A Possible Friendship Between Apple and Microsoft

Back in 2007, before the iPhone’s official release, Steve Ballmer hurried to repel the success this kind of device would have on the market. He had declared himself reluctant, although, nowadays, he finds himself in the opposite position.

Furthermore, in the near future, the perfect rivals, Microsoft and Apple, are thought to cease fire and come up with a collaboration solution. Bing, the search engine launched by Microsoft, might be the peace ambassador. Apple, apparently, is settling the details for Bing to become the default search engine for the iPhone. This kind of rumors has spread since January, this year.

Bing is the current web search engine from Microsoft. It was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009 at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego. It launched online on June 3, 2009, with a safe preview version released on June 1, 2009. Changes include the listing of search suggestions as queries are entered and a list of related searches (called “Explorer pane”) based on semantic technology from Powerset, another Microsoft acquisition.

As of January 2010, Bing has been considered the third largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 3.16%, after its main competitor, Google, at 85.35%, and Yahoo, at 6.15%, according to Net Applications. On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.

AppleInsider cites Brier Dudley, columnist for The Seattle Times, as saying, “Apple is coming off a tough divorce from its young search partner, which is now selling its own touch-screen smartphone and has floated concept designs of an iPad-like tablet device.” “So perhaps it's natural Apple is reaching out to an estranged friend from the early days.” The main idea suggested by Dudley is that the relations between Microsoft and Apple are warming up.

Even if this in not an official remark from the Microsoft CEO, Dudley believes that the Apple-Microsoft alignment is about to happen. The settlement between the two technology giants is regarded as an alliance against Google, which is considered to be a real threat to both parties.