Statistics S/39 · Free to cite · Updated 24 Sep 2026

Bing vs Google statistics 2026.

Bing gets 12.94% of US desktop search referrals but only 1.81% on mobile, according to Statcounter's August 2026 data, which counts page views that search engines send to sites running its tracker. That's a 7.1x gap, and it explains most of what you need to know about Bing vs Google. Worldwide, Google holds 91.02% of search across all platforms and Bing 4.55% (Statcounter, August 2026). Yet from July 2025 to June 2026, Google's search revenue was 16 times Microsoft's, while its average Statcounter share was 20 times Bing's.

Most Bing vs Google statistics pages quote one worldwide number and stop there. That number hides the story: Bing is a desktop search engine with real share in the US, the UK and China, and almost none on phones. It also feeds results to Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. OpenAI says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers and lists Microsoft's privacy statement among their policies, but it doesn't name Bing.

42 sourced numbers 24 primary sources By Milan Novotný

The four numbers to remember

7.1xBing's US desktop share vs its mobile share · computed from Statcounter 2026
91.02%Google's worldwide search share, August 2026 · Statcounter 2026
16xGoogle search revenue vs Microsoft search ads, same 12 months · computed
13.4%US search referrals to engines showing Bing results · computed

This page collects Bing vs Google statistics from primary sources only: Statcounter by device and region, SEC filings, the US v. Google court opinions, EU and UK regulators, and the companies' own statements. It's part of my marketing statistics hub. Every number is dated and linked. Cite freely with a link.

Bing vs Google statistics at a glance

CategoryStatisticSource
ShareGoogle 91.02%, Bing 4.55% of worldwide search, all platforms, August 2026Statcounter, 2026
ShareBing 12.94% of US desktop search vs 1.81% of US mobile search, August 2026Statcounter, 2026
ShareBing 0.60% of worldwide mobile search, behind Yandex, Baidu and DuckDuckGo, August 2026Statcounter, 2026
ShareBing leads China desktop search with 39.4% vs Baidu's 36.9%, August 2026Statcounter, 2026
ShareGoogle had 89.2% of US search queries in 2020; Bing 5.5%US v. Google liability opinion, August 2024
RevenueGoogle Search & other (search plus Gmail, Maps and Play): $224.5 billion in 2025Alphabet 10-K, 2026
RevenueMicrosoft Search advertising: $15.18 billion in fiscal 2026 (July 2025 to June 2026), up 9%Microsoft 10-K, July 2026
RevenueIllustration on Statcounter page-view share, July 2025 to June 2026: Google earns $2.70 billion of search revenue per share point; Microsoft $3.38 billion per Bing pointComputed from Alphabet, Microsoft and Statcounter, 2026
DefaultsGoogle paid $26.3 billion for default placement in 2021, and an estimated $20 billion to Apple alone in 2022US v. Google liability opinion, 2024
ReachBing: about 155 million monthly users in the EU, H2 2025Microsoft DSA disclosure, 2026
Reachbing.com ranks #8 among the world's most visited sites; chatgpt.com ranks #5Similarweb, September 2026
Index13.44% of US search referrals go to engines showing Bing-sourced results (Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo)Computed from Statcounter, August 2026
AIGoogle estimated ChatGPT at 1.2 billion daily queries in March 2025, vs 140 million for GeminiUS v. Google remedies opinion, September 2025

What is Bing's market share compared with Google's in 2026?

Google held 91.02% of worldwide search engine market share across all platforms in August 2026 and Bing held 4.55%, according to Statcounter. Region changes the picture more than any other variable: Bing reaches 8.99% in the United States and 19% in China, and stays under 5% in Europe.

