Apple executive: considered buying Bing search or forming a joint venture with Microsoft in 2018

CTOnews.com, October 6 (Xinhua)-- according to a recent testimony by John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of AI strategy and former Google executive, Apple considered buying Microsoft's Bing search engine in 2018 or setting up a joint venture with Microsoft and investing "billions of dollars", foreign media CNBC reported today.

The testimony is part of the Justice Department's antitrust case against Google, which is currently under way. John Giannandrea revealed that Apple was considering using the results provided by Bing to return some Siri query answers, rather than Google, and to support other iPhone or Mac features. Of course, the deal was not completed in the end, and John said "I believe Cook has told Microsoft that the deal will not proceed."

John also revealed the content of an internal speech by Adrian Perica, Apple's head of business development, in which four options for Apple's contact with Microsoft are as follows:

Carry on "organic development" to Siri

Collaborate to build a technology called "knowledge graph" (Knowledge Graph)

Co-owned Bing search

Acquisition of Bing search

Bernstein, a US investment bank, has previously estimated that Google pays Apple as much as $19 billion a year (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 138.89 billion yuan), making it the default search engine for Apple devices.

CTOnews.com previously reported that Bloomberg disclosed 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 Eddy Cue, Apple's head of services, to discuss a potential deal, but the negotiations were exploratory and did not make progress, the report said. Because Apple did not press ahead with the deal, the company made money from Google and worried that Bing would not be able to compete with Google in terms of "quality and capability."

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"sources say Microsoft considered selling Bing search to Apple in 2020."