Apple Considered Bing Acquisition or Joint Venture with Microsoft, Reveals Testimony

In recently unsealed testimony, it has been revealed that Apple considered acquiring the Bing search engine or entering into a “multibillion dollar investment” joint venture with Microsoft in 2018. The testimony, given by Apple’s head of machine learning and former Google executive John Giannandrea, sheds light on Apple’s deliberations regarding its search engine options.

At the time, Apple was exploring the possibility of using Bing instead of Google to provide answers to certain queries from Siri and power other iPhone and Mac features. Currently, Google pays Apple an estimated $19 billion per year to be the default search engine on Apple products.

The potential deal with Microsoft did not come to fruition, as Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly informed Microsoft that it was not moving forward. Giannandrea’s testimony highlighted the implications such a partnership would have had on Apple’s relationship with Google.

The ongoing Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google has brought these revelations to light. The government aims to prove that Google has utilized licensing deals and contracts to monopolize the search market and exclude competitors. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg’s testimony also suggested that Apple’s contract with Google posed challenges for alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo.

Giannandrea’s testimony focused on Apple’s efforts to enhance Siri and Spotlight, Apple’s device search feature, both of which can utilize Google when they lack immediate answers. The Department of Justice sought to demonstrate that Apple may have invested more heavily in its own search technology if not for the lucrative deal with Google.

While Apple does not have a “general” search engine with a search results page, Giannandrea clarified that it competes for queries through Siri, Spotlight, and auto-complete “Suggestions” in the Safari browser. He mentioned that Apple had not yet decided whether to develop its own general search engine due to the significant costs involved.

Giannandrea revealed that discussions about increasing Apple’s partnership with Bing began after a meeting between Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in the summer of 2018. Microsoft expressed flexibility in sharing revenue from its ads if a partnership were to materialize.

However, Giannandrea expressed skepticism about Bing’s potential and its ability to surpass Google’s search capabilities. In a comparison conducted in 2021, he found that Google was significantly better at mobile queries. He shared his reservations with Cook in an email in December 2018.

The testimony also touched upon Giannandrea’s work at Google, where he discussed Apple’s attempt to obtain closely-held search data from Google as part of their deal. He mentioned Apple’s current focus on search technologies, particularly in crawling the web to power language models.

Representatives from Apple and Microsoft have not yet commented on the matter.

Overall, the testimony provides insight into Apple’s considerations regarding its search engine options and sheds light on the dynamics between Apple, Google, and Microsoft in the search market.