Ballmer at Keynote? One Possible Explanation

image: Crunchgear.com(It was fun while it lasted: Via Twitter, Microsoft says Ballmer will not be on stage at WWDC. Oh well, enjoy the speculation regradless:)

A rather strange rumor is making the rounds today. According to Global Equities Research, and reported by Boy Genius Report, Steve Ballmer will be in attendance at Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote. They go so far as to say seven minutes have been blocked out for Ballmer to make an on-stage appearance. While Gizmodo is guessing  this is to promote the iPhone app development abilities of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, we're thinking there's something else going on here.

Could this be the rumored swap of bing for google as the default search engine on the iPhone? Heck maybe on the Mac itself. A partnership could even extend to maps for mobile devices.

Or let's take a stroll over to the world of crazy speculation: With J. Allard and Robbie Bach both leaving Microsoft, perhaps their decisions were partially influenced by some sort of impending gaming announcement between Apple and Microsoft. We throw that crazy one out there, just because in comparison the bing prediction looks pretty plausible.

Google Counters Bing Ads on YouTube

Thanksgiving is over, but I'll tell you what I'm thankful for: I'm thankful those Bing ads that seemed to run incessantly over the summer are finally gone, or at least greatly reduced. And it does look like Bing has captured a decent size of the search pie here in the early going. 

Google wasn't going to sit idly by and let Bing takeover though. Although you probably won't see a Google ad on tv anytime soon, mainly because that would indicate that they truly are concerned about the prospects of bing. Instead, Google has cleverly started a campaign to remind everyone why search is so wonderful, presumably even more wonderful when you do it with Google.

There's a new ad campaign (I mean, video series) on Google-owned YouTube aimed at keeping you googling for more:

The Day Yahoo Died

For those of us who switched to Google many years ago, it may seem as if Yahoo died long ago. It didn't. At least not until today. Yahoo and Microsoft have announced a search partnership. Yahoo will handle ad sales, and Microsoft's bing will become the new search engine for Yahoo.

While Yahoo will continue to exist for email and as a portal (whatever that means these days) the core of the company, the thing that made it an early web juggernaut is gone. I can't say there's a terrible amount of sentimentality in this for me. It's hard to imagine gathering future generations to enthrall them with tales of putting a search parameter in a box and getting results. I do remember the quaint way you could submit URLs you would want indexed in the early days. And believe it or not, I can remember the first time I used Google instead of Yahoo. It was in the computer lab my freshman year of college, Spring, I believe . (The year is not important!)  I'd heard about google a few times in tech stories, so I gave it a try. A nearly blank screen with a search box appeared. I entered my search terms, and results came back. "This is just like Yahoo," I naively muttered... But again, this isn't like a fond story of an innocent childhood moment, or life-changing decision.

Rather, it feels simply like one of the last vestiges of the another internet time is gone. AOL, you're now the sole link to that time, and sadly, I don't think many people will mourn your eventual passing either. Who knows, in five years we might be forced to write again about the day Google died (or at least Google Search), replaced by Bing. For now, I'll stick with Google. I mean Bing is just like Google! Besides, I'm feeling lucky...