Why Apple Should License Typo Data to Bing

There are three big typo databases in the world:

1. The collective algorithmic typo database. There are a few standard typos (transposition, off-by-one, omitted letter, etc.), which are generally understood by anyone in academia who has studied the issue.
2. Google’s massive database of misspelled terms, plus the results customers eventually click on.
3. Apple’s massive database of typos on iOS devices, and the terms people corrected them with.

It’s hard to say when of the last two is a bigger set of typos. Google has more users, and has been collecting typos more often. But a single email typed out on an iPhone might generate as much typo-correction data as a week’s worth of Google searches; iPhone typos are more common, and a typical text string is longer than a search string.

Who needs these typos? Bing. Google is always a step ahead of other search engines because it accumulates data faster, and this is one tiny way to even things out. Apple could create some kind of bilateral typo-sharing deal with Microsoft: Apple is probably better at correcting typos based on the context of a sentence, but Bing is probably still better at figuring out misspellings of proper nouns and technical terms.

This deal makes some sense from a usability perspective, but makes even more from a strategic perspective: it’s a way for Microsoft and Apple to close ranks against Google, which directly threatens both of them.

One other thing: Apple tends to separate “church and state” on iOS devices: your apps can control what happens within the app, but except for a few tightly-monitored exceptions, app A can’t affect how app B operates, much less affect the device when no apps are in use. Here’s an exception they should provide: a white-list of magazines whose cover can automatically be set as the iPad’s “Lock” screen.

One of the things people miss when they read the Economist or New Yorker on a tablet is the social signaling from holding a copy of this week’s Economist or New Yorker. This won’t be the same phenomenon, but it will replicate part of it. And it will increase device usage—if every time you check your email on your iPhone, you spend a split-second noticing what Vanity Fair features you’re missing, your odds of spending more of your day reading VF on the iPhone increase.