The Safari browser could have had Bing as its default search engine if it weren’t for Annie Lennox. In 2018, Apple was approached by Microsoft to use Bing as the search engine for its Safari browser instead of Google. John Giannandrea, Apple’s vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, used Bing to research Annie Lennox after Microsoft suggested it. When Giannandrea searched for “Annie Lennox first band,” Bing only returned results for The Eurythmics, which was not her first band. This led to Apple rejecting Bing as its default search engine and choosing Google instead.
Giannandrea cited other issues he found with Bing, including its lack of local language coverage in markets that Apple cared about and the slow progress of updating and improving the search engine. He felt that Microsoft acknowledged Bing’s shortcomings, giving a “detailed presentation of what they were not doing, presumably to motivate us to say, ‘Hey if we invested in this together, we could do these things.'” Giannandrea added that “Microsoft was willing to sell Bing, which you wouldn’t do if it was a strategic asset.”
This revelation about Bing was disclosed in a filing by Google in its antitrust case against the US government. The filing is part of Google’s defense in a case that accuses the company of violating competition laws to build its dominance in the US search market. Apple’s decision to use Google instead of Bing is just one example used by Google to demonstrate the level of competition in the search market.
In conclusion, Bing lost out on being the default search engine for Apple’s Safari browser due to its incorrect search results for Annie Lennox’s first band. Giannandrea’s disappointment with Bing, along with its lack of local language coverage and slow progress in improving the search engine, was also a factor in Apple choosing Google instead. Google’s disclosure about Bing is part of its defense against the antitrust case it faces
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