According to reports, Microsoft was in talks with Apple about selling Bing to the iPhone maker. Bloomberg reports that Microsoft executives met with Apple’s services head, Eddy Cue, in 2020 to pitch Bing to the Cupertino company. As a result of the deal, Bing would have replaced Google as Apple’s default search engine in Safari and Siri.
But Apple and Microsoft didn’t agree to a deal in the end. They just talked about the idea but didn’t make a formal plan. Microsoft still kept trying different ways to persuade Apple over the years. However, Apple stuck with Google because Google pays them a lot of money each year to be the main search engine.
This is important because Google is now in big legal trouble for being too powerful in search. The US Department of Justice is suing Google, saying it keeps other search engines like Bing from competing.
The deal between Apple and Google in 2020 was worth billions of dollars for Apple. That’s likely why Apple turned down Microsoft’s offer to buy Bing instead. Little did Apple know that Bing would later get very popular after adding new chat features.
Despite more users, Bing is still much smaller than Google search. Based on website data, about 84% of desktop searches are with Google while only 9% use Bing.
Even so, Apple and Google extended their deal in 2021. Eddy Cue from Apple recently said they didn’t think Bing was as advanced as Google back when Microsoft first proposed the deal. According to Cue, Google continues to be the best search option for Apple’s needs.
