Monday marked Apple's Worldwide Developer’s Conference keynote, where they announced the latest versions of its Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. During the keynote, the largest announcement stemmed from Apple's decision to integrate Bing, not Google, into Apple's Siri tool. This marks a fundamental shift in thought and leaves others skeptical as to why Apple would partner with a Microsoft anything given the two's history. 

Siri will now include web results from Bing when it doesn’t have a direct answer for the user, replacing Google as the provider of supplemental web results. Bing Corporate Vice President Derrick Connel later stated:

Starting this fall with iOS 7, Bing will power Siri’s new integrated web search. When users ask Siri a question either the specific answer or web search links will now be delivered automatically so users can find information even faster.

Bing was designed from the outset to be a great place for web search helping customers quickly find what they are looking for and get more out of search. We are thrilled that all the great results people have come to know and love on Bing.com will now be available to Siri users on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

To add fuel to the Google melee, Yelp (another company bent on thwarting Google) announced their revamp of search results for mobile. This new "Nearby" feature will enhance users to find more localized search results. Considering Yelp's primary audience is those who are looking for small businesses (often in the trade industry), local search would yield more insightful results. A large number of small business focus all of their marketing efforts to Yelp and forego traditional and Internet marketing. They see Yelp, and its user reviews section as the most critical aspect to their online presence. 

Never to be outshined, Google made a major announcement in that it is readying ranking changes for mobile content. New ranking algorithyms suggest that mobile content will play a major role in defining mobile search results. Many businesses today have mobile sites however their entire desktop website hasn't been fully optimized for mobile. Thus, redirects are used in place of these non-mobile friendly pages. These redirects have been suggested (by Google themselves) as a factor for poor ranking ability.

It is widely accepted that smart-phone internet usage will surpass desktop users. The resulting effects will be monstrous for those solely focused on desktop only websites. 

So who will win this battle of mobile search? Certainly there are other factors including the unforeseeable changes to come from all involved. The Google empire knows how many are knocking at its door and certainly continues to make strides in combatting such competition. But who really knows how this will shake out. Perhaps another player will enter the realm and completely revolutionize how we search… yet again.