Former CNET Asia blogger; gadget lover; and currently working as Country Editor Yahoo! Indonesia (Comments expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of my employer, Yahoo!). meme.yahoo.com/budip
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Just discovered an interesting list, 18 first different things on the Internet [brief] history, thanks to the TechReaders site!
Public status updates from Facebook Pages now in Google's real-time search. The new features will be rolling out in the next few days --this time is just available globally in English. "Relevance meets the real-time web," Google says.
The key thing to remember, however, is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook’s real-time data than its competitor, Bing. Microsoft has deeper ties to the social network, as an investor in Facebook and as a search provider for the site. Microsoft has the ability to index public status updates, while Google’s access is limited to updates from Pages, which are vehicles for marketing rather than personal content.
[via VentureBeat]

The answer is no, according to Silicon Alley Insider. There are too many options in the search market today, so that building a new search engine is not that easy. Another reason: The company is getting over US$100 million anually from Google, since Google is the default search engine in Safari.
For Apple, that's not a lot of money. But, it's enough that it doesn't make sense for Apple to put considerable resources towards building its own Internet search engine. And, if Apple wanted more money or options, there's Microsoft -- with Bing and a big checkbook.
If you download a fresh copy of Firefox, you'll note that the default search engine is not whatever you already have picked in all your other browsers. Instead, Mozilla chooses Firefox's default search engine, and the list of search providers in the accompanying drop down menu, based on their popularity. Thus, Bing isn't one of the choices.