Top Search On Bing Is ‘Google’, Google Tells Court

The top search on Microsoft’s Bing search engine is “Google”, Google has told a European Union court.

“We have submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is by far ‘Google’,” Google lawyer Alfonso Lamadrid told the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg, as earlier reported by Bloomberg.

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

Antitrust fine

Google is seeking to overturn a record 4.3bn euro ($5bn, £4bn) fine and an antitrust order that found Google unfairly forced Android mobile phone makers to use its search app.

The European Commission alleged that Google made a strategic decision to leverage its Android software to ensure its dominance in search.

Google, however, argues that its search engine is the most popular because people choose to use it.

At the time of the 2018 fine Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said Android “has created more choice for everyone, not less”.

Margrethe Vestager, at the time the EU’s competition commissioner, said Google had forced Android phone makers to pre-install its search app and Chrome web browser, and paid some to ensure it was the only pre-installed search app, meaning only 1 percent of people downloaded an alternative.

Such deals showed Google had stacked the odds in its favour, said European Commission lawyer Nicholas Khan.

‘Bing’ on Bing

“Google gives itself the laurel wreath even before the race has started,” he said. “The scale of the practices entirely justify the fine that was imposed.”

According to SEO company Ahrefs, “Google” is indeed the top search term on Bing worldwide, followed by “YouTube”, “Facebook”, “Gmail” and “Amazon”.

In searches from the US, “Facebook” is at the top, followed by “YouTube”, with “Google” in third place.

The figures show that “Bing” itself is the seventh most popular search on Bing in the US, and tenth globally.

Bing is the default search engine in Microsoft’s browsers, meaning that any terms other than web addresses typed into its URL bar by default take the user to a Bing search results page.