Kara Swisher on The Weather Channel Replacing Yahoo as Data Provider for Apple’s iOS Weather App

Kara Swisher:

The look, feel and data has been provided to Apple by Yahoo for many years, part of a deal that sends a lot of traffic back to the Internet portal and spurs a multitude of downloads of its own handsome weather app.

I’m nearly certain Yahoo only ever provided Apple with the data, not the “look and feel”. Same thing with Stocks (which stills gets its data from Yahoo) and the old built-in YouTube app or the Maps app back when it was backed by Google Maps. Those apps are (or in the case of YouTube and Maps, were) designed and engineered by Apple; Yahoo and Google only ever provided the data. Plus, the Weather Channel-backed Weather app in the iOS 8 betas looks almost unchanged from the one in iOS 7.

Still, though — interesting that Yahoo let this slip. Seems a big win for The Weather Channel.

★ Saturday, 21 June 2014