Microsoft claims that its attempts to sell Bing to Apple were thwarted by Google. Mikhail Parakhin, CEO of Microsoft’s Advertising and Web Services, stated that they offered Apple more than 100% of the revenue or gross profit to make Bing the default search engine, but the proposal was rejected due to Apple’s deal with Google. Parakhin alleged that despite Microsoft offering to pay Apple more than Google, the offer was turned down. The exact amount of Microsoft’s offer to Apple was not revealed, but it was significant enough that Microsoft would have suffered a loss of several billion dollars.
Apple’s decision to reject Microsoft’s higher monetary offer suggests that there may be factors other than financial considerations involved in their deal with Google. This reinforces Google’s argument that its superior product is preferred. However, it highlights the importance of default search engine status, as Microsoft was willing to incur a substantial loss for the position. Microsoft also attempted to pitch Bing as the default search engine to Samsung, but the discussions were shut down early on due to Samsung’s contract with Google.
In the federal antitrust trial, Parakhin expressed that Microsoft was probably too small to beat Google but stated that Apple’s optimal move would have been to switch to Microsoft in the United States while continuing with Google for the rest of the world. The trial continues, and updates can be found on Google’s antitrust proceedings.