“Search quality” of Bing kept Apple from buying the search engine from Microsoft in 2018،
A chart included in the court document reveals that Google faces more search competition from Amazon than from Bing.
The court filing captures an assessment of Bing by Apple's senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue. The latter said: “The quality of Microsoft research, their investment in research, everything was not significant at all. And so everything was inferior. So the quality of the research itself was not as good. They weren't investing at a level comparable to Google or what Microsoft could invest in. And their advertising organization and their way of monetizing was not very good either.
Court Filed Chart Shows Google's Search Innovations
On the stand, Cue said that “if Apple had not received the massive payments it was demanding from Google, Apple would have developed its own search engine.” Some analysts believe that Apple will eventually launch its own search engine.