‘Google’ is the most searched term on rival Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the company has claimed.
The tech firm made the claim in court as Google made a case for an appeal against a $5bn fine from the European Union for abusing its market power.
The EU has accused Google of using Android’s success in the world of smartphones to make itself the default engine but the tech giant has argued its service is simply the most popular.
Lawyer Alfonso Lamadrid told the EU General Court: “We have submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is, by far, ‘Google’.
“People use Google because they choose to, not because they are forced to.
“Google’s market share in general search is consistent with consumer surveys showing that 95 per cent of users prefer Google to rival search engines.”
The fine was issued in 2018 but Google argues that users opt to choose its services.
The company’s boss Sundar Pichai claimed that Android “has created more choice for everyone, not less”.
Meanwhile, Google is set to launch tools to help you search for things you can’t put into words.
The firm has revealed plans to implement new tools that will help you find the answers to questions you didn’t even ask – which could be used to search for things without knowing the specific words to search for.
The new features are powered by a machine learning model called MUM, or Multitask Unified Model, which can pick up information from formats beyond text, including pictures, audio, and video.
