices, users can also choose to switch to Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo or Ecosia as alternatives. Bing has become a more popular search engine option recently, thanks to Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI and its integration of chatbot technology.
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