Does Bing on the iPhone signal the Apple-Google end?
Just a year ago, Apple and Google shared board members and a lot of good Karma. Now, even the Google icon on the iPhone home app page is in danger of disappearing. Is the end of this corporate friendship near?
Well first, of course, in the corporate world friendship is a relative thing. The corporations don’t go out for a beer after work; the corporations compete for dollars in shared marketplaces. As Google and Apple evolved as companies, they began to share and compete in more and more competitive environments. Google’s movement into the smartphone business, first with the Android operating system and then with the physical Google Nexus handset, seems to have spelled the beginning of the end. When Google started an assault against the iPhone, the gloves came off.
It is very easy to see the growth in this rift in the news reports that the Google icon will soon come off the home page of the iPhone app menu in favor of the symbol for the Bing search engine from Microsoft. Not only would such a change in search engine associations divert advertising revenue away from Google, it would be a clear slap in the face to a former partner that helped launch the iPhone by supplying the original Google Maps for mobile phones, according to a ZDNet article. Such a move would mark the largest change yet in the once friendly and lucrative relationship between Apple and Google.
It is perhaps disturbing that the change of a tiny app icon on the iPhone can signal such a major sea change between corporate giants, but it certainly does. It is no longer a situation in which Google is hoping for some search engine revenue by riding along on the iPhone. The situation has changed to such an extent that Google hopes to replace the iPhone star in the smartphone firmament. Corporations are not about friendship; they are about money. Once Google started a serious run at an Apple product, in this case the iPhone, any illusion of friendship quickly evaporated and the brass knuckles came out.
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January 22nd, 2010
I would say it absolutely signals the end of the relationship. Combine that with Apple buying mapping technologies and Google’s entry in the handset market and there’s not much left for Apple and Google to talk about.
I further explained this on http://www.vigthegeek.com
January 23rd, 2010
Well ever since google came up with android, the google and iPhone relation has not been going well.
January 24th, 2010
Apple forming a stronger alliance with MS is like jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire. Apple really needs to develop more OSX and Mac market, which it won’t be able to do with strong links to MS and Windows products. Anyway, even is iPhone OS is changed to Bing, I won’t use Bing – no ifs, buts or maybes! There will always be a Google application and I chose to use it.