Tech War III, Apple vs. Google

[AnthonyCea]

Apple and Google are going to fight a major market share war in the mobile software application business long term, with Apple going so far as to make Bing the default search engine on iPhone.

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The latest skirmish: BusinessWeek reported Wednesday that Apple was in talks with Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone’s Safari Web browser. The article said the two companies had been negotiating for weeks over a possible partnership on the iPhone.

Apple and Google weren’t always “frenemies.” The companies seemed to band together against any number of competitors, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile included, in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced with numerous Google applications tightly integrated, including Gmail, the Google search engine and Google Maps.

But the friendship turned sour last year during a conflict over the Google Voice application and Apple’s refusal to allow the software into the iTunes App Store.

The Google Voice quarrel was also extremely confusing: Google said it was Apple’s fault, and Apple pointed the finger in the other direction. Eventually, the Federal Communications Commission stepped in and began investigating the dispute. Eventually, Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, resigned from Apple’s board of directors.

To date, Google Voice still doesn’t exist for the iPhone, although Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering, said in an interview at the Crunchies last year, “Google Voice will come to the iPhone soon — one way or the other.”

As Google and Apple enter new realms, the two companies are competing in more arenas than we can count. In mobile hardware and software, Apple has the iPhone, and Google has the Nexus One and its Android software. In cloud computing, Apple has MobileMe, and Google has its suite of Web applications, including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar. As Google’s YouTube unit begins renting movies through its Web site, it will start competing with the highly successful iTunes store. Then there’s Picasa and iPhoto.