iPhones may have Bing as default search engine
Thursday, 21 January 2010, 15:05 IST   |    3 Comments
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iPhones may have Bing as default search engine
Bangalore: In a move that could further intensify the battle between Apple and Google, Apple reportedly plans to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone's Safari web browser. Recently, Google's Voice iPhone application was barred entry into the iTunes App Store. However, since Google is currently the default search engine for iPhone, any change may result in customers facing inconvenience, reports Business Week. The iPhones also come with default applications for Google services such as YouTube and Google Maps. On the other hand, Microsoft cannot compete with YouTube because it recently shut down its Soapbox video site. With regard to maps, recently Microsoft launched improvements to Bing Maps including Streetside, which is similar to Google Street View and other new features. This move may have some minor financial implications on Google. AdMob, a mobile advertising network that Google recently offered to buy for $750 million in stock, says that the iPhone and iPod Touch are the two leading devices for U.S.-based mobile search queries. So unless iPhone and iPod Touch users manually switch their browser's default search engine back to Google, the search giant will probably lose some ground in mobile searches. If the deal goes through, then iPhone and iPod Touch users will actually have greater choice when it comes to in-browser search engines. Right now, Safari offers only Google and Yahoo on the iPhone.

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