StatisticSource
Worldwide, all platforms, August 2026: Google 91.02%, Bing 4.55%. Bing was 3.91% in August 2024.Statcounter, 2026
United States, all platforms, August 2026: Google 86.01%, Bing 8.99%, up from 7.06% in August 2024.Statcounter, 2026
United States, all platforms, August 2026: Yahoo 2.75%, DuckDuckGo 1.70%.Statcounter, 2026
Europe, August 2026: Google 89.65% and Bing 4.77% across all platforms; Bing 9.31% on desktop and 0.51% on mobile.Statcounter, 2026
United Kingdom, August 2026: Bing 10.37% on desktop, 5.66% across all platforms and 0.48% on mobile.Statcounter, 2026
China desktop, August 2026: Bing 39.4%, Baidu 36.9%, Google 2.04%. Across all platforms Baidu leads with 59.1% to Bing's 19%.Statcounter, 2026
Cloudflare's 2025 referral data puts Google at about 90% and Bing at 3.1% of search referrals worldwide, measured from 1 January to 2 December 2025.Cloudflare Radar Year in Review, December 2025
The UK Competition and Markets Authority found Bing's shares of UK search queries and UK search advertising are both below 5%, and that no traditional rival has materially grown against Google for at least fifteen years.CMA SMS final decision, October 2025
Milan's read

One thing to know before you quote any of these. Statcounter measures the share of page views that search engines refer to websites running its tracker, not the share of queries typed. Cloudflare measures referrals to its own customers. Both are proxies for search usage. Cloudflare's 3.1% for Bing in 2025 sits about a point and a half below Statcounter's 4.55% for August 2026: different panels and periods, same order of magnitude.

The regional spread is wider than most people expect. Bing's 8.99% in the United States is almost twice its 4.77% in Europe, and its UK desktop share of 10.37% is higher than its worldwide desktop share of 8.91%. China is the outlier in the other direction: Bing leads Baidu on desktop there, 39.4% to 36.9%, while Google sits at 2.04%. So a single global Bing figure blends a market where Bing is a serious desktop player, one where it's a minor alternative, and one where Google barely registers.

The CMA's finding matters for a different reason. Statcounter shows movement month to month, and it's tempting to read a trend into a rise from 3.91% to 4.55%. The UK regulator looked at fifteen years of data and concluded no traditional rival has materially grown against Google in that time. Treat short Statcounter swings as noise until they persist for a year or more.

Milan's read

Two Statcounter lines look contradictory until you read them by platform. Bing's worldwide all-platform share rose from 3.91% to 4.55% over two years, while its desktop share fell from 11.97% to 8.91% and its mobile share fell from 0.75% to 0.60%. When both halves fall and the total rises, the device mix in the sample moved, not Bing. That's why I never quote a Bing number without the platform next to it.

The device split is where the real Bing vs Google story sits, so that's the next section.

Why is Bing so much stronger on desktop than on mobile?

Bing's US desktop share of 12.94% is 7.1 times its US mobile share of 1.81% (Statcounter, August 2026), because Bing is the default search engine in Microsoft Edge on Windows and has almost no default placement on phones. The gap is 14.9x worldwide and 18.3x in Europe.

Platform, August 2026GoogleBingSource
Worldwide desktop85.94%8.91%Statcounter
Worldwide mobile95.55%0.60%Statcounter
US desktop81.84%12.94%Statcounter
US mobile93.51%1.81%Statcounter
Europe desktop82.6%9.31%Statcounter
Europe mobile95.77%0.51%Statcounter
StatisticSource
Bing's US desktop share fell from 17.22% in August 2024 to 12.94% in August 2026, a loss of 4.28 points or about a quarter of its desktop base.Statcounter, 2026
On US mobile in August 2026, DuckDuckGo (2.08%) and Yahoo (1.86%) both had more share than Bing (1.81%). Worldwide, Yandex (0.92%), Baidu (0.84%) and DuckDuckGo (0.70%) all beat Bing's 0.60% on mobile.Statcounter, 2026
On Windows devices, Cloudflare measured Google at 76% and Bing at about 14% of search referrals in 2025; on all desktops combined, Bing had about 11%.Cloudflare, December 2025
The US court found in 2024 that Bing sees more desktop than mobile queries because it is the default search engine on the Edge browser preloaded on Windows. Google's own share was 84% on desktop and 94.9% on mobile in 2020.US v. Google liability opinion, August 2024, ECF p. 18
Queries typed into Safari account for 28% of all US search queries, and Google is the default there.US v. Google liability opinion, 2024, ECF pp. 107, 209
Milan's read

The court's 2020 figures and Statcounter's 2026 figures come from different methods, so I don't subtract one from the other. They agree on direction: Google is weakest on desktop, Bing is strongest there, and on phones the contest barely exists.

