Old Enemies Now Friends

Everything is quite relative in our life. Einstein has proved it quite well. And old enemies quite easily become best friends. The only condition is to find some common places to share, such as aversion to Google.

Apple is trying to decrease its dependence over Google Search, which seems to be quite a wise move taking into consideration the companies relations. Now Jobs’ company is said to be working with Microsoft to broaden the iPhone's search and related web services using Microsoft’s search engine Bing. The company doesn’t imply that it is going to entirely change Google for Bing but the expansion of search options will benefit the end-users in the long run. Though there are some rumors that Google Search will be replaced in iPhone OS 4, Apple is not ready to take such drastic moves so it won’t remove support for Google search.

Bing is not the first search engine available for the iPhone. Apple already provides Yahoo for web searches in Safari, though that option is not obvious and requires system settings adjustments. Microsoft seems to be ready to deliver its search engine into the iPhone, provided the search option is visible and obvious.

The search engine is not the only thing Apple wants to differentiate from Google. The company is rumored to negotiate with Microsoft about a possibility to get its mapping services integrated into the iPhone. So far there has only been created a number of apps that make use of Microsoft's mapping services but the majority of iPhone developerskeep to Google apps as well as Apple itself hardwiring original Maps app on the iPhone and iPad to Google’s mapping services.

It seems that the war between the two platforms and some borderline encounters between the companies’ allies can be replaced by full scale escalation of the war actions, and the first to suffer will be consumers and iPhone developers.