12 ms·
Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine
- machello13 6y ago> It is clear that Apple has started to return search results within Spotlight Search and is completely bypassing Google altogether. This isn't new in iOS 14, Spotlight has had a basic web search (supported by Apple's crawler) for several years.
- snazz 6y agoSame with Siri Suggestions, although they may be taking on a larger role in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur.
- machello13 6y agoRight — this article seems pretty uninformed. I don't think there's a reason to believe Apple is any closer to launching a search engine now than they were 3 years ago.
- zenexer 6y agoThere is. They’ve started crawling much more aggressively, similar to how Googlebot and Bingbot crawl. Coincidentally, I mentioned to a friend that I thought Apple was preparing to launch a search engine just yesterday.
- slantaclaus 6y agoToo bad Siri is developmentally challenged (“special”)
- draw_down 6y agoIf they do it, we'll hear more about how anticompetitive Apple is being. Maybe so... but it's funny because if anyone has a monopoly on anything it's Google and search.
- onion2k 6y agoIt's always a tempting story - Apple have the resources, they could make a lot of money from making it the Safari and iOS default, and they're pushing in to services for growth, but people have been suggesting that Apple will launch a search engine "soon" for at least a decade. It hasn't happened yet and there's no particularly significant reason to believe it'll happen now. That said, it would be nice if Google had some proper competition to drive innovation for once. Search really hasn't changed in any fundamental or even noticeable way for a long time.
- mmcconnell1618 6y agoMicrosoft has very deep pockets and created a solid search platform in Bing but they still struggle against Google. Microsoft used ownership of Windows to push their Edge browser (both the original and new flavor) but still struggled against Chrome. For Apple to succeed, they don't need to be "as good," they need to be significantly better or differentiated. One way might be to focus on privacy and play on fears. Combine fear of being tracked with default search engine status one a billion iPhones and you might have a shot at some market share.
- gerash 6y agoI disagree. Apple maps is worse than competition but they push it to their consumers because it's not bad enough to be worth switching away from iOS.
- uniqueid 6y agoMy take is that the timing is perfect, so the rumor is likely true, but that Apple is going to screw it up royally. This is a great time for a big competitor to start a search engine. Google's reputation and search quality aren't what they used to be. Google is also in a MS antitrust situation, where they have to fight with a hand behind their back. If Apple were to work with others to set up some sort of "search foundation," I'll bet its search product could mop up a lot of the search market. As a result, Apple would have more leverage over Google, and more momentum. They'd have some measure of control over the user experience, even via a shared "foundation". But that's not what is going to happen! Apple management is going to release some weird, overly strategic product with Apple-branding all over it. Users don't want a "Siri" or "Spotlight" or "Apple" branded search engine (assuming Apple isn't so deliriously drunk on "clever strategy" that they don't make search an "app" instead of a webpage). It will also detract from Apple's "privacy" messaging, because they'll not only be pushing users aggressively to store all their data in iCloud, but also appear to have access to users' search histories. I think Apple's search engine is going to fail horribly, despite fate giving them a golden opportunity to plough into Google's market. Apple is going to "sherlock" itself.
- adoxyz 6y agoIf it's anything like Siri, I'll pass. Went back to the iOS ecosystem last year after being in Android/Google land for the past decade. I used Google Assistant on a daily basis easily 20-30 times and 99% of the time it got me what I needed. Siri can't even do a 1/10th of the things I used GA for, and that 1/10th that it does, it does so poorly that I don't even bother anymore.
- adwww 6y agoWhat sort of tasks were you using GA for? I use mine to turn a smart plug on or off, and set a timer when cooking. Nothing else I've ever wanted to do via my Pixel 2 is reliable enough to waste time trying. Sending a WhatsApp while driving is the one thing I keep wanting to do, but it's hopeless.
- adoxyz 6y agoBasic things that I feel like should be trivial for Siri to handle. The biggest issue by far is how bad the voice dictation is for sending messages. It almost never gets it right. I'm not opposed to an Apple search engine if it works. Would happily use it. But the way Siri has stagnated doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence for me.
- spike021 6y agoThat's odd. I use Siri with CarPlay in my car and a very low-quality mic from an aftermarket headunit, and it's able to capture probably 80%, if not more, of my voice-to-texts when I'm trying to text people hands-free. The only real issue Siri has there more often is when I ask it a more complicated query for playing music a certain non-trivial way, like "Play music by X from their latest album" or similar.
