This Friday a report surfaced that Apple would be dropping Yahoo as it’s middleman in the iOS 8 Weather App.
Apple is going direct to The Weather Channel in providing a weather solution for the new operating system.
Yahoo has been trying diligently to increase their presence in Apple’s operating system, according to CEO Marissa Mayer. Yahoo had been a middleman in the equation for a long time and now Apple decided to just go direct with the source instead of maintaining the middleman relationship.
Yahoo was hoping to also make it’s search engine the primary search engine in iOS, but it no longer looks like their bond is that tight and that deal will likely not go through either.
The company has been trying to make its search algorithm more competitive with the likes of Google. It doesn’t seem that they will succeed, especially not in time for the new iOS release.
One problem that Yahoo faces is that a lot of it’s technology was based on relationships with other middlemen providers, such as Yelp, IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. They were providing services that relied heavily on those other services, so it wouldn’t necessarily make sense for Apple to keep working with this middleman relationship instead of just going direct to those sources themselves.
The most likely partner to take over Search in the iOS is long time Apple nemesis Microsoft. A new version of Mac OS X puts Bing at the center of the Apple desktop, which is also an interesting move for the company, who seems to be shifting away from Google services. Yahoo has coincidentally also ended its relationship with Microsoft focus on growing their own technology so they have a competitive edge in the marketplace.