The US desktop decline deserves its own sentence. Bing lost 4.28 points of US desktop share between August 2024 and August 2026, falling from 17.22% to 12.94%, while its US all-platform share rose from 7.06% to 8.99% over the same months. Both come from the same Statcounter series. If you only track the headline US number, you'd conclude Bing is growing. If you sell to people at desks, the number that matters to you went the other way.

Mobile is harder still. In August 2026 Bing had less mobile share in the US than DuckDuckGo or Yahoo, and less worldwide than Yandex or Baidu. For a company that spent nearly $100 billion on search, being the fifth choice on phones is the clearest measure of what missing the mobile default cost.

Milan's read

The desktop gap is a distribution fact, not a quality verdict. Judge Mehta wrote in 2024 that Bing's quality now matches Google's on desktop, and Microsoft still can't get onto phones because Apple and Android ship with Google. If your buyers work on company laptops, Bing is a 10% to 13% channel in the US and UK. If your buyers search on phones, it's a rounding error.

Revenue tells the same story from the money side, and it's more favourable to Microsoft than the share numbers suggest.

What did the US v. Google court record reveal about Bing?

The August 2024 liability opinion in US v. Google found that Google held 89.2% of US general search queries in 2020 and Bing 5.5%, and that Bing's share had never risen above 12%. Judge Amit Mehta's opinion cites trial testimony and exhibits for each figure; page numbers below are the ECF page stamps.

StatisticSource
Google's share of US general search queries rose from 80% in 2009 to 89.2% in 2020, and was 94.9% on mobile. Bing had 5.5% of all queries and 1.3% on mobile; Yahoo had 2.2% and DuckDuckGo 2.1%.Liability opinion, August 2024, ECF pp. 17 to 18, 160
Google receives nine times more queries each day than all rivals combined, and 19 times more on mobile.Liability opinion, 2024, ECF p. 38
Google paid $26.3 billion in revenue share under its default contracts with Apple, Mozilla, Android makers and US carriers in 2021, booked as traffic acquisition costs.Liability opinion, 2024, ECF p. 105
Google's revenue share payment to Apple was an estimated $20 billion in 2022, covering worldwide queries. Microsoft had offered Apple a 90% revenue share, worth a little under $20 billion over five years, to make Bing the Safari default.Liability opinion, 2024, ECF pp. 107, 116
The remedies opinion of 2 September 2025 found that no existing rival had taken market share from Google since the liability trial.Remedies opinion, September 2025, ECF p. 5
Milan's read

The liability opinion is now more than two years old and its share data describes 2020. I include it because it's the only source that measures queries rather than page views, and because the payment figures came from sworn testimony, not estimates.

Read the scale numbers next to the payment numbers. Google gets nine times more queries than all rivals combined, 19 times on mobile, and it spent $26.3 billion in 2021 to keep the defaults that deliver those queries. Safari alone carries 28% of all US search queries. A rival that wants to close the gap needs defaults, and defaults cost more than a rival with 5.5% of queries can earn back. The remedies opinion in September 2025 found that no existing rival had taken share from Google since the liability trial, so the market structure the court described in 2024 is still the one advertisers buy into today. That opinion barred Google from exclusive distribution deals and ordered it to share some search index and user-interaction data with qualified competitors, but it let Google keep paying for default placement and refused to order a Chrome sale (ECF pp. 7 to 8).

Milan's read

The single most revealing number in the whole record is Microsoft's offer: $20 billion over five years for the Safari default, against roughly $20 billion a year from Google. Microsoft couldn't match it because it lacked the query volume to earn the money back. Scale buys defaults, defaults buy scale. Everything else on this page follows from that loop.

The next question is where Bing's results go beyond bing.com, which is where the index matters more than the brand.

