The Truth About The Secret Talks Between Yahoo And Apple
A couple of weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo is in talks with Apple.
The purpose of the talks: to make more Yahoo-branded apps default apps on the iPhone.
Already, there are two Yahoo-branded apps on every iPhone – "Stocks," and "Weather."
We spoke to a source familiar with these talks, and learned some details.
They are:
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The WSJ was probably a bit early on this one. Yahoo and Apple are talking, sure. But Apple is talking to everyone. Nothing is imminent.
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Apple likes partnering with Yahoo because unlike the other big consumer Internet companies – Facebook, Google, and Amazon – Yahoo doesn't have a rival mobile operating system or anything like one to push.
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The kinds of apps Yahoo is talking about making for Apple would pull content from Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo News.
- The Weather Channel, which supplies the data for the "Weather" app that has Yahoo's branding on it, is working very hard to convince Apple to ditch the Yahoo branding.
The fact that Yahoo is involved in these kinds of talks at all is a good sign for the company.
It doesn't hurt that Yahoo's current CEO, Marissa Mayer, is more plugged-into the Silicon Valley scene than her predecessors.
In January, we found out she went to a "CEO dinner" with a bunch of high profile executives from other companies, including Apple's design boss, Jony Ive.
Here's a photo from that night: