8 ms·

It’s likely the payoff is also to prevent apple from building its own search engine to compete. As googles payoff is so lucrative

dehrmann 5y ago
Maybe, but Google Maps seems to do fine on iPhone. Google and Apple might have their own numbers on this that disagree, though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- simfree 5y ago
  Google Maps has a better data collection method (bugging their userbase to collect data for them, encouraging users to collect even more as Google Scouts) and also the dataset of Waze, while Apple has a much more laborious process where an Apple Contractor (initially in Austin or Cupertino) modifies points of interest, business hours, road alignments, etc manually. Apple started to ship this operation over to India 5ish years ago, and their contractors over there produce much worse results as they are not hiring professional geographers with degrees like they did stateside.
  - toastal 5y ago
    I wish more people would realize they are literally working for Google without getting paid to do this work. If it's out of a greater sense of helping people and contributions, OpenStreetMap needs to be better known.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Russian tech giant Yandex (they mostly do everything that Google does: search, maps, email, etc) has a so-called "People's map", filled by volunteers who transfer rights for their edits to Yandex for free the use in their closed commercial project. I always wondered why these volunteers don't work on OpenStreetMap instead.
      - ygra 5y ago
        Perhaps they simply don't know about it. OSM is doing its own thing and doesn't market itself much to the general audience. But for things that Google/Yandex are grabbing for free (opening hours, whether shops still exist, etc.), StreetComplete should be known much better, IMHO. It doesn't really help OSM that its home page is considered just an example of what can be done with the data and not positioning it as an alternative to Google/Bing Maps is somewhat intentional.
    - drusepth 5y ago
      If the goal is just helping people, why would OpenStreetMaps be preferred over Google Maps? I love answering questions on Maps and providing information for others (in my eyes: effectively working for them, not Google). Google Maps seems like it has a significantly larger user base, so my contributions help significantly more people. It's very much a help-and-be-helped community, too. I can ask questions about businesses and have answers from other people in just a couple minutes. I don't imagine I'd have the same quality/speed asking questions on OSM (if they even have that feature?).
solarkraft 5y ago
There have been reports and speculation that they’re doing just that. Of course it’s worth it for the negotiation threat alone, but Apple also really doesn’t seem to like depending on Google. I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.
- int_19h 5y ago
  That sounds like a cartel to me.
- Renaud 5y ago
  >DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible I would like someone to make some objective research on that. My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing. I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something. I very rarely have to resort to a !g search and usually if I can't find it on DDG, I won't easily find it on google either. I don't feel like missing out on anything and I always find what I need (and if I don't, I can't find it in other searches either). Other platforms have some strength in some area, like Bing and Google have more tools for image searches, and it's possible that one of these is better than the others at some specific domain, like research papers or patent searches. But after switching to DDG, all these options are still available and -at least in my case- 99%+ of my needs are met with it.
  - craftinator 5y ago
    I've found it's very dependent on what I'm searching for. DDG results tend to match my search patterns better, but it often seems they are missing pages with all the correct keywords that google returns. I suspect it just comes down to Google having crawled more pages, and having had more resources to invest in optimizing result hierarchies.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    There is not much interesting stuff on the internet these days outside closed FB etc, so search is just not as important as it used to be.
amelius 5y ago
If I were Apple, I would spend at least $1B of that $7B on developing a secret new search engine :)
- geocar 5y ago
  I think a lot of people overestimate how easy it is to make a search engine, and underestimate how hard it is to sell search to advertisers. I think this is closer to a 50B problem than a 1B problem. Not impossible, but I don’t know anyone who has 50B that they would want to spend fighting uphill to kill google.
  - nerbert 5y ago
    A 50B$ problem is only 5 years of these 10B$ per year. I’d be surprised if Apple wasn’t on it.
  - _laiq 5y ago
    I find this really hard to believe. Say, you manage to recruit the top-30 engineers who know all the in-and-outs of the google search engine. Add to that, their recent replacement of trad AI methods with full NN I believe, and I can't realistically believe it's not more than a 1B problem. One of the reasons Google is going horizontal because their search engine can't be "magical" forever, this applies to their ad platform too.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      Remaking Google requires engineering talent and lots of clickstream data (ie. Hundreds of Billions of search queries and information about what search results were clicked by which users). Nobody else has this, and until they do, they won't be able to recreate Google.
      - Applejinx 5y ago
        Is it not like statistical certainty: i.e. you need a million or so queries to cover the range of your possible outcomes, and the hundreds of billions just takes you from 0.999999 certainty to 0.9999999999999999999? You do NOT get added benefit from big data by taking it from millions to hundreds of billions. It becomes just a lesson in scale, without bringing any added benefit of insight.

