Being the default choice matters and this is being focused on in the ongoing landmark US versus Google antitrust trial. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stand and said: “Defaults are the only thing that matter in terms of changing user behaviour.”

Nadella was in a Washington DC courtroom and said Google’s search engine is dominant because of deals locking it in as the default across smartphones and computers. During the course of the trial, the focus shifted to the quality of Bing, the search engine from Microsoft.

Adam Severt, a lawyer at the department of justice, asked Nadella why he wanted to compete with Google and the answer was simple: “I see search as the largest software category out there by far. I used to think of Windows and Office as attractive businesses until I saw search.”

This is nothing new but all eyes were on him when the topic of Apple came up. Microsoft wanted Bing to be the default search engine on Apple devices but somehow that never happened. “It would be a game-changer,” Nadella said.

Then came the revelation. Nadella said Microsoft was prepared to give Apple all of the economic advantage of the deal if Apple were to switch to Bing and was even willing to hide the Bing brand in Apple users’ search engines. Becoming Apple’s default search engine is not just about money. “We needed to be less greedy and more competitive,” he said.

Nadella called search engines “the organising layer of the Internet”. Equity firm Sanford Bernstein estimates Google will pay Apple $18 billion to $19 billion this year for default status on iPhones and other Apple products. Before Nadella became Microsoft’s chief executive in 2014, he led the company’s efforts, starting in 2007, to build a rival search engine to Google’s. Bing search engine launched in 2009.