Which search engines and AI tools use the Bing index?

Yahoo and DuckDuckGo both draw their web results from Bing, according to their own help pages and to Satya Nadella's testimony in US v. Google. OpenAI says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers but doesn't name Bing; its help article lists Microsoft's privacy statement, alongside Shopify's, among those providers' policies. On Statcounter's August 2026 data, 13.44% of US search referrals go to engines that show Bing-sourced results.

StatisticSource
DuckDuckGo says it maintains its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, but largely sources its traditional links and images from Bing.DuckDuckGo help pages, accessed September 2026
Yahoo tells site owners to submit their site through Bing Webmaster Tools to be included in the Yahoo Search index, and warns it can take 6 to 8 weeks or longer.Yahoo Help, accessed September 2026
The US court found in 2024 that Bing is the only rival that crawls the web and generates its own results, and that Yahoo and DuckDuckGo syndicate their results from Bing.Liability opinion, 2024, ECF pp. 14 to 17
OpenAI said at launch on 31 October 2024 that ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers plus content from partners. Its help article, accessed September 2026, lists the Microsoft privacy statement and Shopify's privacy policy among the search providers' policies users should review. Neither page names Bing.OpenAI, October 2024 and OpenAI Help Center
Ecosia says its search results and related ads come from Microsoft Bing, Google and EUSP (European Search Perspective), and that the provider depends on the user's location and other factors.Ecosia Help Center, updated August 2026
Microsoft retired the public Bing Search APIs on 11 August 2025 and pointed customers to Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure AI Agents.Microsoft Learn, May 2025
Bing supplied about 7% of Brave Search's results until Brave removed every Bing API call in April 2023, when Brave averaged about 22 million queries a day.Brave, April 2023
Engines showing Bing-sourced results (Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo) received 13.44% of US search referrals across all platforms and 17.74% on desktop in August 2026; worldwide the figure is 6.49%.Computed from Statcounter, August 2026
Milan's read

The 13.44% figure is a ceiling on the Statcounter-visible part of the Bing index, not a measure of Bing's total reach. DuckDuckGo mixes in its own sources, and ChatGPT search isn't tracked by Statcounter at all, so I don't add it in.

The Brave and Ecosia examples show the other direction of travel. Brave used Bing for about 7% of its results until April 2023 and then dropped it entirely. Ecosia still uses Bing but now mixes in Google and EUSP, depending on where the user is. Smaller engines are reducing their dependence on any single index, and Microsoft's decision to retire the public Bing Search APIs in August 2025 pushed third-party developers towards its Azure grounding product instead.

Milan's read

For an SEO, this is the most practical number on the page. One submission to Bing Webmaster Tools reaches Bing, Yahoo and most of DuckDuckGo, which together get about one in seven US search referrals and more than one in six on desktop. Most teams I talk to have never opened Bing Webmaster Tools. That's a free 13% they're leaving to chance.

How many people that represents is the next question, and the answer depends on whose counter you trust.

How many people use Bing vs Google?

Microsoft reported about 155 million average monthly Bing users in the EU for the second half of 2025, while Google reported 368.9 million signed-in accounts and 397.3 million signed-out sessions for Google Search in the EU for the first half of 2026. Both figures are legal disclosures under the EU Digital Services Act, but they use different counting methods.

StatisticSource
Microsoft Bing had approximately 155 million average monthly active users in the EU in the six months to 31 December 2025.Microsoft DSA disclosure, 2026
Google Search averaged 368.9 million signed-in accounts and 397.3 million signed-out sessions a month in the EU from January to June 2026. Google says it doesn't fully de-duplicate within either count.Google DSA monthly active recipients report, August 2026
google.com was the #1 most visited website in the world in August 2026, chatgpt.com #5, bing.com #8, yahoo.com #14 and duckduckgo.com #41. Visitors viewed 8.70 pages per visit on google.com vs 5.95 on bing.com.Similarweb Top Websites, September 2026
Google Search accounts for more than 90% of UK general search queries, and over 200,000 UK firms spent more than £10 billion on Google search advertising in a year.CMA SMS final decision, October 2025, p. 5
The European Commission decided in February 2024 that Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising are not gatekeeper services under the Digital Markets Act, closing 4 market investigations. Google Search had been designated in September 2023.European Commission, February 2024
Milan's read

I don't divide Google's EU count by Bing's. Microsoft counts users; Google counts accounts and sessions separately, and says it doesn't fully de-duplicate them. Read them as two facts: Bing has an EU audience in the low hundreds of millions, and Google's is at least twice that on either of its own measures.

