I think the point is that Bing is competition, but they are not as good as Google's product.
So i.e. it is not simply the fact that Google is #1 "just because" and they are sitting there milking an inferior product and forcing it on everyone through backroom deals to keep the monopoly, but they are top because they have a better product and keep winning competitive bids as a result.
I think the fact that these failed pitches even happened (and happened multiple times in the past decade or so) shows that there is quite strong competition. It's not like this was just some unheard of startup sending emails to apple and not getting a response, it sounds like proper high-level stuff between two behemoths of tech (apple and microsoft), so it was a serious thing from the sounds of it.
Personally I use duckduckgo which I think uses Bing, and I am comfortable with it, but there you go.
I don't know how it helps their case to show that their main competitor is weak and underinvested, wouldn't it be way better for them if they could portray Bing as formidable competition?
Wouldn’t index to much on Apple just meeting with Bing as a sign of Bing being a realistic solution. If I was apple I would off course try to create the sense Bing is viable alternative to extract as much value from Google in negotiations
Google does not have a better product. They used to, but not anymore. I usually use google but only out of habit and because it was the default. A lot of times I have trouble and end up on duckduckgo, which uses Bing. Now with GPT integration Bing is really useful.
Apple gets paid tens of billions of dollars per year by Google, which is over a third of the revenue Google brings in from Safari. They have an absolutely gigantic financial incentive to keep using Google. Even if they were to acquire Bing for free, they would still have to get its profits to over a third of Google’s Safari-attributed revenue just to break even on the switch.
If Apple were to acquire Bing, it would be about gaining control at a financial cost. Bing being as good as Google as a search engine doesn’t really come into it.
Apple probably agreed that acquiring Bing was worthwhile, as the discussions did happen, but they haven’t agreed that it was worth more than the amount Google pays to them to stay the default search engine.
If I had all the money in the world, I'd also buy the very same car seven times in a row, if it's simply the best car for me. That doesn't mean the car market is not competitive.
I'm not arguing that the search engine market is competitive, it is probably not, but deriving that conclusion from the fact that Apple did not choose Bing in favor of Google is... weak, in my opinion.
