It might not be long before you fire up your iPhone's copy of Safari, tap the search window and run yourself a search on... Bing?

If a recent report from BusinessWeek is correct, Apple and Microsoft are in talks on a new partnership which would replace the iPhone's current Google search bar with a Bing search in Safari.

While it's possible that this is the result of Apple being impressed by Bing (and if such a deal goes down I'm sure that will be Apple's standard explanation) it's just as likely that Apple is in fact pretty miffed with Google. It's hard to imagine a company being disliked enough by Apple to make Microsoft a favorable alternative. Perhaps Steve Jobs was a lot more upset about Eric Schmidt and the rest of the company's actions with Android than we were led to believe.

On another note, if Apple does in fact turn its back on Google and go to Bing, will the faithful follow suit? For so many years Microsoft was seen as the enemy, and the upstart Google was viewed by Mac users as a close ally. How long would it take for longtime Mac users to come around to the company's new stance?

21 Jan 2010