A Microsoft executive testified during the U.S. antitrust trial against Google that Apple used Bing as a “bargaining chip’’ to take larger checks from Google but was never serious about replacing Google with Bing as the default search engine on Macs and iPhones.

“It is no secret that Apple is making more money on Bing existing than Bing does,’’ said Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s chief of advertising and web services.

Parakhin depicted the search engine landscape and Microsoft’s inability to depose Google on Apple devices.

According to analysts, Apple amasses approximately $15 billion-$20 billion a year in revenue-sharing income from Google for granting its search engine the desirable default position on all of Apple’s devices.

An eye-watering amount of revenue is produced when users click on advertisements in search results.

The antitrust case against Google is also built on the Justice Department aiming to block others like Bing and Yahoo with similar agreements, thereby stomping out competition and, ultimately, stifling innovation.

On the Google side of the fence, the tech giant’s lawyer Ken Smurzynski, worked at disproving one of the government’s main arguments concerning Google’s present market supremacy, which permits it to gather immense quantities of user data to advance search results and maintain its top spot over competitors.

According to Google, with the remarkable advances in artificial intelligence, search engines can improve results without depending on user data.

During the trial, Smurzynski presented a document including comments about this issue from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all – search,’’ Nadella said.

However, Parakhin countered that AI was like driverless cars, which are still being prepared for the market and not ready to launch.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta pressed Parakhin about whether a search engine could be created only from machine learning.

He said, “We’ve seen companies try. We haven’t seen anybody succeed.’’

At this stage, the case is far from over and is just heating up, with Mehta unlikely to rule on the antitrust case until 2024, but if he rules against Google, another trial will be required to decide how to limit its market power.

We wonder if blocking Google from paying off Apple and others to make Google the default search engine would be the direction the judge would go.