Apple has left no stone unturned to display its fading interest in Google integration for its products. It forced the first nail in the wall with its voice assistant Siri, which relied on services like Wolfram Alpha and Yelp for a short period of time before moving back to Google. In the second move, Apple removed YouTube and Google Maps from iOS in turn for its in-house navigation app, and replaced Google with Bing search for Siri. Now, the latest scoop suggests that Apple might be planning to abandon Google Search from its Safari web browser.
According to a report from The Information, the latest deal to use Google as the default search engine in Safari will expire in 2015. Sighting the possibility, Microsoft and Yahoo have been trying to woo Apple to acquire the default search engine's spot in Safari. Apparently, Yahoo and Microsoft have delivered their pitch to Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue.
Going by the history, it looks like Microsoft might have an upper hand in this deal, as it has already struck deals with Apple to get Bing to be the search engine for Siri as well as Spotlight. If Apple ditches Google Search for Bing, it would be the second hard blow for Google as Firefox also recently decided jump the ship and abandon Google search as the default search engine in its browser.