Maybe I'm just a little more allergic to politics than usual lately, but the continuing hostilities between Apple and Google set off my pettiness alarm when I saw the ArsTechnica headline Apple may dump Google for Bing.
Not "petty" for the usual tit-for-tat rationales that you'd expect, what with Android and ChromeOS and all. But in terms of screwing the customer merely to spite a rival who's had the audacity to try and build a better (or at least different) mousetrap. True, it's capitalism, and Apple can build its own iSearch website or application for all I care. That's not the point. Here's what I'm talking about:
Step 1: Try searching a random phrase--I used "Renaissance costume"--in Google (or, preferably, its custom search Blackle).
Step 2: Keep that browser window open, and fire up another one. Now search the same term in Bing.
Step 3: Now imagine the two of them in a smallish iPhone or iPod Touch window. Which one would you want to use?
Yeah. Scale-wise, in Blackle, search results are the two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions between the sesame-seed-buns of ads. But in Bling--I mean, Bing--they're more like the vanilla-flavored grease filling of an Oreo Double-stuff. Now, If you tip the iPhone on its side they might be two inches wide instead of one. Maybe. Because Microsoft's too busy pimping your eyeballs and squandering your AT&T data plan to obsess about piffling details like...oh, I don't know...actually giving you what you were searching for?!
Personally, I think Bing (all by itself) is a huge step backward. Specifically, back to the late 90s, when search engines were starting to morph into (gack!) portals--basically moving into your internet, sleeping on your couch and helping themselves to all the leftovers in your 'fridge. And for Apple, whose brand equity revolves around giving its users a smug sense of "experience"--of the VIP treatment from an operating system--Bing is most definitely a step backward. Maybe even two.
And Apple should know better. But they don't, so if Google is serious about muscling into the gadget and OS space, the best thing that could happen to them might well be Apple upping the ante even further and shutting out the URL entirely, as they've shut out various Google-authored iPhone applications.
C'mon Apple: You're supposed to be the aristocrat of computers and smart-phones. Stop acting like reality TV white trash.
