(Reuters) – Samsung Electronics will not change the default search engine on its smartphones from Google to Microsoft Corp’s Bing any time soon, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Shares of Google-parent Alphabet Inc gained more than 1% in premarket trading. Microsoft shares were down about 1%.
Samsung has suspended an internal review that explored replacing Google with Bing on its web-browsing app, which comes pre-installed on the company’s smartphones, according to the report.
Google, Samsung and Microsoft did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
A sizable part of the revenue earned by search-engine companies comes from their long-term partnerships with phone makers such as Apple Inc and Xiaomi.
Google earns an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue from the Samsung contract, according to an April 16 report by the New York Times.
Samsung considering a potential shift to Bing was first reported last month and had weighed on Alphabet’s shares at the time.
The integration of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence technology into Microsoft-owned Bing has driven people to the little-used search engine and helped it compete better with market leader Google in page visits growth, according to data from analytics firm Similarweb.
(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
