Google “Default” Search On The Apple iPad

Google announced a bunch of its services iPad-ready: YouTube (sans Flash), GMail, Maps and Voice Search. And Google also says in the same blog post, “As with Mac computers and the iPhone, you’ll find Google Search in the top right corner of Safari.” So it would appear then that Google will be the “default” search engine on the iPad.

Google Maps were demo’d by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the iPad launch event in January. However there’s been considerable speculation since then about whether Bing would get the nod as the default search engine on the iPad, given the tensions between Apple and Google and the lawsuit filed by Apple against Android/Google surrogate HTC. The “CEO Coffee Summit” may have diffused some of those tensions, however.

Bing has a popular iPhone app and we’ll likely see a new version of that for the iPad. Bing’s “visual search” would be particularly well suited to the device. And just imagine the “coolness” and utility of Bing’s Map Apps on the device, although Silverlight I think would be an obstacle. HTML5 Microsoft?