Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is reportedly preparing detailed presentations for Apple executives in an attempt to convince the Cupertino firm to integrate Yahoo’s services more prominently in iOS.
While a lot of the chatter about Yahoo’s latest financials seems focused on increasing display advertising sales — which went up two percent in Yahoo’s first quarter — sources inside the company say the big focus for truly turbocharging revenue will be an aggressive effort being led by CEO Marissa Mayer and Adam Cahan, its SVP of mobile and emerging products, around search.
Yahoo currently powers the Weather and Stocks apps, and while Google is set as the default search on Apple’s mobile devices, but you can change it to either Yahoo or Microsoft’s Bing by adjusting your device settings. (“Settings” -> “Safari” -> “Search Engine.”)
Yahoo insiders tell Re/code that Mayer’s idea to pitch Yahoo as Apple’s marquee mobile search partner is well developed, with a number of detailed decks that include images of what a Yahoo/iOS search product would look like. Mayer hopes to present these to Apple executives.
Mayer has already buttonholed a few Apple execs on the subject, including big man Jony Ive, who has a good relationship with Mayer.
“This is the aim of the whole effort here, to grab the pole position in iOS search,” said one person working on the effort. “It will take more than pretty pictures though to convince Apple to give up Google, given its focus on consumer experience being top-notch. But Marissa wants it very badly.”
All of this is still at the pitch stage, and is seen as a longer term play by Yahoo to integrate itself better with Apple’s devices and operating systems.