dehrmann 5y ago

Maybe, but Google Maps seems to do fine on iPhone. Google and Apple might have their own numbers on this that disagree, though.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
simfree 5y ago
Google Maps has a better data collection method (bugging their userbase to collect data for them, encouraging users to collect even more as Google Scouts) and also the dataset of Waze, while Apple has a much more laborious process where an Apple Contractor (initially in Austin or Cupertino) modifies points of interest, business hours, road alignments, etc manually. Apple started to ship this operation over to India 5ish years ago, and their contractors over there produce much worse results as they are not hiring professional geographers with degrees like they did stateside.
- toastal 5y ago
  I wish more people would realize they are literally working for Google without getting paid to do this work. If it's out of a greater sense of helping people and contributions, OpenStreetMap needs to be better known.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Russian tech giant Yandex (they mostly do everything that Google does: search, maps, email, etc) has a so-called "People's map", filled by volunteers who transfer rights for their edits to Yandex for free the use in their closed commercial project. I always wondered why these volunteers don't work on OpenStreetMap instead.
    - ygra 5y ago
      Perhaps they simply don't know about it. OSM is doing its own thing and doesn't market itself much to the general audience. But for things that Google/Yandex are grabbing for free (opening hours, whether shops still exist, etc.), StreetComplete should be known much better, IMHO. It doesn't really help OSM that its home page is considered just an example of what can be done with the data and not positioning it as an alternative to Google/Bing Maps is somewhat intentional.
  - drusepth 5y ago
    If the goal is just helping people, why would OpenStreetMaps be preferred over Google Maps? I love answering questions on Maps and providing information for others (in my eyes: effectively working for them, not Google). Google Maps seems like it has a significantly larger user base, so my contributions help significantly more people. It's very much a help-and-be-helped community, too. I can ask questions about businesses and have answers from other people in just a couple minutes. I don't imagine I'd have the same quality/speed asking questions on OSM (if they even have that feature?).

solarkraft 5y ago

There have been reports and speculation that they’re doing just that. Of course it’s worth it for the negotiation threat alone, but Apple also really doesn’t seem to like depending on Google. I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.

int_19h 5y ago
That sounds like a cartel to me.
Renaud 5y ago
>DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible I would like someone to make some objective research on that. My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing. I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something. I very rarely have to resort to a !g search and usually if I can't find it on DDG, I won't easily find it on google either. I don't feel like missing out on anything and I always find what I need (and if I don't, I can't find it in other searches either). Other platforms have some strength in some area, like Bing and Google have more tools for image searches, and it's possible that one of these is better than the others at some specific domain, like research papers or patent searches. But after switching to DDG, all these options are still available and -at least in my case- 99%+ of my needs are met with it.
- craftinator 5y ago
  I've found it's very dependent on what I'm searching for. DDG results tend to match my search patterns better, but it often seems they are missing pages with all the correct keywords that google returns. I suspect it just comes down to Google having crawled more pages, and having had more resources to invest in optimizing result hierarchies.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  There is not much interesting stuff on the internet these days outside closed FB etc, so search is just not as important as it used to be.

amelius 5y ago

If I were Apple, I would spend at least $1B of that $7B on developing a secret new search engine :)

geocar 5y ago
I think a lot of people overestimate how easy it is to make a search engine, and underestimate how hard it is to sell search to advertisers. I think this is closer to a 50B problem than a 1B problem. Not impossible, but I don’t know anyone who has 50B that they would want to spend fighting uphill to kill google.
- nerbert 5y ago
  A 50B$ problem is only 5 years of these 10B$ per year. I’d be surprised if Apple wasn’t on it.
- _laiq 5y ago
  I find this really hard to believe. Say, you manage to recruit the top-30 engineers who know all the in-and-outs of the google search engine. Add to that, their recent replacement of trad AI methods with full NN I believe, and I can't realistically believe it's not more than a 1B problem. One of the reasons Google is going horizontal because their search engine can't be "magical" forever, this applies to their ad platform too.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Remaking Google requires engineering talent and lots of clickstream data (ie. Hundreds of Billions of search queries and information about what search results were clicked by which users). Nobody else has this, and until they do, they won't be able to recreate Google.
    - Applejinx 5y ago
      Is it not like statistical certainty: i.e. you need a million or so queries to cover the range of your possible outcomes, and the hundreds of billions just takes you from 0.999999 certainty to 0.9999999999999999999? You do NOT get added benefit from big data by taking it from millions to hundreds of billions. It becomes just a lesson in scale, without bringing any added benefit of insight.