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Bing To Become Default iPhone Search?

Posted by samzenpus on from the strange-bedfellows dept.

snydeq writes "BusinessWeek reports ongoing talks between Apple and Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine for the iPhone. The discussions reflect an accelerating rivalry between Apple and Google, one that some believe will be the most important rivalry in tech in the years to come. 'Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy,' says one person familiar with Apple's thinking. 'Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle.'"

24 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Big Battle by sopssa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Even more than just Apple vs Google fight, this is serious battle between Microsoft and Google. MS has actually made their search engine better than Google (the different categories and combining them together shows this, and it's greatly improved over Live search).

    Immediately when Bing was released Google tried to answer back with its sidebar options. But it never really got where Bing is. And now Bing keeps gaining marketshare faster than ever before. It is actually a good product, and actually something MS has left alone from their other marketing efforts (for example, they use flash instead of silverlight, because flash is installed on so many machines, and do not try to promote silverlight on cost of their search engine).

    I hate microsofts business practices as much as the next guy on slashdot, but Bing is something they're actually done really good. Yesterdays news about Bing deleting user data in 6 months just shows that bitter battle with Google is getting even better and better. Bing keeps gaining market share every month, faster and faster. Google pulls out from China market. Google CEO says privacy doesn't matter. This is something to watch while drinking cola and making some popcorns - two giants fighting to death.

    This shows competition is good. It surely leads to innovations.

    1. Re:Big Battle by contrapunctus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I know what you mean.
      I hate this one person who works for subway (just a nasty personality). The thought of her preparing my food makes me ill.
      I once went in and saw that she was working and walked right out.
      That's how I feel about bing. (she would be microsoft)

    2. Re:Big Battle by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      MS has actually made their search engine better than Google (the different categories and combining them together shows this, and it's greatly improved over Live search).

      Citation needed. Live search was crap, being better than crap doesn't make something great. And I've compared the search results, 80% of the time I prefer Google's results (there was this site that compared Bing/Google/Yahoo and had you pick your favorite and then told you what it was, don't know the URL at the time)

      And now Bing keeps gaining marketshare faster than ever before.

      And I would imagine that most of that growth is caused by people using the default IE search option which uses Bing.

      It is actually a good product,

      Again, Citation needed. Is there really anything that Bing does better than Google for the general user?

      and actually something MS has left alone from their other marketing efforts (for example, they use flash instead of silverlight, because flash is installed on so many machines, and do not try to promote silverlight on cost of their search engine).

      Isn't that how -all- Microsoft's products start? First as nice, good projects with open standards, etc. Then they release that one program that breaks the standard and suddenly that becomes the new standard and then close it off to non-MS products.

      Google pulls out from China market.

      Um, not exactly sure what you meant by this statement, but assuming its anti-Google, I don't really see your point. Basically Google said that they are sick of being the pawns of the Chinese government which is a -good thing-, I really don't think Microsoft would have the guts to say that.

      This shows competition is good. It surely leads to innovations.

      Competition is good, but corrupt competition is not. Both Microsoft and Google use software patents to discourage competition, both don't care about privacy, and both are willing to be tossed along and won't fight for their user's rights.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:Big Battle by DerPflanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the thought of using bing makes me cringe

      What happened to judging products on their merits? Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe? And on a related note, what should Microsoft do to regain your respect?

      On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?

      --
      -- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
    4. Re:Big Battle by rtfa-troll · · Score: 1, Interesting

      What should Microsoft do to regain your respect?

      Make good the things they have stolen. Show contrition and remorse.

      Give back the Browser market to Mozilla by cancelling all future development of IE and giving a 2 year end of life notice (Netscape is no more; still they should pay compensation to the shareholders).

      Give back the operating system market; announce that Windows will be GPLed, compensate the owners of DRDos OS2. Pay back money to all consumers who would have bought

      Cancel all future development of the .doc/.docx "standard"; agree to only stick to registered features of ODF. Compensate the shareholders of Wordperfect.

      Donate 50% future profits to a charity to pay for victims of computer viruses. Donate a further 25% of future profits to pay for the education of children who were denied access to OLPC laptops by their actions. Remaining 25% left for victims I haven't thought of right now.

      I'm sure there's quite a bit more, but that's a beginning.

      --
      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
    5. Re:Big Battle by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes...
      Microsoft have done a huge amount of damage to their customers and the industry as a whole...

      They have stifled innovation for years (for an example see IE6 - allowed to totally stagnate once it had a dominant marketshare, only updated again once its share was threatened several years later).
      They have locked thousands of individuals and businesses into their products, removing those peoples freedom to choose the best product for the job. Even worse is that the lockin extends to those who aren't their customers, it's common to send proprietary microsoft format files around and people are expected to open them.

