Apple Turned Down Microsoft's Bing Offer Over Google Partnership

Microsoft’s attempts to sell Bing to Apple were reportedly blocked by Google, according to the CEO of Advertising and Web Services Mikhail Parakhin. Despite a proposal to offer Apple more than 100% of Bing’s revenue or gross profit to make it the default search engine being put forward, the offer was rejected due to Apple’s deal with Google. Parakhin alleged that Microsoft even offered to pay more than Google, which is claimed to have offered around 60%. The exact monetary value of Microsoft’s offer has not been revealed, but it was enough to warrant a several billion dollar loss, which the company felt was worth the investment due to the importance of default search engine status.

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This implication of Google’s deal with Apple not only being about financial considerations could support Google’s claim that its product is superior. However, it underlines the value of default status for search engines, as Microsoft was clearly willing to take a significant loss for the position. Furthermore, Parakhin also revealed that Microsoft had also pitched to Samsung to make Bing the default search engine on its products, but negotiations were not worth discussing due to Samsung’s contract with Google.

In a federal antitrust trial, Parakhin stated that the optimal move for Apple would have been to switch to Microsoft in the US, accept the aggressive offer there and continue to use Google in other parts of the world. However, he acknowledged that Microsoft was “just big enough to play but probably not big enough to win.”

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