[wodenokoto]

I don't agree. An iPhone without search is a really poor smartphone. An iPhone without Kik is not a poor smartphone.

Few people consider yahoo or bing search comparable in quality to google.

So what parent finds odd, is that Apple is asking the best in class to pay them, to improve their product.

[babuskov]

Many people don't consider search quality at all and just use what's served to them.

I understand that someone reading HN would find that hard to believe, but when I look at some people around me who are not working in tech - many wouldn't be able to tell difference between Bing and Google search results. All they know is they can type/say a query and get the site they are looking for. The only time they would start thinking about underlying tech. is if they started to consistently get unusable results.

Google results are better, but how many people are actually aware of that (outside IT crowd) is questionable.

[wodenokoto]

You are right that most people wouldn't know which search is better, but to say they don't care about the quality is ridiculous.

Maybe today Bing and Yahoo are competitive, but back when the iPhone was released, it was quite different.

[rokhayakebe]

many wouldn't be able to tell difference between Bing and Google

Tested and true.