At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Vic Gundotra, who leads Google's mobile engineering, told journalists that all this talk of Apple and Google breaking up their relationship is unfounded, according to a Reuters" report (http://www.reuters.com/article/idCNLDE61E1CF20100215)

"Apple is a very close and valuable partner and we're very excited about the relationship we have with them today. We have no reason to believe that's going to change," he said. "We don't want to comment on those rumors [of Apple planning to dump Google Search for Microsoft's Bing]. "We think that relationship is stable."

Last month "The Register" reported that Apple would be giving Microsoft's Bing top billing on the iPad as its search engine (rather than Google), according to "people familiar with the matter." (Of course, this didn't happen.) This came along with talk that Apple may make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone.

However, Apple is getting over US$100 million a year from Google in its revenue share deal, according to "BusinessWeek," as Google is the default search engine in Safari. So there seems to be little reason for Apple to dump Google for Bing.

Sure, Apple and Google are competitors in the smartphone market. But Apple and Microsoft are competitors in the computer OS market. So why change?