The NORAD Santa tracker, a cute little tool that helped kids everywhere track Santa’s trip around the globe on Christmas Eve, has been around for ages, first starting as a phone service and then transitioning to the web in the late ’90s. For the last five years, the service has been using Google Maps to display Santa’s progress, but this year it seems that Google may have been bumped to the naughty list.
For the first time, NORAD has chosen to partner with Microsoft (MSFT) Maps, proving once and for all that Steve Ballmer is not, in fact, the Grinch. This means that Santa’s progress as tracked by NORAD will be displayed on bing’s home page, giving users a reason for the first time ever to navigate to Bing.
Of course, Google has decided it doesn’t really need NORAD, anyway. The company built its own Santa tracker, and it’s as adorably Google-ish as expected. You can also track Santa’s trip via a specially-built Android app.
Apple Maps were reportedly never considered by NORAD because “Santa don’t mess with that shit.”
