When Microsoft sought help from Samsung to take on Google and Apple

Some top Microsoft and Apple executives have been called to testify in the ongoing Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust trial against Google. The US government has accused Google of misusing its search monopoly to weaken competition. The trial has seen executives share some interesting details about the relationship of these companies and more. Microsoft vice president Jonathan Tinter recently told the court that the company tried to take help from South Korean smartphone giant Samsung in its battle against Apple and Google, but didn’t get much help.
According to a report in Bloomberg, quoting Tinter, Microsoft reportedly tried to persuade Samsung Electronics to use its Bing search engine as the default on its smartphones. “Even if the economics were superior in working with Microsoft, they would not move off Google,” Tinter reportedly said of Samsung.
Wanted Bing to be default search engine on Samsung phones
Tinter said that for years, he urged Samsung executives to at least allow Microsoft to make a bid for the search default on its phones, pointing to the Apple example. Microsoft basically wanted Samsung to replace Google with Bing as the default search engine on its phones.
Even though “we weren’t winning, we were helping Apple win more money and costing Google more money,” Tinter said. But the Samsung executives said “Jon, it’s not even worth it. We don’t want to go down this path.”
Later in December 2019 in an email shown in court, Tinter urged Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to stop pushing Samsung’s then-president, Dong-Jin Koh, known as DJ, to switch the search default. “I have gotten some pretty candid feedback from the Samsung team that DJ has clearly heard your desire to do something here, but they don’t want to make a big move because of the partnership with Google but DJ is too polite to say no,” Tinter is said to have written in the email.