According to the guys over at @TechCrunch, multiple sources including one specific high-level source, yesterday placed Microsoft’s new attempt at the search engine – Bing!, as poised to take the place of Google search in iPhone OS 4.0.

Still unconfirmed, the rumor comes from a so called “high level” source who claims to have been briefly let in on the matter.

Its no secret that Apple and Google haven’t exactly been getting on like a house on fire lately, one of the reasons is due to Google entering the mobile phone market with its Nexus One, creating direct competition for the company’s iPhone handset on a massive scale. The second of course was when Apple rejected Google Voice from its App Store. In a sentence, this threw the companies into an out-and-out war with eachother.

Google was reportedly paying Apple $100 million a year to secure their search rights on iPhone OS. Now, according to sources within Google itself, Apple just isn’t happy at the amount of core iPhone OS applications which are powered by the search giant’s technologies, and so they’ve been looking elsewhere … they’ve been looking at Microsoft.

Most people have speculated though that an announcement of this nature would require Microsoft’s CEO to attend one of Apple’s events, and while he was rumored to be showing his face at this year’s WWDC, Microsoft quickly denied the claims.

[via @TechCrunch]