Back in February, there was some speculation about Microsoft having a very good chance at landing a deal with Apple to become its default search engine for the iPhone. Apple was reportedly receiving about $100 million a year in search revenue from Google with the deal it previously had inked with them. As of yesterday CEO Eric Schmidt told Charlie Rose that their search contract had been “recently extended“, but didn’t get into any particulars:
CR: You no longer serve on the Apple board. It is said Steve Jobs got very upset with you, his friend.
I didn’t go into the search business, he said.
Why are you going into the phone business?
ES: Apple is a company we both partner and compete with.
We do a search deal with them, recently extended, and we’re doing all sorts of things in maps and things like that.
So the sum of all this is that two large corporations, both of which are important, both of which I care a lot about, will [remain] pretty close.
But Android was around earlier than iPhone.
This news brings brings to an end any speculation of Bing becoming iOS’ default search engine and also, for the time being, quells rumors that Apple might be developing their own search engine. Though he didn’t go into any detail about the deal, he said just what needed to be said to quiet the storm of rumors.
