Microsoft met with Apple executives in 2020 to discuss the possibility of selling its search engine Bing, but the talks never progressed further.

Bing was the default search engine on Apple products from 2013 to 2017. Google took over after Apple chose Alphabet’s search engine as its preferred partner for iPhones, iPads, and other products. 

The news came out in the ongoing testimony in Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust suit against Google.

Apple’s relationship with Bing was used as a “bargaining chip,” a Microsoft executive said this week during testimony in U.S. District Court.

“It is no secret that Apple is making more money on Bing existing than Bing does,” Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s chief of advertising and web services, said during the trial, which began earlier this month. The U.S. Department of Justice accuses Google of using similar agreements to lock out search engines such as Yahoo, as well as smaller companies.

Google lawyer Ken Smurzynski questioned Parakhin, seeking to discredit one of the government’s key arguments — Google’s existing market dominance allows it to collect massive amounts of user data to improve search results and widen its lead over competitors.

Artificial intelligence (AI), he alluded, lets search engines can improve results without relying on user data, reported the Associated Press. Marketers inherently know this is not true, and that data, even first-party data, is the backbone of the way AI processes information.

Branch Metrics Co-Founder Alexander Austin testified that Google’s exclusive contracts with phone companies and manufacturers impeded his company’s attempts to market a search engine, called Discovery, for apps on smartphones.

Austin said that in meetings with Samsung, the Android phone maker was worried Branch’s tools would cause conflict with Google. Reuter reports Austin was later contacted by Samsung during a launch in 2019 and told, “Oh, we need to cut this functionality because Google says it’s, like, in conflict or there’s a risk to the contract.”

Austin’s company, Branch, had to ensure its searches remained within apps and never linked to the web. The company was forced to scale back on things its product could do to avoid interfering with lucrative agreements Google had with companies like Samsung and Verizon that had made Google’s search engine the default choice on digital devices.

Branch Metrics had hoped to do for smartphone apps what Google had done for searching the internet — and to collect advertising revenue when users clicked on apps such as DoorDash, according to the Associated Press.

It meant that Branch Metrics could not monetize its search engine app, which Austin called an “injustice” to stop products like his company’s from not seeing “the light of day.”

The U.S. Department of Justice accuses Google of using agreements to lock out rival search engines and stifle innovation.