Report: Microsoft considered selling Bing to Apple

WEB DESK: Microsoft’s Bing search engine underwent a major overhaul in 2023, featuring new generative AI capabilities powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology.

Despite efforts to revamp Bing and enhance Microsoft’s search engine, a recent Bloomberg report has revealed that Microsoft had contemplated different paths for Bing’s future.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft executives engaged in discussions with Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue, who oversees Apple’s existing search arrangement with Google. Under this arrangement, Google pays Apple billions to secure its position as the default search engine on Apple’s Safari web browser. However, Microsoft had apparently contemplated altering this status quo.

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The report says that Microsoft and Apple mulled selling Bing to Apple, but the talks were just initial discussions and didn’t go very far. They also looked at different ways to make Bing the top choice for Apple, but Apple still chose to work with Google.

During a recent trial about competition issues with Google, a Microsoft executive Jon Tinter mentioned that back in 2016, Microsoft thought about investing a sizeable amount of money in Apple to make Bing the main search engine in Apple’s Safari web browser. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, even met with Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to talk about it.

Meanwhile, in 2016, Apple was using Bing for Siri and Spotlight searches, but in 2017, they switched to using Google.

As per the reports, Eddy Cue from Apple suggested that Bing wasn’t as good as Google for search, and he wasn’t sure what Apple would have done if their talks with Google hadn’t worked out.

Now, in 2023, Microsoft is probably happy they didn’t sell Bing. Bing is now a big part of Microsoft’s Edge web browser and a feature called Copilot in Windows 11. Bing is also used for business data protection.

Earlier this year, Microsoft’s CEO Nadella challenged Google to show they’re the best. Google released a chatbot called Bard, but it looks like Microsoft’s new Bing chatbot hasn’t been a big threat to Google’s search engine. Google is also trying out a new way to show answers at the top of search results using AI.