[jsnell]

> The image of the chief executive of a leading tech rival — Microsoft is one of the world’s biggest public companies, valued at $2.4 trillion — saying it could not easily fight Google was striking.

Why is that striking? It's just a repeat of the playbook Microsoft used to great effect in the Activision trial. "Oh, woe is us, we've lost the console wars, we're in distant 3rd place and can't compete". They have absolutely no problem being mock-humiliated due to a supposed failure to compete if it gets them the result they need in court. (Which is the smart play, of course.)

> But in court, Mr. Nadella said that argument was “bogus” because users generally don’t change their default search engine, even if they have the ability to do so.

Oh, huh. Isn't Bing the default search engine for the default browser on Windows? I guess all those Windows users are searching on Bing then.

Though I do wonder why Microsoft gets into the news on a regular cadence about yet again having reset the defaults with a Windows update. Seems like something that they wouldn't need to bother with if nobody changes the defaults.

[TerrifiedMouse]

I don’t get why he saying “MS can’t compete” matters. It doesn’t mean it’s in any way true.

MS has almost every opportunity that Google has when it comes to search. They fail to compete simply because they aren’t good enough.

Google being default on Chrome the leading browser? Edge freaking comes with Windows and defaults to Bing.

Google being default on iOS? MS has every opportunity to take Google's spot on iOS. The fact that Apple, a major competitor with Google in the mobile space, sides with Google says a lot about Bing's quality - can't be money because MS is worth like 2.4 trillion.

[matteoraso]

>Google being default on Chrome the leading browser?

This is why Microsoft won't win. Google obviously isn't going to not use their own search engine on their own browser, and that's totally fine. I'm not sure what Google can even do to reduce the market share of their search engine besides intentionally making it worse than Bing.

[layer8]

They can be broken uo so that the entity making the browser is not the same entity operating the search engine anymore. If course, the same would apply to Edge and Bing.

[nojvek]

The entity making Edge is mostly Google. Edge is a shell on top of Chromium engine.

Chromium/Chrome team(s) is easily a few 100 million loss making, only profitable because of ads.

No one pays for the browser. It’s a loss leader.

So splitting them means things could get worse instead as the top browser engineers go elsewhere.

[TheCoelacanth]

Top browser engineers going elsewhere is a good thing because it means more competition.

Browsers being forced to come up with a real business model is a good thing too.