Microsoft Considered Investing Billions in Apple To Compete With Google Search

Microsoft weighed investing multiple billions in a deal with Apple in 2016 to make its Bing search engine the default on the Safari browser and better compete with Alphabet's dominant Google search, a Microsoft vice president testified Thursday in court. From the report: Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella met with Apple CEO Tim Cook as part of the talks, said Jon Tinter, a Microsoft business development vice president who is on the stand during the US Justice Department's antitrust trial in Washington against Alphabet. Microsoft would have taken a multi-billion dollar loss on the terms of the deal, Tinter said, but it would have bolstered Bing, eventually gaining more share and revenue. Microsoft had secured a deal for Apple to use Bing in Siri and Spotlight, an Apple feature to help find apps on iPhones from 2013 to 2017, but wanted to expand to Safari. Instead, Google wound up expanding its own deal with Apple to the products that had used Bing.

Meanwhile...

[MpVpRb]

Those of us who know how to easily change to something other than the default, sit back and laugh at the obscene amounts of money wasted on games like this

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have used their resources to make their search actually better than Google's.

I mean Yandex Image search is better than Google Image search for some (not all) things. And their web search has found stuff for me that Google's web search hasn't. So theoretically it is possible to be better than Google.

But when I try to use DDG or Bing when Google fails, I don't get anything useful too many times.

I'd happily set DDG or Bing as my main if they are better than Google. But they're so bad that I rarely

Re:

[Flavianoep]

A question. I've noticed that some operators that Google has do not have the same effect on DDG. I am talking about using "-" for exclude a word in the results. Is it because of patents or lousy implementation?

Re:

[Darinbob]

They should save even more money by not trying to get into market segments in which they have no experience in or aptitude for. If they could just focus on making their core products be marginally competent it would be a huge gain.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Windows search is worse or as bad.

Windows search certainly is better today than it ever has been (low bar) but it's still ridiculous that one dev was able to make a tool with so much better and more useful search for Windows than Microsoft has in two decades. [voidtools.com]

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[UMichEE]

Edge supposedly has ~10% market share on desktops despite being the default on Windows. Is it easier to install a new browser on Windows or switch default search engine on iOS?

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

9% of that market share is opening it up to download a new browser.

Re:Meanwhile...

[Tony Isaac]

I don't see it as a laughing matter. We who know how to change such settings, are in the minority. It seems easy to us tech nerds, but the person you need to visualize is the McDonald's cashier, or the construction worker, or UPS delivery driver, or the retiree who has trouble operating a TV remote. There's absolutely nothing wrong with these professions, they are just examples of the types of people who are less likely to know how to change settings on their phone, however trivial that might seem to some of us.

Re:Meanwhile...

[LazarusQLong]

thank you for this caring and cogent reply. My 88 year old mom has used a computer since about 1987 and yet, she still needs computer help from time to time in her law practice. she isn't interested in how the computer works, she is interested in using it to research and then write up her caselaw for her law practice. Yes, she is still working, doing mostly 'care and protection' cases for the state and she gets enormous feelings of pride whenever she gets a good outcome for one of her clients. People who revel in the ins and outs of computers are not average, the average computer user just wants it to work... so for them, we need to make the UI easy enough to use without too much thought, and making a search engine switch SHOULD be easy. I find it easy, but I know where to look, as do you, but the average person? probably not.

For the record, I do use DDG and Brave on my mac laptop, and firefox and DDG on my windows boxen at home. Here at work I use what IT allows me to use (Edge and DDG)...

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

With all that said (and we seem to be in agreement), the problem is a hard one to solve for these same groups of users, because the same people who don't know how to change the setting, would likely not know any difference between the search engines presented to them in a list of choices, and would have no idea how to choose one over the other. More than likely they'd pick the first one just because it's first in the list. And more than likely that choice would be fine for that kind of user, regardless of w

Re:

[LazarusQLong]

exactly. Whenever I have consulted, I have found that even when I explain about security and the need for being secure, many folks have the knee jerk reaction of, "if I am not doing anything illegal/imoral, then why would I care?" and I try to then educate them on the fact that here, on the internet, it is kinda the wild west, and what you may deem as completely vanilla/legal/moral/ethical, some other person/group may find completely wrong... for example, let's say one supports a certain political person...

Re:

[slazzy]

I think everyone on slashdot knows how to change a default search provider, but ultimately if they invest 10 billion to be default, and make back 15 billion in advertising costs from the people who don't switch, they get the last laugh.

Duplicate

[JackieBrown]

https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
I guess it's that great a story