Microsoft has claimed that its attempts to sell Bing to Apple were blocked by Google. The tech giant’s CEO of Advertising and Web Services, Mikhail Parakhin, said he offered Apple more than 100% of the revenue or gross profit to make Bing its default search engine, but the proposal was rejected due to Apple’s deal with Google. Parakhin alleged that Microsoft’s offer to pay Apple was even higher than what Google was offering, which he estimated to be around 60%. While the exact amount of Microsoft’s offer to Apple was not revealed, it was significant enough that Microsoft would have incurred a several billion dollar loss.
Apple’s decision to reject Microsoft’s higher monetary offer for Bing raises questions about the nature of its deal with Google. Microsoft’s willingness to sustain a significant loss for default search engine status underscores the importance of this position. The rejection also suggests that Google’s argument of offering a superior product may hold some weight. Furthermore, Microsoft’s attempt to pitch Bing as the default search engine to Samsung was also shut down by the tech giant in the early stages, as negotiations were deemed unnecessary due to its contract with Google.
In the federal antitrust trial, Parakhin expressed Microsoft’s position, stating that they were “big enough to play but probably not big enough to win”. He suggested that the optimal move for Apple would have been to switch to Microsoft in the United States while still maintaining a partnership with Google in other parts of the world. These revelations shed light on the behind-the-scenes competition between tech giants for default search engine status and the potential impact it can have on their financial strategies.