People Do Use Bing! But Apparently They Use It to Search for Google

Google recently shared with the court that the most searched term on Microsoft’s Bing is none other than “Google.”

Just last week, Bloomberg reported that Alfonso Lamadrid, a lawyer for Alphabet Inc., shared with EU’s General Court in Luxembourg that they have “submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is by far Google.”

But why did Google do this? Did it just want to shame Bing publicly? It’s possible, but there’s actually a more significant reason for it.

Back in 2018, EU judges fined Google an astonishing amount of $5 billion because the court considered Google was abusing its dominance on Android to push its search app. The European Commission said that Google was squeezing out other search engines and basically creating a monopoly.

Because of this, Google decided to show the court that they’re not forcing users to use its search engine since people use the competition to search for Google. The example Google gave was that Bing is mostly used to go to Google. Meaning people want to use Google, and the company isn’t forcing them.

Comment

People use Google because they choose to, not because they are forced to. Google’s market share in general search is consistent with consumer surveys showing that 95% of users prefer Google to rival search engines.

Alfonso Lamadrid

Whether Google is forcing people or not, this isn’t the first legal issue the company had recently. Google’s also facing a legal suit for abusing its control over the Google Play Store. Additionally, the European Commission is said to be investigating the dominance of the Google Assistant on Android devices, similar to what Google’s facing with its search engine.