- shakna 6y agoA lot of it comes down to your accent. It seems like Siri is trained well for a very particular voice, and if you fall in that range it works great. If you fall outside that range... It might get one in three words correct.
- devinl 6y ago~1/5 of Apple's Services revenue comes from having google be the default search ($9-10B per year), so I wonder if this new search will coincide with them ramping up their own search ads business [https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/15/apple-ad-revenue/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/15/apple-ad-revenue/]
- stock_toaster 6y agoCould be that contract is up for renewal? Google seemed like it was going to stop paying Mozilla this year, then changed their mind. Threat of building a search engine competitor could just be part of contract negotiation (a BATNA).
- saagarjha 6y agoMight be, since you can swap out default apps in iOS 14.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoOr they could just say they'll use Bing instead. That's cheaper, provides a better experience for their users than their own search engine, and is a stronger threat to Google if they want Google to increase payment by encouraging more ad dollars chasing big spenders to go to Bing.
- giarc 6y agoScott Galloway talked about this in a recent Pivot Podcast. He predicts it will launch after the US DOJ announces anti-trust actions against Google. If they do it soon, Google will just point to Apple to say "We aren't the only game in town... this $2 trillion dollar company just launched a search engine on a few billion phones/tablets/PCs around the world." They have reason to wait.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoMonopolist in one market refrains from competing in another market in order to weaponize antitrust investigation into competitor from a third market.
- summitsummit 6y agoim for it in this case. in the absence of perfect solutions, i'll opt for the best one available.
- api 6y agoAll rules will be gamed. No exceptions.
- Paul-ish 6y agoThere is not guarantee that Apples search engine will succeed. It would be suck if it stuck around just long enough for Google to use it as a fig leaf.
- three_seagrass 6y agoExclusive access to a walled garden will certainly help.
- novok 6y agoWouldn’t the same logic apply to bing today?
- jordache 6y ago
- yalogin 6y agoHave a feeling this is just syndication taking cue from Scott Galloway's recent podcasts. He has been saying at least over his last two pods that Apple is going to launch a search engine.
- dividedbyzero 6y agoI hope they do – Google is far, far, far too dominant in this space, and small-ish incumbents don't really stand a chance. If they keep up their privacy-friendly stance, this could really become something neat. I'd like for at least a little bit of competition in the gatekeeper-for-human-knowledge space.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mgh2 6y agoI honestly don't like my search results mingled with the advertising industry: there is bias in all results, you can't trust in information if it is not impartial. People used to create content to advance knowledge, but the amount of crap nowadays motivated my money (even if it is good quality) concerns me about the education of the human civilization as a whole. "The love of money (greed) is the root of all evil": Google, Amazon, Facebook all are already deep down this hole. Apple might be the only company that still has some decency left.
- switch11 6y agoAgreed totally there are parts of Microsoft that are also very honest For that matter there are even divisions within Google that want to do good stuff However, Amazon, Facebook and 90% of Google are basically just the precursors of The Matrix now Their ideal is that all people are mindless zombies, living on universal basic income, like vegatbles/animals, and spending all their money on AmazooogleBook
- elihu 6y agoI think there's a great opportunity now for a new search engine that evaluates the general spamminess of a site, and then punishes sites that link to spammy sites.
- tweetle_beetle 6y agoThis has already been in place for a long time. So much so in fact that you used to be able to attack a sites rankings by creating, or stealing, many low quality sites and publishing links on them to the victim's site. The victim, if they were lucky enough to know about theses things, would then have to create a Search Console account (for Google) and declare that the sites have nothing to do with them and Google should ignore them for ranking purposes. These days there are more attributes to add subtlety to your outbound links of you want the search engines to take you seriously.[1] I'm sure other search engines make similar judgements based on them. [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en
- HumblyTossed 6y agoWhy don't they invest heavily in DDG? They don't have to have their own.
- Kiro 6y agoThey don't need DDG for that. They can just use the Bing API like DDG does.
- salimmadjd 6y agoApple's spellchecker/autocorrect is horrible compared to google's. When you type anything in google, very often with very high accuracy suggests the correct spelling. I believe the search engine data can go a long way in helping apple improve basic stuff like spell checker and auto correction.
