Jonathan Yarmis, research fellow with the consulting firm Ovum, was interviewed by BusinessWeek, and BusinessWeek wrote:

Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum’s Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple’s engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says. “I fully expect [Apple] to do something in search,” he adds. “If there’s all these advertising dollars to be won, why would it want Google on its iPhones?”

I am not sure if that will happen, but there is no doubt a conflict between Apple and Google. The biggest sign of such conflict was seen when Google’s CEO resigned from Apple’s board in mid-2009.

Will this ultimately lead to Apple building out their own search engine or dropping Google for Bing? That is unknown, but anything is possible.

Armstrong said this at Citi’s annual entertainment, media and telecommunications conference today. This was prompted by a question about possibly using Microsoft Bing as a search partner at the end of this year, when the Google deal expires. Armstrong added that a new search deal, under the new independent AOL, will be financially good for them. He specifically said they “may trade search dollars for more display dollars.”

Armstrong is a former Google executive, who was named the CEO of AOL back six months ago.

If you visit Google.com today, you will see that they are showing a promotion for the Nexus One. The promotion is found under the search box and reads, “Experience Nexus One, the new Android phone from Google.”

As we saw in Danny’s live blogging of the event, yesterday – Google said they would use Google.com to push this device. They did so for the Verizon/Motorola Droid, so of course they will do it for their own device.

The link takes you to google.com/phone, as you would expect.

Here are some past ads/promotions on the Google home page:

Postscript from Greg Sterling: Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster calculated the value of the Nexus One placement on Google’s homepage to be worth between $4 and $5 million (at a $15 or $20 CPM) if it were an ad that had to be bought.

Google really wants you to buy a Motorola Droid, the hot new phone that just hit stores today. In fact, Google is so enamored that it’s advertising the Droid on its homepage: “The Droid is on sale now. Learn more.”

Clicking the “learn more” link leads to this “mobile partners” page that touts the Google search capabilities available on the Droid.

The two links in the upper right — the “Get” button and the “Learn more” text link below it — point to verizonwireless.com and droiddoes.com, respectively.

It’s hard to make the case that this isn’t an ad on Google’s home page, and SEO folks will surely notice that neither off-site link uses the nofollow tag. In other words, some can argue that Verizon is effectively buying a link from Google, which Google fights against.

(Postscript: The link from the home page redirects to a virtual page that is blocked by Google’s robots.txt file, so shouldn’t be passing along PageRank and would be in compliance with Google’s paid links policy. But the “Google Search on Droid by Motorola” page has no such block leading to the Verizon site).

For its part, Google will probably point out that it has run promotions on its home page before, like in October, 2008, when it promoted the T-Mobile G1 — the first Android-based phone — on its home page.

At the time, Google denied that was an ad for T-Mobile, instead calling it a promotion for a Google product.

Google has quite famously declared in the past that the Google home page would remain ad free, compared to other portals. Said Google’s Marissa Mayer in 2007:

There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.

But Google actually has a long history of promoting things on its home page. As Mayer also said in 2007:

The Google home page is very simple and when we put a link underneath the Google search box on the home page to advertise one of our products, we say, “Hey, try Google video, it’s new, or download the new Picassa.” Basically it’s the only other thing on the page, and while it does get a fair amount of click through, it’s nothing compared to the search, because most users don’t even see it.

Notable among these was a Da Vinci Code promotion that put a puzzle on the Google home page in 2006, as well promoting Firefox on the home page in the same year. Both were non-Google products being pushed.

What are your thoughts on today’s version of the home page? Is Google advertising Motorola and the Droid phone?

Postscript: Google’s Gabriel Stricker gave us this statement about the Droid mention on Google’s home page:

We are currently running a homepage promotion for Droid. From time to time we include a link on the Google home page that points users to exciting and important information, whether it be relief opportunities in the wake of a tsunami or hurricane, awareness about an important cause, or information about a new product. The Droid is a hardware collaboration that we’ve been very active and involved with, so it makes sense that Google has an interest in getting the word out.

“We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

That was published minutes ago on the official Google blog by VP Marissa Mayer. Not coincidentally, she’s due to speak shortly at the Web 2.0 Summit — where Bing made its announcements earlier today. We plan to live blog her appearance just as we did earlier when Microsoft’s Qi Lu was on stage.

— Update, October 28, 2009: This is now live. See our story, Google Music Search 2.0 Launches With Musical “OneBox” for more. —

According to TechCrunch, users will access the Google music service through search:

Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well (presumably any relevant results from YouTube as well as information already available in Google’s existing music search – example). One source said that Google will organize music searches in a way very similar to the way they do public company stock searches today.

