Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls Bing worse than Google, says he will do anything to make it better

When it comes to search engines, Google Search is leading the space. While there is a list of search engines available including prominent competitors like Microsoft's Bing, Mozilla's Firefox or Yahoo, nothing has till date beaten and is better than Google. And even Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella admits this truth. Nadella during his testimony in US v. Google antitrust trial, admitted that his company's search engine Bing lags behind Google's and said that he would do anything to make it better.

Explaining why Microsoft wants to compete with Google, Nadella standing on the witness stand, boiled down his answer to one word: money. "I see search as the largest software category out there by far, .. I used to think of Windows and Office as attractive businesses until I saw search," said Nadella, as reported by The Verge. He further explained that despite its inferior market share, Bing has managed to turn a profit for Microsoft.

However, commenting on why Bing hadn't managed to top Google, Nadella blamed Apple for it. He noted that one of the biggest reasons Bing isn't as good as Google is due to Google's massive deal with Apple to make the search engine the default option on the iPhone. He admitted that if Apple had agreed to Microsoft's deal to make Bing its default browser, it would have been a game changer for the company.

In fact, he even revealed that in order to do 'anything' to make Bing work and make it work with Apple, Microsoft was ready to lose $15 billion a year, hide the Bing brand for searches made on Apple devices, and submit to any privacy preferences that Apple demanded.

Nadella quotes that for Microsoft's deal with Apple it was not just money but competitiveness. "We needed to be less greedy and more competitive," he explained.

Microsoft proposed the deal for iPhones

Nadella explained that if Microsoft's deal with Apple to make Bing the default search engine had worked, it would have led to an increase in "query flow," meaning a significant increase in the number of people using Bing. This, in turn, would have generated more data that the Bing team could use to make the search engine better. As Bing improved and attracted more users, advertisers would have been more interested in using the platform.

Nadella called this positive cycle, where a better search engine leads to more usage, more data, and more advertisers, the "virtuous cycle" of search engines. In Nadella's view, this virtuous cycle could have helped Bing catch up to Google's search quality. However, for Bing, which has struggled to gain user queries, data, advertisers, and users, it has been a vicious cycle.

However, Nadella noted that Microsoft's deal with Apple to make Bing the default search engine for iPhones hadn't gone well. He highlighted that the deal failed due to the economic advantages of Google's deal with Apple and hinted that Apple might also be reluctant to sever ties with Google due to concerns about potential retaliation.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes that being the default search engine is crucial for success, and that Google's financial arrangements with device manufacturers have made it difficult for other search engines like Bing to compete. He also raised concerns about Google's potential to use its popular services like Gmail and YouTube to promote Chrome, which could lead users to abandon Safari- according to Nadella, this was also the reason why Apple denied Microsoft's deal. Nadella believes that this apprehension is a key reason why Apple and Google maintain their partnership.