- blazar 6y agoFinally, a way to opt out of AMP links on Safari -.-
- adammenges 6y agoDuckDuckGo my good human
- gerash 6y agoYay! no AMP! Every news article will be exclusively published to Apple News, all websites will have to switch to Apple Sign-in, users will need to pay $100 / yr to "cover the cost" of running Apple crawlers and all websites will pay 30% of their revenue to Apple to stay listed.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoApple News links are the worst. They hide the source of the article and make me wait for a redirect before I can read the article. Why does Apple News share that apple.news link instead of a link to the underlying article? Just to track me? What are they hiding in that path string?
- sroussey 6y agoHow would apple monetize this search engine? I don’t completely trust Apple with doing ads as they already do plenty of self-dealing with their own ad system. If anything, they should jedison their ad product altogether.
- snowwrestler 6y agoPresumably the same way they monetize Siri.
- sroussey 6y agoThat’s good enough for basics then, and nothing for Google to worry about. Or a great way to make it so no one competes with their partner google — by offering a totally free (and ad-free) search that’s good enough for many use cases but not great.
- ehsankia 6y agoSiri is an exclusive feature of iPhones, that's how it's "monetized". This is unlike GA which is available on iOS [0]. So unless this search engine is exclusive to iPhone users as a way of "keeping their privacy intact", I don't see how they can justify running a free search engine for everyone. [0] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/google-assistant/id1220976145 https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/google-assistant/id1220976145
- snowwrestler 6y agoYeah, I think if Apple launches their own search engine, it will take the form of a change that results in Apple handling more searches from Apple devices themselves. Kind of like Apple Maps, which "competes" with Google Maps but only on Apple devices. You can't just point any web browser at an Apple Maps website the way you can with Google Maps. I doubt that Apple would launch a search engine that you can just browse to from anywhere like Google or Bing.
- sroussey 6y agoFor example, in iOS 14 they added a Tracking permission and a slider in Settings > Privacy > Tracking. Except to have them not track you requires a separate setting in Settings > Privacy > Apple Advertising > Personalization.
- colinbartlett 6y agoIf privacy is the focus, could Apple acquire Duck Duck Go and get a head start? Or is there no reason to get a head start when you have virtually unlimited resources?
- partiallypro 6y agoDuck uses Bing's index, for the most part...they should just partner with Microsoft if they were wanting to do that.
- greendude29 6y agoOh god I hope not. I use DDG as my full time search engine. I don't need Apple coming in, limiting it to their walled garden and ruining it. You might be onto something though since DDG and Apple signed a deal on the default maps for DDG.
- jjcon 6y agoDDG is just bing reskinned for the most part so I sincerely doubt Apple would be interested in it
- phenylene 6y agoMaybe Apple could use it to search for wherever their developer documentation went.
- TLightful 6y agoLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
- li4ick 6y agoMakes sense. If they're really serious about Siri they need a high-quality search engine.
- akmarinov 6y agoNo, thanks. Apple is notoriously horrible when it comes to localization: Apple Maps (localization, regional maps, regional traffic data, turn by turn), iOS supported languages, Siri supported languages, their new Apple Translate that only has 7-8 languages, Spotlight suggestions, etc. They're also very slow to expand their services, I think Apple News still only supports 4 countries. Just buy DuckDuckGo
- baq 6y agoddg is 99% bing.
- themodelplumber 6y agoMan that 1% of icing is pretty amazing then.
- jjcon 6y agoDo you see large differences between ddg and bing? I get close to the same results on both sites especially for images
- three_seagrass 6y agoThat icing is Yandex, so no thank you.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y agoAnd by icing you mean Yandex, right?
- djxfade 6y agoYeah, as a non US citizen, this annoys me. Every year Apple announce a new cool feature, but I won't be able to use it for years. Like a lot of the Maps features, the News app, the better predictive keyboard, etc. Apple is the most valuable company in the world, they really have no excuse.
- 6y ago
- jdeibele 6y agoGoogle Maps is slightly superior to Apple Maps but the gap continues to narrow and it's possible that Apple will pull ahead. The competition between the two means that it's important for new features to be added and incorrect data to be fixed. On the other hand, Apple's search in the App Store app is so bad that I use DDG or Google to search for apps.
- Hamuko 6y ago>Google Maps is slightly superior to Apple Maps but the gap continues to narrow and it's possible that Apple will pull ahead. How many places does Apple Maps have their version of Street View for?
- alfalfasprout 6y agoNot sure, but at least for me street view is the least useful part of a map application. Battery usage is much better in Apple Maps, the turn by turn directions are on average better now (Google maps used to lead by a longshot maybe a year or so ago), and it's less invasive to my privacy.