Similarweb's engagement figures add texture. Visitors to google.com viewed 8.70 pages per visit in August 2026 against 5.95 on bing.com. Part of that is Google's wider product set on one domain, part is habit. Either way, the average Bing visit is shorter, which fits a search engine many people reach by default in Edge rather than by choice.

Milan's read

Similarweb's ranking is the one I'd show a CFO. chatgpt.com now outranks bing.com on visits, even though Microsoft licenses some OpenAI models for Bing and Copilot (remedies opinion, ECF p. 42). The chatbot became the destination, and Bing's index now does its work behind Microsoft's own Copilot answers.

That shift from destination to plumbing is what the AI numbers measure.

How is AI search changing the Bing vs Google contest?

ChatGPT handled an estimated 1.2 billion daily queries in March 2025, against 140 million for Google's Gemini app, according to a Google estimate cited in the September 2025 remedies opinion. The fight over AI answers now runs through search indexes, and the same opinion records that Microsoft grounds some Copilot queries on Bing results.

StatisticSource
Google estimated that on 28 March 2025 ChatGPT had about 1.2 billion daily queries, the Gemini app about 140 million, Meta AI over 200 million, Grok 75 million, DeepSeek 50 million and Perplexity 30 million.Remedies opinion, September 2025, ECF p. 46
ChatGPT had over 100 million daily active users at the end of 2024, according to OpenAI's Nick Turley in testimony. Microsoft grounds some Copilot queries on Bing search results.Remedies opinion, 2025, ECF pp. 42 to 43
ChatGPT had been adopted by around 10% of the world's adult population by July 2025.NBER Working Paper 34255, September 2025
Only 16.61% of ChatGPT search results appear anywhere in Google's results for the same query, and 6.82% in Google's top 10, across 118,931 fan-out queries.Ahrefs, August 2025
IndexNow, the instant-indexing protocol Microsoft backs, receives over 3.5 billion URL submissions a day and accounts for 18% of all new URLs clicked in Bing's web results.Bing Webmaster Blog, December 2024
Milan's read

The Ahrefs study compared ChatGPT's results only with Google's, so it tells you ChatGPT isn't copying Google, not that it's copying Bing. I'd treat any claim of a precise "ChatGPT uses Bing X% of the time" as unsupported: OpenAI hasn't published one. For the traffic side of this story, see my ChatGPT vs Google search statistics, and for what Google's clicks are worth, the organic vs paid search statistics.

The ChatGPT query estimate comes from Google itself, presented as evidence in its own antitrust case, where Google had every reason to make rivals look large. Treat it as an upper-range estimate from an interested party. Even so, it puts ChatGPT's daily volume in the same conversation as a traditional search engine, which Gemini's 140 million and Perplexity's 30 million are not.

Milan's read

Microsoft closed its public Bing Search APIs in August 2025 and now sells Bing grounding inside Azure. That tells me Microsoft sees the Bing index as an AI supply business more than a consumer brand. For marketers the implication is plain: being indexed and fresh in Bing, IndexNow included, is now partly an AI visibility task, not just a 9% US channel.

The four numbers computed for this page are laid out below, so you can check or change the inputs.

How we calculated the original numbers

Four figures on this page don't appear anywhere else. Here is the arithmetic.

