Microsoft used an image of an ambling snow leopard licking its chops for the backdrop to its Live Search homepage on Thursday, prompting a few in the business and technology press to speculate why.
Among them, Ina Fried at c|net is likely furthest from the mark, with her suggestion Microsoft could have been showing a player’s tell that Live Search will be the default search engine in Safari’s tool bar when the next version of OS X launches.
Fried suggests that because Microsoft has money to spend and because it might be willing to do so in order to get the market share boost for Live Search that such a deal would bring, well, she admits the idea is a “crazy” one, but she put it out there any way.
Why it won’t happen: Apple doesn’t need the money and has almost never made it a practice to co-brand its products with services that suck.
