New York — Although Steve Ballmer did not, as some bizarre rumors asserted he would, make an appearance at WWDC 2010 today, but among the flurry of news from Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote speech did mentioned something important concerning Microsoft’s search engine. Jobs announced that Bing will now officially become a search option on the iPhone users is certainly a glad tidings for Microsoft.
Two of Apple’s innovations announced by Jobs during this keynote address was the star of the show, naturally, was the new iAds, a system Apple has designed and will soon release it globally that allows developers to sell interactive advertising space on their iPhone, iPod touch and iPad applications, and Bing’s adoption into the iPhone search club was mentioned in passing.
Still the news is not bears such a significant that rumors earlier this year had predicted, nevertheless, the fact that Bing is joining Yahoo as a Google alternative was concealed in Job’s Monday keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, does bestow credibility to Microsoft’s ambitious–if seldom used–Web query tool.
“Microsoft has done a pretty excellent job with Bing and with HTML5,” Jobs said. Apple mobile devices will now carry three third party search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing.
“Apple today declared that Bing will be accommodated as one of the search engine choices within Safari on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and within the Safari browser on the Mac and PC,” Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post, expected to be posted later on Monday.
In addition to accepted as a third search alternative for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, Bing will also be an option in the Safari browser on Macs and Windows PCs, according to published reports.
“Surely, we are excited that Bing will be included as an option in Safari because it will make it easier for you to search and get the benefits of Bing.” Mehdi said it is nonetheless a big step for the Microsoft search engine.
This could represent a remarkable win for Microsoft in a couple of ways. It and Apple have not always been on friendly terms, of course, and Apple and Google used to be extremely close, so the fact that Apple has started to accommodate Bing might mean tensions are thawing.
His reference to HTML5 is noteworthy given his forthright criticism of Adobe’s Flash widely used by web designers, especially online advertising.
Flash, he reiterated, hogged battery life, was unreliable, unstable on the Macintosh operating system (used in various flavors on all Apple devices and computers) and was a technology that had had its time.
Flash does not run natively on any Apple mobile device in a family of more than 100 million devices in the market – iPhones, iPod touches and iPads. “No-one else comes even close to that,” Jobs said.
Mehdi stated that Microsoft has been functioning with Apple “since the last couple of months” to deliver Bing for Safari, including some HTML5 work for the iPhone version.
“In addition, we are continuing to ameliorate our existing Bing mobile application for iPhone which makes it easy to search, map, and find commerce and movie times,” Mehdi said. “We will have a new release with even more great features very soon. For those of you that have not already tried it, you can find it in the App Store today.”
Regardless of Microsoft’s best efforts, including a pricey marketing campaign, to convince people to switch to Bing, Google commands the lucrative online search market on both conventional PCs and mobile devices.
Now the challenge for Microsoft’s Bing team is how to sway iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users to switch from Google. After all, why should people defect? Google continues to innovate, and it certainly has the resources and ambition to match Bing in a features war.
Nevertheless, today’s Bing-on-the-iPhone announcement indicates that Microsoft’s chances in the mobile search game have improved–if only a bit.