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> And ends up paying its major competitor $18 billion+ a year How much more would they be paying if Android didn't exist? How tempting would it be for Apple -
by sangnoir 4y ago
> And ends up paying its major competitor $18 billion+ a year
How much more would they be paying if Android didn't exist? How tempting would it be for Apple - as an intermediary - to make its own search service that would immediately hit Google's top line? How much revenue would Google lose in that scenario? Sometimes it pays to take the smaller loss to avoid larger losses.
- scarface74 4y agoI can’t find it now. But someone actually did make a web interface for Apple’s search engine powered by “AppleBot”. It’s used in different parts of iOS. It’s horrible. If you have ever tried to find anything in the App Store, you know that the last thing that the world wants is an Apple powered search engine. Most people would just go to Google anyway.
- sangnoir 4y agoApple maps was horrible...at first (and still is in parts of the world). A full-throttled attempt at Apple search would likely go the same way: not great in the long tail, but acceptable or even good for a decent proportion of users.
- scarface74 4y agoThe only thing it took to improve maps was more data, acquiring companies and hiring experts. Directions are a hard problem. But at the end of the day it’s just programming. Search at Google’s scale requires massive infrastructure investments, the top ML/AI experts and the constant feedback loop of users. Apple has demonstrated it sucks at everything that Google is good at. It’s an institutional problem. Having its own mapping infrastructure was a core business need and really there are only two or three companies in the world that are good at it.