- nemonemo 6y agoAndroid does not even have an app for Apple Maps. I certainly don't wish the success of Apple search if they are going to follow the model of Apple Maps and many of their other attempts with the closed ecosystem.
- altdatathrow 6y agoIt’s going to suck for the e-commerce sites who have to pay Apple 30% commissions to be listed in their web directory.
- tyingq 6y agoWould they likely just tie it tightly to Apple devices, or would they also expose it as a regular web site?
- cblconfederate 6y agoBut Apple's model is selling premium products and a search is a massive expense for apparently zero benefit to them (they wouldn't launch ads would they?). Plus their web results will probably be strictly censored and say goodbye to open web. It would be a nice dream though, google having some serious competition.
- hellofunk 6y agoThey are transitioning as iPhone sales stabilize. https://www.barrons.com/articles/apple-stock-services-business-iphone-devices-outperform-rating-51590087110 https://www.barrons.com/articles/apple-stock-services-busine... It’s not all about the hardware anymore.
- cblconfederate 6y agothere's no way they 'll make the premiums they have with software. There isn't even content with such margins.
- ianai 6y agoThat’s not a reason to not expand the business.
- coopsmgoops 6y agoGuess they should just do nothing then? Diversity in buisness is important. And Google has a whole pie from which apple can steal a big chunk of. Simply set apple search to be the default on safari and you immediately have a huge chuck of the market.
- cblconfederate 6y agonot in a premium business. in fact diversity may be a bad thing there, as evidenced by the highly limited number of apple computer models. I don't think they want to become the next Samsung
- 6y ago
- aazaa 6y agoApple's MO is vertical integration. So this only makes sense in the context of a vertical integration play. The article talks about some of ways a search engine could integrate with existing products, but they don't seem very compelling. On that score, this doesn't look like it will happen, despite appearances. On the other hand, if Apple is also working on another, secret, project that would integrate well with search, that would be a different matter.
- bitxbit 6y agoWish Apple would release a GPU line. A man can dream right?
- modeless 6y agoUh, they have? It's in every iPhone and iPad and iPod and Apple TV and Apple Watch, and coming soon to Mac. Of course you'll never be able to get it in a PC.
- andreasley 6y agoApple Silicon will use an Apple-designed GPU.
- asdasfasdfasdf 6y agoGood. Seriously. It's impossible to compete with Google on Search if you don't have a trillion dollars. Apple is one of the few companies in the position to make a small dent. I suspect others here may disagree, but I wouldn't even hate to see them absorb and improve duck duck go.
- mark_l_watson 6y agore: ""iOS and iPadOS 14 beta bypasses Google Search with Spotlight Search"" I just updated my iPad Pro to the latest 14 beta this morning, tried Splotlight search, and I didn't see this effect. EDIT: I forgot to add that I look forward to a privacy respecting search from Apple.
- rising-sky 6y agoIf this eventually bears out in reality, will not be surprised if they make an attempt to buy DuckDuckGo since they align on privacy as a business model. However, I'm not certain how I would feel about the concentration in a few large players, which would be the outcome of that, although it sounds like it might increase rather than decrease the level of competition...
- jjcon 6y agoI doubt they would buy ddg since it is entirely reliant on Microsoft’s bing.
- jacquesm 6y agoWill this be before or after that Apple car?
- azinman2 6y agoThis is so silly. It’s already launched! It’s the “Siri Suggested Website”. It’s already there in spotlight and Safari. Those links come from an Apple crawler! There’s no mystery.
- chanmad29 6y agoAssuming Apple is going to let go the $12B+ that Google pays to remain as the default search.
- justusthane 6y agoThe article covers that.
- CarbyAu 6y agoI hope they do so that aggregate searchers have another option. I want a search engine I can use the search term "rockets" to get me actual fire breathing rockets rather than some US sports team...
- twiceaday 6y agoI want a search engine that is optimized for completing my task and leaving quickly rather than ever-increasing engagement. When I search for something and its not there I don't want pages of unrelated-but-popular garbage, I just want to see a 'no' so I can move on.
- brentos99 6y ago30% for all transactions done on Apple search
- throwawaysea 6y agoWill Apple curate, police, and censor their search results like they do the App Store? While I welcome competition for google, I really wish it was from some other players.
- toper-centage 6y agoI feel like this will hurt small companies developing Bing-based engines more than it will hurt Google.
- pcdoodle 6y agoCool, do I have to pay 30% of my revenue to show up in the search results?