Marissa Mayer Wants Yahoo To Be Safari’s Default Search Engine

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marissa_new4

Having seen its shares jump recently, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has another plan she hopes will continue her company’s turnaround: convincing Apple to adopt Yahoo as the default search engine for Safari on iOS.

Yahoo has reportedly been working on two secret projects designed to build “a viable mobile search engine and monetization platform to convince Apple to make Yahoo the default search engine on its Safari browser on the iPhone and iPad,” according to a new report from Re/code.

Codenamed “Fast Break” and “Curveball,” the projects will be the subject of an upcoming presentation Mayer will make to Apple at some point in the near future — with the aim of getting the company to ditch Google as its search partner.

“This is the aim of the whole effort here, to grab the pole position in iOS search,” a person “working on the effort” was quoted as saying. “It will take more than pretty pictures, though, to convince Apple to give up Google, given its focus on consumer experience being top-notch. But Marissa wants it very badly.”

Mayer has reportedly “buttonholed a few Apple executives on the topic,” including Jony Ive — although an ongoing deal with Microsoft might hinder progress.

Mayer is reportedly looking to get out of its 10-year search partnership with Microsoft, while Apple’s choice to ditch Google Maps in iOS might also mean that the company could be open to the idea of integrating Yahoo into its mobile operating system.

Of course, this all depends on the quality of what Yahoo is offering — and while there’s currently a lot of big talk about revolutionizing search, right now all of that is firmly future tense.

Because as of this writing embracing Yahoo seems like the kind of “forward step” that would only be matched by putting flame gifs, a GeoCities banner, and a background midi track on Apple’s home page.

Source: Re/code

 

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