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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) had offered to sell Bing to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in 2018, or form a joint venture related to the search engine, according to a recently unsealed post-trial brief from the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
The case relates Google’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) alleged search monopoly and the methods it employed to ensure dominance, such as spending billions of dollars to make its search engine the default option in phones. Google argued that it’d been competing fairly.
Google (GOOG) told the court that Microsoft (MSFT) approached Apple (AAPL) in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2020 to make Bing the default option for its Safari browser.
“In each instance, Apple took a hard look at the relative quality of Bing versus Google and concluded that Google was the superior default choice,” said Google (GOOG). “That is competition.”
Apple (AAPL) executive Eddy Cue said this was because Bing’s search quality wasn’t as good as Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) wasn’t investing at “any level comparable” to Google.
Google (GOOG) also argued that its search engine received nearly 80% of queries on Windows PCs in the U.S. despite Bing being the default option in those devices.
As for Google (GOOG) being the default option in the Firefox browser, Mozilla had informed the DOJ that the search engine provided the best user experience, whereas Bing had “poor retention, lower search volume, and lower monetization rates.”
The DOJ argued that Google (GOOG) spends more than $20B each year to pay for defaults and restrictive contracts. “Google paid billions to lock up search queries for itself, deprive rivals of scale, and thwart entry by innovative competitors.”