Bloomberg: Microsoft talked to Apple about selling Bing around 2020

Apple and Microsoft were in discussions around 2020 about a possible sale of the Bing search engine, Bloomberg writes. Bing would then become the default search engine in Apple products. Apple ultimately decided to extend its existing deal with Google.

The conversations never went beyond the exploratory phase, the anonymous sources told Bloomberg, and were between Microsoft executives and Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services. It’s not clear how much Microsoft would have liked to receive for Bing or why it would want to sell the search engine. The two companies declined to comment to Bloomberg.

The acquisition would make Apple less dependent on Google. Now Google’s search engine is the default search engine on Apple’s devices. Apple receives 4 to 7 billion dollars annually from Google for this. Apple gets a fixed amount and a percentage of what Google earns from searches on Apple products.

Those billion-dollar revenues were part of the reason for declining the deal, the sources said, although there were also concerns about how Bing can compete with Google when it comes to quality and capabilities. Bing was temporarily used as the default search engine for Siri and Spotlight, for example, but Google is now known to be the default search engine for all Apple services. Users can choose alternative search engines for apps and services.

In September, the US Justice Department launched a lawsuit against Alphabet, alleging abuse of power with Google Search. The billion-dollar deal with Apple to be the default search engine is used as an example. Cue states that this deal is not an example of abuse of power, but says that Apple uses Google precisely because it is the best search engine.