  1. 7.1x: Bing's desktop vs mobile gap. Statcounter, August 2026, US: desktop 12.94% / mobile 1.81% = 7.1. Worldwide: 8.91 / 0.60 = 14.9. Europe: 9.31 / 0.51 = 18.3. Same source, same month, so the comparison is clean. Statcounter counts page views that each engine refers to sites running its tracker, not searches.
  2. $2.70 billion vs $3.38 billion of revenue per point of share. Microsoft's fiscal 2026 runs July 2025 to June 2026, so I built Google's revenue for the same months from Alphabet's filings: 2025 Search & other ($224,532 million) minus first-half 2025 ($104,892 million) gives $119,640 million for July to December 2025, plus first-half 2026 ($123,670 million) gives $243,310 million. Statcounter's worldwide all-platform share averaged 90.18% for Google and 4.49% for Bing over those twelve months. $243,310 million / 90.18 = $2.70 billion per point. Microsoft: $15,176 million / 4.49 = $3.38 billion. Microsoft's 10-K says its line comprises Bing, Copilot, Microsoft News, Edge and third-party affiliates. DuckDuckGo says it largely sources its links from Bing, Yahoo sends site owners to Bing Webmaster Tools, and the court found in 2024 that DuckDuckGo syndicates both results and ads from Microsoft and Yahoo syndicates its results from Bing (liability opinion, ECF pp. 14, 17). Crediting Microsoft with Yahoo (1.41%) and DuckDuckGo (0.80%) gives 6.70 points and $2.27 billion per point. Microsoft doesn't disclose how much syndicated revenue it books, so the real figure sits between $2.27 billion and $3.38 billion. The divisor is Statcounter's share of page views, not of queries or ad spend, and the two revenue lines are defined differently, so this is an illustration of scale from mixed sources, not a measured rate.
  3. 16.0x revenue vs 20.1x share. $243,310 million / $15,176 million = 16.0. Average share over the same months: 90.18 / 4.49 = 20.1. Credit Yahoo and DuckDuckGo to Bing and the share ratio falls to 13.5x (90.18 / 6.70), below the revenue ratio. Same caveats as above.
  4. 13.44% of US referrals to Bing-sourced engines. Statcounter, August 2026, US all platforms: Bing 8.99 + Yahoo 2.75 + DuckDuckGo 1.70 = 13.44%. US desktop: 12.94 + 3.37 + 1.43 = 17.74%. Worldwide: 4.55 + 1.24 + 0.70 = 6.49%. Statcounter counts referred page views, not searches. It's an upper bound for these three engines because DuckDuckGo adds its own sources, and it excludes ChatGPT search, which Statcounter doesn't track.

What the 2026 numbers really say

Bing is a desktop search engine, and the numbers should be quoted that way. A 4.55% worldwide share describes almost nobody's real situation. A US B2B marketer faces a Bing that's 12.94% of desktop search and more than 17% once Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are added. A consumer app marketer faces a Bing under 2%. Anyone who tells you "Bing is 4%" without the platform is averaging two different markets.

The gap between Google and Bing is distribution, and money proves it. On Statcounter's page-view share, Microsoft earns more per point of Bing's own share than Google does per point of its share, and only about 16% less if Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are credited to Bing. It lost the phones, and the court record shows what it would cost to buy them back: Google paid Apple about $20 billion in 2022 alone. No product improvement closes that.

Bing's future value is as an index, not a destination. chatgpt.com passed bing.com in visits, Microsoft shut the public API and moved Bing into Azure grounding, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo still run on it, and Ecosia still draws on it. I'd keep Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow set up for that reason alone, even if the bing.com traffic line in your analytics never moves.

FAQ

What is Bing's market share vs Google in 2026?

Bing holds 4.55% and Google 91.02% of worldwide search across all platforms, according to Statcounter's August 2026 data. In the United States Bing has 8.99% overall and 12.94% on desktop. On mobile, Bing's worldwide share is only 0.60%.

Why is Bing's share so much higher on desktop?

Statcounter shows Bing's US desktop share (12.94%) is 7.1 times its mobile share (1.81%) in August 2026. The US court found in 2024 that Bing is the default in Edge, preloaded on Windows, while Google is the default on Safari and Android. Bing's share follows its default placements.

How much revenue does Bing make compared with Google?

