Google does not appear to be the only search engine interested in making its search browser the standard in popular devices for a fee. Microsoft approached Apple to make Bing the default search engine on its Safari browser, but the Bing developer could not afford to do so due to Google Search’s dominance.
In 2016, Apple was reportedly approached by Microsoft, asking to make the Bing search engine the default on the Safari browser. To make the deal attractive, the deal would cost the Windows developer billions of dollars. Bloomberg reports.
Jon Tinter, VP of business development at Microsoft, voiced these statements. It happened during questioning in a U.S. court in the antitrust case against Google. The search giant must defend itself against the U.S. Department of Justice accusing Google of unfairly retaining market dominance with Google Search.
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The deal to integrate Bing into Safari fell through, but Microsoft already had other agreements with Apple to strengthen the search engine’s market position. Bing was used in Siri and Spotlight, a function that helps users find apps.
Costs were too high for Microsoft
Expanding into Safari would not have been attractive to Microsoft. This is because the Bing search engine has only a small number of users compared to Google Search. Because of the smaller market share, there are fewer users to click on ads in Bing. However, that just generated revenue for Microsoft, and to get the deal done with Apple, that revenue also needed to be shared with the iPhone developer. Only Microsoft had to share a higher percentage of ad revenue compared to Google to get to an interesting amount of money for a deal.
“In the short term, it would have been very negative. We told the board we were thinking about making a multi-billion dollar negative investment to support this,” Tinter said.
Market plays out existence Bing
Further, Microsoft’s search engine did not appear interesting enough for hardware manufacturers to make a deal. Tinter defends that position with negotiation talks that once took place with Samsung. “Even if the economic conditions were superior in working with Microsoft, they would not leave Google,” Tinter testified about this.
The manufacturers would only use Bing’s existence to force a larger percentage of Google Search’s profits. Mikhail Parakhin, president of Web Experiences at Microsoft, articulated it as follows: “It is no secret that Apple makes more money from the existence of Bing than Bing itself does.”