I doubt that creating a new competitive search engine is quite as hard as Google would like us to believe. Whether it's something Apple would do, I don't have

I doubt that creating a new competitive search engine is quite as hard as Google would like us to believe. Whether it's something Apple would do, I don't have an opinion; in general I don't pay much attention to Apple. They could conceivably setup a search engine as a pro-privacy move by deliberately not collecting/monetizing user's search data, and perhaps not even running ads at all if they can figure out some other way to pay for it or justify the expense. However, I agree with you that it feels wrong. I think I'd feel better about a new search engine if it was run by a less profit-driven institution, like the Internet Archive. Maybe the best course of action if Apple wanted a Google alternative to exist is to develop some of the technology in-house and then give a giant grant to some well-respected pro-privacy organization to actually run the thing.