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It would harm Google's primary revenue source Ad-words. Reducing the revenue of your competition is beneficial since they will have less money to fund their com

It would harm Google's primary revenue source Ad-words. Reducing the revenue of your competition is beneficial since they will have less money to fund their competing products with.

mythz 9y ago
So Apple should invest billions of their profits in a technology they have no experience or skills in and over a decade away from being able to catch up and provide a competitive service against arguably the smartest company in the world whose core competency is search, so they can devalue the Apple brand with a sub par service that has nothing to do with their strengths, absorbs the billions required to develop and maintain the infrastructure (see: Bing), forgo billions of Service revenue their now receiving from Google to provide an ad-free Service that will never be profitable so they can force a worst end-user UX on their Customers? Somehow I don't see this happening.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  They already did something similar with Maps. Very rough launch, but now it's pretty good.
  - mythz 9y ago
    Apple invested in Maps so they have control over their destiny of one of the most popular use-cases people use their Smart Phones for as Google was with holding key features like turn-by-turn directions which would've given Android an edge. Apple always wants to be seen as the best, they love to say they offer the best Smart Phone with the best hardware, best OS, Apps, etc. Having a sub-par experience on a core feature would've hurt both their brand and sales. Although it required a significant investment and Apple Maps still isn't as good as Google Maps, end-users still end up with a first-class experience in iOS with their choice of either. This isn't the same as Search, Google wants to provide the best Search service for iOS as possible and is now paying Apple billions for privilege of being the default. Attempting to develop an ad-free Search alternative would dilute their focus, cost them a fortune and their Customers would be worse off for it.
    - siproprio 9y ago
      It's funny that you talk about Apple developing maps because Google was withholding features like turn-by-turn direction, and Apple wanted to give a better user experience. In the country where I live (Brazil), Apple Maps does not have turn-by-turn direction available, while Google Maps has.
- touchofevil 9y ago
  I don't see how offering ad-free Internet search that's available in the OS (like in spotlight) would be a bad UX experience for the customer. Also, Bing is doing pretty well bringing in 5.6 Billion in revenue in 2016 [0]. And since DuckDuckGo has 21 employees and is doing a pretty good job of providing a search engine, I would think Apple could probably handle putting together a solid search engine fairly quickly. [1] Apple could always add keyword based ads like DuckDuckGo does, so that they can still charge for some ads without tracking their users. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microsoft-turns-bing-from-a-joke-into-an-ad-business https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microso... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    Alternatively they could acquire DuckDuckGo
    - simonh 9y ago
      Which mainly uses Bing and a few other sites as backends anyway.
  - mythz 9y ago
    > Also, Bing is doing pretty well Maybe Bing's not a sinkhole now, but they were losing billions per year trying to compete with Google: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-reorg-earnings-reports-2013-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-reorg-earnings-repo... It still costs Microsoft billions to run Bing for which an Apple ad-free Service will always be a profit sink hole without any chance of recuperating their investments whilst foregoing their billions of nearly pure profit Services Revenue they're getting from Google now. And for what? inflict a worse experience on their customer base so they can try to hurt Google the way Microsoft tried to do with Bing? Google has enough successful properties that there's nothing Apple can do that would hurt Google's profits enough where they can't maintain their level of R&D on Android (which is itself ludicrously profitable). I just don't see what this would achieve and how it would help them achieve their core mission, diluting their talent and resources doesn't help them make the most enviable products and would cost them billions in the process, both of which are against their DNA.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Actually companies often invest in areas to weaken the competition, Oracle and IBM invested in Java over the years because they didn't want to see Microsoft dominate corporate development for example.

It would harm Google's primary revenue source Ad-words. Reducing the revenue of your competition is beneficial since they will have less money to fund their competing products with.

mythz 9y ago

So Apple should invest billions of their profits in a technology they have no experience or skills in and over a decade away from being able to catch up and provide a competitive service against arguably the smartest company in the world whose core competency is search, so they can devalue the Apple brand with a sub par service that has nothing to do with their strengths, absorbs the billions required to develop and maintain the infrastructure (see: Bing), forgo billions of Service revenue their now receiving from Google to provide an ad-free Service that will never be profitable so they can force a worst end-user UX on their Customers? Somehow I don't see this happening.

iainmerrick 9y ago
They already did something similar with Maps. Very rough launch, but now it's pretty good.
- mythz 9y ago
  Apple invested in Maps so they have control over their destiny of one of the most popular use-cases people use their Smart Phones for as Google was with holding key features like turn-by-turn directions which would've given Android an edge. Apple always wants to be seen as the best, they love to say they offer the best Smart Phone with the best hardware, best OS, Apps, etc. Having a sub-par experience on a core feature would've hurt both their brand and sales. Although it required a significant investment and Apple Maps still isn't as good as Google Maps, end-users still end up with a first-class experience in iOS with their choice of either. This isn't the same as Search, Google wants to provide the best Search service for iOS as possible and is now paying Apple billions for privilege of being the default. Attempting to develop an ad-free Search alternative would dilute their focus, cost them a fortune and their Customers would be worse off for it.
  - siproprio 9y ago
    It's funny that you talk about Apple developing maps because Google was withholding features like turn-by-turn direction, and Apple wanted to give a better user experience. In the country where I live (Brazil), Apple Maps does not have turn-by-turn direction available, while Google Maps has.
touchofevil 9y ago
I don't see how offering ad-free Internet search that's available in the OS (like in spotlight) would be a bad UX experience for the customer. Also, Bing is doing pretty well bringing in 5.6 Billion in revenue in 2016 [0]. And since DuckDuckGo has 21 employees and is doing a pretty good job of providing a search engine, I would think Apple could probably handle putting together a solid search engine fairly quickly. [1] Apple could always add keyword based ads like DuckDuckGo does, so that they can still charge for some ads without tracking their users. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microsoft-turns-bing-from-a-joke-into-an-ad-business https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microso... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
- jogjayr 9y ago
  Alternatively they could acquire DuckDuckGo
  - simonh 9y ago
    Which mainly uses Bing and a few other sites as backends anyway.
- mythz 9y ago
  > Also, Bing is doing pretty well Maybe Bing's not a sinkhole now, but they were losing billions per year trying to compete with Google: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-reorg-earnings-reports-2013-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-reorg-earnings-repo... It still costs Microsoft billions to run Bing for which an Apple ad-free Service will always be a profit sink hole without any chance of recuperating their investments whilst foregoing their billions of nearly pure profit Services Revenue they're getting from Google now. And for what? inflict a worse experience on their customer base so they can try to hurt Google the way Microsoft tried to do with Bing? Google has enough successful properties that there's nothing Apple can do that would hurt Google's profits enough where they can't maintain their level of R&D on Android (which is itself ludicrously profitable). I just don't see what this would achieve and how it would help them achieve their core mission, diluting their talent and resources doesn't help them make the most enviable products and would cost them billions in the process, both of which are against their DNA.
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Actually companies often invest in areas to weaken the competition, Oracle and IBM invested in Java over the years because they didn't want to see Microsoft dominate corporate development for example.