Microsoft's Search advertising revenue was $15.18 billion in fiscal 2026 (July 2025 to June 2026), against $243.3 billion for Google Search & other over the same months (SEC filings). That's a 16x gap, smaller than the 20x gap in Bing-only Statcounter share. As an illustration on page-view share, Microsoft earns about $3.38 billion to Google's $2.70 billion, or $2.27 billion if Yahoo and DuckDuckGo count as Bing share.

Do Yahoo and DuckDuckGo use Bing results?

Yes. DuckDuckGo says it largely sources its links from Bing, Yahoo directs site owners to Bing Webmaster Tools, and the US court found in 2024 that both syndicate Bing's results. Together with Bing they received 13.44% of US search referrals in August 2026 (computed from Statcounter).

Does ChatGPT search use Bing?

OpenAI said on 31 October 2024 that ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers, and its help article lists Microsoft's privacy statement, alongside Shopify's, among those providers' policies. Neither names Bing. OpenAI hasn't published what share of results come from Bing, so any precise percentage you see is a guess.

How much does Google pay Apple to be the default search engine?

About $20 billion in 2022, according to Eddy Cue's testimony recorded in the August 2024 US v. Google liability opinion. Google paid $26.3 billion in total for default placements in 2021. Microsoft offered Apple a little under $20 billion over five years and lost.

Sources

  1. Statcounter, Search Engine Market Share Worldwide, all platforms (August 2026 data, accessed September 2026)
  2. Statcounter, Search Engine Market Share by device and region: US, Europe, UK, China, desktop and mobile (August 2026 data)
  3. Cloudflare, Radar 2025 Year in Review (December 2025)
  4. US District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Google LLC, Memorandum Opinion (liability), Case 1:20-cv-03010-APM, ECF 1033 (August 2024)
  5. US District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Google LLC, Memorandum Opinion (remedies), ECF 1436 (September 2025)
  6. Microsoft Corporation, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2026 (July 2026)
  7. Microsoft, FY26 Q4 earnings press release (July 2026)
  8. Alphabet Inc., Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 (February 2026)
  9. Alphabet Inc., Form 10-Q for Q2 2026 (July 2026)
  10. Microsoft, EU Digital Services Act information for Bing (2026, covering H2 2025)
  11. Google, Information about Monthly Active Recipients under the Digital Services Act (August 2026)
  12. UK Competition and Markets Authority, Strategic market status investigation into Google's general search services: Final Decision (October 2025)
  13. European Commission, Commission closes market investigations on Microsoft's and Apple's services under the DMA (February 2024)
  14. Similarweb, Top Websites Ranking (updated September 2026)
  15. DuckDuckGo, Where do DuckDuckGo search results come from? (accessed September 2026)
  16. Yahoo Help, Submit your website to Yahoo Search (accessed September 2026)
  17. OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT search (October 2024)
  18. OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT search (accessed September 2026)
  19. Ecosia Help Center, Search result providers (updated August 2026)
  20. Microsoft Learn, Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025 (May 2025)
  21. Brave, Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search results page (April 2023)
  22. Bing Webmaster Blog, IndexNow expands adoption across industries (December 2024)
  23. Ahrefs, Is ChatGPT really powered by Google? (August 2025)
  24. NBER, How People Use ChatGPT, Working Paper 34255 (September 2025)

Methodology. Numbers were collected on 24 September 2026 and checked against the original publisher's page, filing or court document, not against other statistics roundups. Statcounter figures were pulled from its CSV export for August 2026 and are always labelled with month, region and platform; they measure page views referred by search engines, not queries. Revenue figures come from SEC filings; where Microsoft reports only growth rates (search revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs), I report the growth rate and use the gross dollar figure from the 10-K for comparisons. Court figures cite the ECF page stamp of each opinion. Claims about which products use the Bing index rely only on those companies' own statements or sworn testimony, with dates. Cross-source calculations are flagged as such. Last updated 24 September 2026.

Need one of these numbers for your own piece?

Cite it with a link to this page and the original source. Every figure above is traceable to its publisher. If you spot a number that has gone stale, email me and I will fix it within a week.

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