Foreign media CNBC reported today that according to a recently disclosed testimony record of John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of AI strategy and a former Google executive, Apple considered acquiring Microsoft’s subsidiary in 2018. Bing search engine, or a joint venture with Microsoft and a “billion-dollar” investment.
The testimony is part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s ongoing antitrust case against Google. John Giannandrea revealed that at the time, Apple was considering using results provided by Bing to return answers to some Siri queries instead of Google, and to provide support for other iPhone or Mac features. Of course, the deal was not completed in the end, and John also said, “I believe Cook has told Microsoft that the deal will not proceed.”
John Giannandrea also revealed the content of an internal speech by Adrian Perica, Apple’s head of business development, in which he proposed four options for Apple and Microsoft to contact each other:
“Organically Grow” Siri
Collaborating to build a technology called Knowledge Graph
Co-owned Bing Search
Acquiring Bing SearchAccording to previous estimates by the US investment bank Bernstein, Google pays Apple up to US$19 billion per year to become the default search engine for Apple devices.
It was previously reported that Bloomberg revealed in late September that Microsoft had considered selling its Bing search engine to Apple in 2020.
If the acquisition happens, Bing will replace Google as the default search engine on Apple devices. Microsoft executives met with Apple services chief Eddy Cue to discuss a potential deal, but the talks were exploratory and no progress was made, the report said. Because Apple didn’t move forward with the deal, the company made money from Google and was concerned that Bing wouldn’t be able to compete with Google on “quality and capabilities.”
