Apple, Google Kiss And Make Up – And Bing’s NOT Getting Into Bed With iPhone

In a recent interview with BusinessWeek, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that his company had extended their agreement with Apple to be the featured search engine on iOS devices.

According to Schmidt, “We
do a search deal with [Apple], 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.”

Apple and Google have not always seen eye to eye.  Earlier this year, following the debut of Google’s Nexus One Android phone, Steve Jobs blasted the search engine colossus for their move into the smartphone field: “We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone
business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let
them.”  (Turns out they didn’t have to; thanks to a web-direct-sale business plan and a variety of reception issues, the Nexus One is now deader than Dillinger…)

Google, meanwhile, are still smarting from Apple pulling the Google Voice mobile app from iTunes (reportedly for duplicating existing iPhone functionality), then sitting on its resubmission application ever since.  Google would ultimately recommend that iPhone users resort to their GV web app implementation.

When Schmidt left Apple’s board of directors last year, rumors began flying that the House of Jobs would replace Google with Microsoft’s Bing as the iPhone’s default search engine.  Now it appears that Bing (along with Yahoo) will continue to be selectable search-engine options, but Google retains its iPhone “pole position.”