      In many markets we are unable to judge products in their merits precisely because of microsoft. A competing product may be cheaper (or free), do everything you need better, but lacks compatibility with some proprietary microsoft technology therefore ruling it out.

      To regain any level of respect, they need to undo all of the underhanded anti-consumer actions they have taken, and start competing purely based on the merits of their products in all the markets they operate in.

      As it stands, although they may be trying to compete on merit right now, history has shown that once they gain sufficient market share they revert to their usual underhanded practices of locking people in and allowing the product to stagnate and/or using one product to forcibly push another. Don't forget all the "embrace, extend, extinguish" stuff from a few years back...

      To give an example, the vast majority of MS products are tied to windows (forcibly pushing)..
      By contrast, google simply promote their products, if you use their sites from some non-chrome browsers you will see advertisements for chrome, but the sites will not refuse to work in other browsers and aren't tied to chrome-os etc... This is promotion as opposed to forcibly pushing.

      So that's what MS can do, give us the ability to judge all their products on merit and we will be more likely to judge them all that way.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  2. Marketshare gains misleading... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like competition as much as the next guy.

    However, I am really suspicious of Bing's marketshare numbers. Has no-one else noticed that many of those demonic hoverover underline word links pull up Bing now? How much of the increase is because people lingered a little too long over a word on a web page?

    Furthermore, anything with a small marketshare can easily post impressive percentage gains quickly...

    Bing's results are as you say pretty decent, however I really don't like the super-heavy home page with the ginormous image. It's cool once but I just can't have that for a page I pull up so often... even if cached, the image is just too annoying over time. Goolge has the simplicity aspect right.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by sopssa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I never see either Bing's or Google's homepage. I just search using my browsers search bar. Actually I was surprised to see Google's fade-in homepage manually after friend told about it.

    2. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by LoverOfJoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Another factor could be Club Bing. They allow you to earn prizes by playing their games. The games? They are games that do searches on bing.com. So for instance, every word you enter into a crossword puzzle gets a search on bing. If you click for a clue, it does another search. One game easily makes 45 searches or more even if you don't use any hints. Because of the prizes, people are always finding ways to set up bots on multiple accounts to try to get more and more points. Even if Microsoft catches them and invalidates their points, I imagine the searches done still count toward how often Bing is used. It doesn't matter that no one bothers to look at the search results (except briefly if they need a clue).

    3. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I like competition as much as the next guy.

      Hi, I'm the next guy.

      Competition is generally good, but in this business there's not enough of it to make it all that great.

      Microsoft sucks. Security has always been a problem, but the thing about them that bugs me the most is that I can't but a nice (17") laptop without also buying a license for an OS I'm not even going to use.

      Apple sucks. I could go on and on about how much they suck, but I'll be brief. The worst thing about them is that they get away with more crap than Microsoft, thanks to their slick marketing campaign.

      Google sucks. Well, sort of. Their search engine is great, and they seem to have a lot of offerings, but thanks to the 'Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer', I've always been a little suspicious of any of their software products.

    4. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well to add my exp I have just tried it using Firefox on both WinXP and Windows 7 HP x64, and both seem to be working fine. The only search where I noted the supposed behavior was when I did some Google shopping for Zoom Bass Pedals (my old one is just about had it and I love their fat compression) and that is to be expected since it IS Google shopping.

      I tried the same shopping search on Yahoo and found the same redirect behavior. So maybe the person was shopping via Google? Because I just couldn't get the redirect behavior on standard results from either search engine.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by denmarkw00t · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I started noticing this as I link my friends to things quite often, and its annoying. So, what do you do? Double-click the plain-text URL under the result, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+P - ta da! And if I'm not sharing links, I'm using Google to go to Wikipedia or look up code references. I certainly don't go to or xxxxxxxx.xxx from Google, I know those URLs by heart.

      As much as I don't care for their data mining business, I don't care who knows that I'm fervently trying to find that Gizmodo article I read five days ago.

    6. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by michaelhood · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you're logged in and have web history disabled, you should never see this sort of behavior.. drove me nuts until I figured that out. If you're logged out I'm not sure what the situation is, I'm always logged in for gmail.

  3. Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Apple is also working on ways to manage ad placement on its mobile devices"

    What the hell is that line about. Apple better not be spamming the fuck out fo me when i'm paying for their fucking devices and software AND cell service.

    FUCK YOU APPLE.. Dont even try it.

    1. Re:Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? by DirtyCanuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The million dollar question is would you still object if you had a reduced bill?

      Discounting phone bills in exchange for AD space is a quick way to have everybody consider it.

