Apple To Form iPhone Search Alliance With Microsoft To Topple Google?

Business Week has reported that Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are in talks to replace Google search engine with Microsoft’s Bing search engine as the default web browser on Apple’s iPhone smartphone.

Bloomberg owned Business Week, claimed that according to "two people familiar with the matter", the negotiations between Apple and Microsoft has been going on for weeks.  

Several industry experts believe, now that Google has come out with its own smartphone offering, the search engine giant has emerged a direct threat to the iPod maker as the Google Nexus One is designed to compete with the iPhone smartphone, Apple’s blockbuster smartphone. 

If the search engine deal goes through, then Google is predicted to suffer a significant setback in its mobile search market share as a significant number of people access Google via the iPhone. According to Nielson and Co, 86 percent of mobile search users use Google as their preferred search engine while only 10 percent use Bing. 

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The deal will also prove instrumental in boosting the popularity of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which after a $100 million ad campaign has managed to garner a desktop search market share of 10.7 percent in December last year.