A new report suggests that Apple could include more Yahoo features in iOS
Yahoo and Apple have been partnered up for a while now due to their common interest of going up against Google. Up to this point, Apple has included multiple Yahoo services in iOS such as weather, sports scores, stock information, and Web search in Safari. According to the Wall Street Journal, the two companies are now in talks to bring even more Yahoo features to iOS.
The report suggests that Apple could include Yahoo Sports and News within iOS. Apple has had a hard time pulling away from Google since it still remains the default search engine in iOS and was the default Maps provider up until iOS 6 (and we all know how well that switch went.)
By incorporating more content from Yahoo, Apple can potentially pull away from Google even further. Of course, Yahoo would also benefit from any additional exposure via iOS considering how much their user base has dwindled during the past couple of years.
Yahoo does have strong ties to Microsoft which will make any deal with Apple slightly more difficult. Microsoft Bing has powered Yahoo’s search engine since they struck a deal in 2010 just two years after Microsoft tried to completely buyout Yahoo.
The new services will either be pre-loaded onto iOS or will be pushed to devices through Siri. Multiple reports are suggesting that Yahoo wants to become the default search engine in iOS, but I do see a few issues with this.
- As I mentioned before, Yahoo’s deals with Microsoft will make any agreement with Apple slightly harder to attain.
- Apple could end up charging anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion to make Yahoo the default search engine.
- Yahoo is far from being as good of a search engine as Google, therefore users will likely have some issues with that sort of change.
Any talks that are happening are in the earliest stages at best, so no big deal is going to be struck anytime soon, but it is something worth following for sure.