      They can make those losses back with ad revenue and data mining ;)

    2. Re:Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Cool your jets, seriously. They are most likely talking about advertising inside of free applications from the iTunes store. Don't like it? don't use the app, or spend $2 or $3 for the "full" (non-ad-supported) version. There was even talk about Apple competing with Google to purchase "Admob" at one point, a company that does a very significant portion of advertising for the free games on the itunes store.

      http://precursorblog.com/content/whyhow-did-google-outbid-apple-admob-schmidt-google-apple-not-primary-competitors

  4. Re:It's not a search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Steve once said, after Apple took $150M USD from M$ a few years ago, that it was not necessary for Microsoft to fail for Apple to succeed.

    He may hate M$, but he's a smart businessman, and Apple and M$ have worked together more than you'd think over the years.

    I hope the rumor is true, I'm not a fan of Google, or M$, but I'm tired of being mined for data, and right now M$ has a better privacy message.

    Even better would be an opt in on all data mining, but we all know there are too many well funded lobbyists flying first class from Silicon Valley/Redmond to ever let that happen.

  5. Re:Will you finally own up to Apple's Evil? by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The thing I love about this story, in the way that I love to see a brawl break out in the stands, is that while Microsoft aficionados - or even tolerators - are a distinct minority in Slashdot, Apple fans and Google fans are about equal in representation here. So this is a perfect wedge story. (Grabs popcorn.)

    For myself, I use Google Products and Microsoft Office on Mac OS X 10.6 on my MacBook Pro, running Windows 7 in Parallels and bootcamping to play games. I like open source stuff when I can use, too (scientific and data viz/analysis software especially - yay, R.) So, I don't have a dog in this fight. Or, I have 3 dogs. That all smell. I do like the Google dog just a little better than the others, though.

  6. Re:Microsoft a pawn? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    MS is hardly anyones fool. what is far more likely is that MS will play the 2 off against each other. Apple's piss weak market share makes them less of a threat, so initally siding wiht them is logical. Next i bet you'll see MS leverage this into a windows mobile version of the iphone. mark my words children....

    Wha'? I know people don't read the articles here - but you should at least consider reading the summary. We're talking about the iPhone and mobile devices and search - not personal computers. Apple's marketshare is pretty darn good (to say the least). As far as Windows Mobile goes... I know some guys that work in that group, and they don't currently expect it to even exist in another year or two. It is not Microsoft's golden child by any stretch of the imagination.

    Seriously - Microsoft hasn't managed to leverage their Windows near-monopoly into a dominant position in any of these spaces. I'm glad you're happy with your Zune, but... wow. Seriously.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  7. Re:It's not a search engine by westlake · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm pretty positive that Steve hates Microsoft, what it stands for, and the way it does its business. Pretty much like many Linux folks do

    Apple and Microsoft have had a mutually profitable - symbiotic - relationship for thirty years.

    Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle.

    Microsoft solid middle class value.

    Both have a very clear notion of how to profitably leverage the other's platform. Windows gets iTunes. The Mac gets MS Office.

    Hate makes good theater - but rarely good business - and the geek needs to remember when he is watching a show.

  8. Re:It's not a search engine by derGoldstein · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Before the Android/Schmidt/NexusOne business, Jobs would probably hate having an MS logo anywhere on the iPhone far more than losing some cash to Google. Now though, it's like you said -- they're seriously being aggressive about pretty much everything that Apple was aiming for from the moment they released the iPhone. Things like Chrome OS seem like vaporware now, but if some new netbook/tablet form factor takes off, Google is ready with their code. Their different "vectors of attack" include both MS *and* Apple, they're not blind to the usability angle that Apple has, and they're trying to "steal as much thunder" as they can in any area in which (they think) they can compete.

    --
    Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  9. Past companies who partnered with Microsoft by Solandri · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Some past companies who partnered with Microsoft (or tried to):

    IBM
    Spyglass
    Stac Electronics
    Sun
    Sendo
    OpenDocument

    Good luck, Apple!

  10. Re:Total world domination! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    No matter how iPhone will start their next step, as one of crazy Nintendo fans, this is really attracting to me!

    http://www.jojam.tw/blog/post/26323134

    Don't worry about the mandarin, just see the pics and u'll know their idea. Fantastic!!
    Honestly, if Nintendo publish this Nintenphone, iphone / android will face a serious threat.
    And, embed Bing or Google as the primary search enginge seems not an important issue for Nintenphone users.

  11. Re:not even in the same league / market by radish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sorry - are you high? You claim that iPhone has "1%" of the smart phone market, and that Android has more? Utter crap. The most recent data I could find from the end of last year gives Apple 18%, behind Symbian and RIM. Android is showing a whopping 3.5%. Now I'm sure Android did much better in Q4 and will continue to rise, but I would bet my house they won't even reach iPhone by the end of 2010, never mind pass them.

    --

    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"