Stefan Mileschin

Software giant Microsoft will be providing the search engine for Apple's Siri.

For decades, Apple has seen Microsoft as its number one sparring partner and made its followers chant mantras about how Redmond nicked all Steve Jobs' ideas.

The reality was that most of the time, the two shared an alliance of the proprietary, particularly in the court room where the pair seemed to be on the same side.

Now it seems that Apple has a new sparring partner, Google and it seems that it is time to bury the hatchet with Microsoft.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple said Bing is displacing Google as the default source for searches spoken into the Siri voice assistant for the iPhone and iPad.

From the next version of the iOS software, released to consumers in the autumn, people who ask Siri get answers from Bing.

The news is great for Microsoft which wanted desperately to boost its signed up users. Bing is centuries behind Google in terms of market share.

At the moment, Bing will only serve Siri. Google remains the default web-search engine in the Safari browser built into the iPhone and iPad.

It is possible for Siri users to opt for Google search results if they specifically ask Siri to "search Google" for a particular request. Of course, no Apple user is ever going to leave the default settings because that would require them to think differently.

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