Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had his day in court today, where he answered for Bing’s inability to compete with Google Search. In his view, Apple’s Google Search deal protects Safari from being killed by Chrome.
David Pierce at The Verge gives us a glimpse into the Microsoft CEO’s testimony in the US government’s case against Google. Nadella’s argument is that Apple’s Google Search deal isn’t just about the money.
If Microsoft ponied up $15 billion a year to Apple for Bing to be Safari’s default search engine, Nadella argues, Google could leverage YouTube and Gmail to aggressively promote Chrome to Safari users.
Even so, Microsoft knows it needs users to make Bing a thing. Nadella argues that Microsoft engineers could improve search results if more people simply used Bing. The idea is that more search queries would give Microsoft more data needed to make Bing better. That’s Nadella’s “query flow” cycle argument, anyway.
The Microsoft CEO claims that simply having more user data is critical enough to Bing that the company was willing to forgo Bing branding in Apple search results.
Apple has actually plugged in Bing search results in places outside of Safari before. For example, web image search through Spotlight has defaulted to Bing before.
Bing, of course, wouldn’t be the only search engine option for Apple. It seems to have the talent and technology to go its own way if it wanted. Why bother with bolstering Bing in Nadella’s scenario?
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