We all have friends (people we know) and friends (people we not only know but hang out with). Maybe the better contrast might be between friends and buddies. Well Avram Miller is one of my buddies. He lives down the road from me and my kids prefer his pool to ours because his is solar heated. The retired Intel VP of business development is quite a character, knows a lot of people who know people, and understands the business of technology at a level few people do. So when he wrote a post this morning predicting that Apple will clean Google’s clock in search, I sat up in my chair.

Avram’s thesis is that Steve Jobs felt betrayed by Google’s development of Android and decided years ago to go after the soft underbelly of the Googleplex by building a superior search product called Found that Apple would have no need to monetize — the Switzerland of search. Please read Avram’s post and you’ll see he claims that Steve Jobs even pre-recorded his participation in the Found launch event scheduled for sometime next year. Which of course makes me wonder what else Steve may have prerecorded?

I believe Avram. We haven’t yet discussed this directly because Avram has spent the winter in Israel but that’s what makes this post so plausible. If there’s an Israeli scientist at the heart of Found, then Avram — who has been the toast of the Tel Aviv tech scene all season — would probably have bumped into him or her.

I love the Apple side of this but what gives it real import are the Google and Facebook aspects. Facebook has pivoted deftly to mobile, Google hasn’t particularly succeeded in social networking with Google+, so Google is more vulnerable than one might think. I’m not sure Avram is right that Zuckerberg & Company are the major threat, but if Apple can out-Bing Bing without needing the ad revenue, well Steve Jobs may well get his revenge on Google after all. As I guess he will be explaining to us sometime next year.