Microsoft Reportedly Tried to Sell Bing to Apple

Microsoft’s Bing search engine had its biggest revamp in years in 2023 with new generative AI features powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology. If the new Bing chatbot helped to bring back Microsoft’s search engine to the spotlight, a new report from Bloomberg reveals that Microsoft explored selling Bing to Apple back in 2020.

According to the report, Microsoft executives had discussions with Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, who is the executive responsible for Apple’s current search deal with Google. The search giant gives Apple billions of dollars to make Google the default search engine on Apple’s Safari web browser, but Microsoft reportedly wanted to change that.

Bloomberg said that the talks about a sale of Bing to Apple “were exploratory and never reached an advanced stage.” The report also claims that “Over the years, the companies have discussed other ways to make Bing the preferred option, though Apple ultimately stuck with Google.”

When testifying this week at the ongoing trial DOJ’s antitrust trial against Google, Jon Tinter, CVP of Business Development at Microsoft said that in 2016, the Redmond giant considered investing billions of dollars in Apple to make Bing the default search engine in Safari. As part of the discussions, Satya Nadella also met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tinter said.

In 2016, Microsoft still had a search partnership with Apple, which was using Bing for Siri and Spotlight searches. However, Apple replaced Bing with Google for Siri and Spotlight search back in 2017.

Eddy Cue, who also testified at Google’s search trial this week, hinted that Bing’s search capabilities were not as Google’s, saying that he didn’t “know what we would have done” if Apple’s negotiations with Google about the default search engine on iOS had failed.

Fast forward to 2023, Microsoft is probably glad that it didn’t sell Bing, which is now deeply integrated into the company’s Edge browser. Copilot in Windows, which has started rolling out in the Windows 11 Fall Update, also relies on Bing, and an Enterprise experience with commercial data protection is also available.

Earlier this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella boldly said that he wanted Google “to come out and show that they can dance.” While Google did rush the release of its Bard chatbot earlier this year, it looks like the new Bing chatbot is still no threat to Google’s search dominance. In addition to its Bard chatbot, Google has also started testing a new generative AI search experience that puts AI-generated answers at the top of search results.