CNET reports the following:

The initiative is coming out of Google Search and is designed to organize everything a music fan may need when searching online for a favorite artist, the sources said.

The way One Box will work is that a person who keys in the names U2 or Coldplay, for example, will find a thumbnail photo of the artists, background information, as well as a listing of the music that they can preview, according to the sources.

There was rumor and speculation about Google launching a music-download service as far back as early 2006. And Google has offered fairly extensive music search since that time (though it’s buried):

An angle I haven’t yet seen discussed is the Android angle. Currently Android users can get music on their phones through a deal with Amazon’s music store. However this is a significant weakness of Android vs. the iPhone, which much more seamlessly integrates music and ringtone downloads into the mobile experience. Delivering music to mobile devices may become part of any such Google service, assuming TechCrunch has it right. We’ll see.

This is another potential way in which Google becomes even more of a direct competitor of Apple.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

Postscript: We just received our own ticket/invitation to the launch event:

Reportedly the service will provide e-commerce links to Amazon and the iTunes music store, solving the mystery of the download question.

Google also unsuccessfully competed against Microsoft for the Verizon wireless “default” search business. In addition to being motivated by revenue guarantees offered by Microsoft, Verizon’s rejection of Google as mobile search and ads provider was seen as part of the lingering animus between the companies. Microsoft’s win at Verizon was and is a big deal for Bing and adCenter. Yet on the day of the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade and a new push to regain momentum in an intensely competitive US smartphone market, Google has encroached on Microsoft’s relationship with the largest US mobile operator.

I won’t call it a “love triangle,” but Verizon seems to be playing the two companies against each other to a degree. Beyond the Android handset announcement (though no specific handsets have been announced) there’s this vague statement of  intent:

Integral to this agreement is a commitment by the companies to devote substantial resources to accelerate delivery of leading-edge innovation that will put unique applications in the hands of consumers quickly. The two industry leaders will create, market and distribute products and services, with Verizon Wireless also contributing the breadth of its nationwide distribution channels. Consumers will be able to purchase products resulting from the collaboration in Verizon Wireless retail and online stores.

So this could be tablets or netbooks using Android (or Chrome) beyond smartphones. But Android on Verizon both raises its profile and puts pressure on BlackBerry’s touch-screen Storm (or Storm 2) and Windows Mobile phones. The iPhone remains in its own category, but Windows Mobile and Android phones will be going head to head at the largest carriers for consumer attention and it will be a tough fight for Microsoft to win with 6.5.

Most interesting will be to see how Verizon’s search and ads deal with Microsoft plays out on Android handsets. The absence of a “carrier deck” on the Android handsets may allow Verizon to wiggle out of its obligation (as I understand it) to pre-install a Bing search box on all Verizon handsets. I’m guessing at that however.

Mark explained that over the past several months, eBay has been testing Google ads on about 1% of the ads shown on eBay. On August 26th, he said, eBay “flipped the switch” and began showing Google ads as the bulk of the ads displayed on eBay. About 90% of the ads are now Google powered, whereas the remainder are now Yahoo.

I have not seen this reported elsewhere, and to many, this may come as a surprise. Why? Well, eBay and Google have an interesting relationship, to say the least.

Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.

Here are some screenshots provided by Google, which look quite similar to the originally leaked screens from the earlier “Flipper” rumors:

According to Google’s Marissa Mayer, Google co-founder Larry Page said, “Why isn’t the web like a magazine?” and wanted a way to browse it. Well, Fast Flip lets users visually browse (as well as search) news. There’s also personalization; the site makes recommendations based on your clicks, searches and other behavior.

When you click on any of the stories, you’re taken to publisher sites, which makes them happy. Speaking of which, Google’s initial publisher partners include the NY Times, Atlantic Magazine, Washington Post, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek.

Google is banking that an improved user experience will mean lots of traffic and page views. Google says that revenue generated from ads on the site will be split with publishers. (This could potentially be a goldmine of display inventory for Google if it expands the content from news into a broad range of magazines.)

If it’s a hit, this probably becomes the successor to Google News. And it may be the testing ground for the potential “micropayments platform” that Google is developing for content publishers — it’s all coming together now. I’m only partly kidding with that remark.

We haven’t yet had a chance to try the site but it looks like a much richer and more interesting way to consume news than, well, Google News.

Google says there’s also a mobile version “with tactile page flipping,” for the iPhone and Android.

Here is a screen capture of the search box that now says, “Powered by Google,” taken from ConnectedInternet.co.uk, which tipped us to this:

I know the Yahoo and Microsoft deal has not been signed off on yet, but you have to admit, this is a bit comical?