Apple’s current deal with Google is set to expire in early 2015 which means Apple’s Safari browser for both iOS and Mac could drop Google as its default search provider and have a new default search partner by next year, according to a report from The Information.
Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo Search are most likely replacement candidates since they have already spoken with Apple’s Eddy Cue about replacing Google. It was said that Cue’s decision is “likely to be based on the quality of the product as much as the potential money made from search ads.”
It’ll be no surprise to me if Apple eventually gets to drop Google as its search provider. Let me refresh your memory; Apple has tried separating themselves from Google for quite a while now… Remember when they took off Google map which was previously shipped with their iDevices, or when they no longer made YouTube ship as part of iOS, and also when they recently made Bing the default search provider for Siri?
Yeah, these little moves just made me realize Apple won’t even think twice about letting Google go, and these are changes consumers quickly adjusted to.
Bing has already made moves towards Apple since it’s the search provider used by Siri and Spotlight Search, without any option to choose Google instead.
Mozilla also dropped Google in favor of Yahoo, at least for the next five years… and Yahoo is undoubtedly hoping it can convince Apple to make the same switch but honestly, it’ll be hard to see Apple convince millions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac owners that Bing or Yahoo is a better search choice than Google.
Yes I have my reasons for saying that, and here are the facts;
• Since Apple can’t build a search engine to compete with Google, I see no way they’ll try to make Users switch to a different search engine.
• Even if Google search isn’t the native search engine on iDevices, nothing is going to stop users from changing that setting, well except Apple takes Google search engine out of iOS, which isn’t possible.
• Partnering and Re-branding another search engine could be dangerous because users want Google’s results or maybe that’s just me?
Let’s wait till 2015 to know Apple’s decision on which provider it’ll make use of but will the change cause a door to slam at Google’s face? I doubt that.
