“Verizon Communications Inc has chosen Microsoft Corp to provide Internet search services for cell phones, in what is seen as a blow to rivals Google Inc and Yahoo Inc,” Ritsuko Ando and Sinead Carew report for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: Alternate headline: Microsoft pays Verizon more than would Google or Yahoo
Ando and Carew continue, “‘Microsoft really needed to win that,’ Nielsen’s head of telecom research, Roger Entner, said about the Verizon deal. ‘It gives them a good fighting chance. Otherwise they would have been almost insurmountably behind Google’ in mobile search.”
“However, the deal was not likely to change how many Verizon Wireless customers use their phones to surf the Web, Jackson said,” Ando and Carew report.
MacDailyNews Take: Because Verizon blew it and lost Apple’s iPhone. That, coupled with this idiotic choice, shows that there’s just not a very bright crew over there making decisions at Verizon.
Q: “Would you like to (1) have the revolutionary iPhone or (2) parade through an unending stream of substandard knockoffs that your marketing department will have to try to foist off on ignorant customers?
Verizon: We’ll take #2, please (our customers aren’t that bright; they’ll never know the difference) and a punch in the face for good luck.
Q: “Would you like to (1) have the world’s dominant search leader, Google, or (2) the world’s #2, Yahoo!, or (3) the one nobody uses along with the constant phone calls from the goofy, sweaty, chair-hurling, dancing, screaming, cursing monkey boy?
Verizon: Obviously, we’ll have to go with #3 and a kick to the groin while you’re at it.
Q: “Would you like for your company to (1) be associated with the clear leaders and innovators in both mobile devices and mobile search or (2) be linked inextricably to a bunch of derivative knockoff device makers and a third-rate search product from a company renowned for bloated software, user frustration, hardware failures, and wholesale idea theft?
Verizon: Gee, that’s a hard one. Uh, #2?
Ando’s and Carew’s full article is here.
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