You may no more see Google, as the default search companion in iOS’s Safari browser. As per a report on The Information, Microsoft and Yahoo have already pitched in Apple SVP to make Bing and Yahoo respectively, as the default search engine for iOS.
This sudden rush of competition comes because of the end of an already extended deal between Apple and Google, which made the search giant, the default search engine in Apple’s Safari Browser. The deal was signed in 2007 and extended till 2015.
Just a while back, Mozilla stunned the tech-community by replacing Google, with Yahoo in the U.S. as the default search engine in its Firefox web browser. Now, the only such deal, that exists and matters anymore, is between Apple and Google, which ends next year.
As per The Information’s report, Microsoft and Yahoo have already talked to Apple SVP Eddy Cue regarding the matter. Apart from Apple’s Safari browser, both Siri and OS X Ysemite use Bing as their default search provider. Microsoft, hence has an upper hand, in the race to be Safari’s default search companion on iPhones and iPads.
Lately, Apple has been separating itself from Google services. While some of those separations were quite smooth, the others proved disastrous. An example of the former is non-shipping of YouTube with iOS and the example of latter is the disengagement of Maps from iOS.
However, when it comes to “Search” and Apple’s “Users first” policy, those two lines intersect, unarguably, at a point called Google. Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo are quite distant on those fronts.
