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People always get excited over what Apple does. Supposedly Apple is working on an EV. And a VR headset. And a search engine. They're probably doing that and a w

People always get excited over what Apple does. Supposedly Apple is working on an EV. And a VR headset. And a search engine. They're probably doing that and a whole lot more. It's called R&D. Apple doesn't want to be surprised by anything and their investors don't want Apple to miss opportunities. So Apple runs a lot of projects to better understand the item in question, its manufacturing and/or maintenance, customer profiles, and so on. What I read in a headline like this is Search was one of those items Apple has been researching. They've probably decided it's not worth their effort. The staff have learned that, whether officially or through the grapevine, and are now going back to a firm where search is worth their effort. The news for us is Apple sees no viability in search, at least not in how we've become accustomed to thinking about search.

onion2k 4y ago
The news for us is Apple sees no viability in search, at least not in how we've become accustomed to thinking about search. I don't think you can read much about Apple's strategy from this. Apple might well see search as an important priority, they just don't feel spending the sort of money necessary to keep these particular people around is the best way to get there.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Or they feel these are not the people worth keeping around, so letting them go on their own is just fine?
computomatic 4y ago
According to an interview I watched recently, Steve Jobs wasn’t even sure they’d launch the iPhone a year before they did. There’s a relatively well-known exchange where he flat-out tells an interviewer there’s no phone, and post-launch admits he was lying. The truth was in the middle - if they couldn’t control the product enough (due to then-standard carrier influence over design and experience), then they wouldn’t make a phone. Eventually they found a launch carrier that would let them do it. If apple can’t make “the best search in the world” (by someone’s subjective definition), then they’ll never launch it. Simple as that.
- CyanLite2 4y ago
  Sort of the anti-Google. Whereas Google will release something, get user traction and then try to make it 'best in the world'. If it doesn't get to world class status, then it cancels it and moves on, pissing off the early adopters in the process. The problem is that this becomes counter-productive just like serial dramas in the TV world. If people think you're going to cancel something, they're not going to get emotionally invested in your product. Then it almost certainly gets canceled because it doesn't get enough user traction. Rinse. Repeat.
  - ytpete 4y ago
    Apple will pull the plug on things that aren't panning out too though. The MacBook Pro's Touch Bar came and went in a pretty short period of time, for example. Though I suppose in that specific example at least, the people whose trust was damaged are mainly developers who invested in building for it, and probably less so users who invested in learning it or relying on it. Maybe there are better, more Google-like examples where user/community trust bears the brunt of it.
    - barryvan 4y ago
      Mostly went. My 2022 13" MacBook Pro still includes it. Whether or not it should is a different question, of course.
  - kccqzy 4y ago
    From the perspective of employees it's also terrible to see the product being worked on for years get cancelled. Sometimes there are no easy choices. My takeaway is that Apple wants its customers to be happy even at the expense of its employees, but Google wants its employees to be happy (product launch => promotions) more than it wants its customers to.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be "best in the world", just good enough and justifiable to themselves - many of the Apple in-house products kinda sucked when first released (I'm thinking of Apple Maps).
CharlesW 4y ago
> They've probably decided it's not worth their effort. I think The Information's intel is probably true — that Apple is years away from launching web search product — but I don't think that means there's been any loss of momentum. Building a generalized search engine better than Google is hard. We know that Apple absolutely bristles at dependencies for core capabilities. For now they'll continue to begrudgingly take Google's $15 billion/year, but Google will not be the default search engine for iOS by 2030. I can understand core team members not wanting to wait that long.
- bombcar 4y ago
  You don't have to build a search engine that is better than Google's - you may only need to build one that is roughly in the running and keep it around until such time as you have to divest from Google. And working for years on a project that may never see the light of day can be hard.
  - dewey 4y ago
    With them working so much on building up their ad business, having a search engine and switching the iOS default search to it might make up for the loss in Google money they get right now. Just like with Google Maps / Apple Maps it doesn't seem very Apple-like to depend on a partner this heavily for such a core feature.
  - guyzero 4y ago
    The money doesn't come from search quality, it comes from selling ads and Apple is a long way away from building up ad inventory and an ad salesforce like Google's. They absolutely are making money on ads today, but they're a long way from swapping out Google.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yeah, I suspect part of it is keeping an emergency option if Google were to not only stop paying them but actively blocking them (it's unlikely to happen, but if you have infinite money you're going to be paying to reduce unlikely risks). Apple will start using their own search tools in smaller places that they can monetize better, I suspect, things like "Siri find a good restaurant".
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Google is paying apple $14 billion a year to not build a search engine. Gotta be hard for them to say no to that, and even more cynically having a team building a google competitor probably helped them negotiate a bigger bribe from Google.
- alphabetting 4y ago
  Google is paying for default IOS search eyeballs. That's it. It would make zero sense to be paying Apple billions a year "to not build a search engine" when Apple is openly working on Search. Search is also ridiculously hard with the constant battle against SEO/Spam industry so I don't think Google is worried about a similar platform. Bing is 13 yrs old and has 3% market share. Where they are actually probably worried about losing search usage is social outlets like Tiktok and Reddit where people look for answers.
  - saimiam 4y ago
    > constant battle against SEO/Spam industry I'm pretty sure this is a self inflicted injury. Google started relying on metadata as a signal for its search algo and the SEO war was on. 1. Nothing is forcing Apple or any other search engine maker to use the same signals 2. In any case, the era of general purpose web search seems to be ending - most things we care about is in walled gardens like Insta or WhatsApp. E.g., millions of people get their Ukraine war news from Telegram channels which Google is blind to. Any general purpose search engine is hoovering up less and less relevant content
johnthuss 4y ago
Apple is already doing search on a huge scale and will continue doing it -- that's what the "Siri Suggested website" is that shows up when you type in Safari's search bar, on both iOS and the Mac. It's under the radar a bit, but it is absolutely the same search.
- thundergolfer 4y ago
  Yep, Apple apparently runs the largest Solr search cluster in the world.
- acomjean 4y ago
  It’s caught me off guard as I assumed the search bar went to google, but it doesn’t do that till you hit enter.
rockinghigh 4y ago
You're extrapolating a lot from just a title. Apple has had various search engines and crawlers for almost a decade now. Their first major investment was the Topsy's acquisition, in 2013. They've continued to invest through acquisitions and organic growth to reduce their reliance on Google Search. There is no indication that Apple will stop.
mFixman 4y ago
Apple doing R&D doesn't mean Apple won't ever make a search engine, electric car, or VR headset. It means that Apple is waiting to get a mature enough product in any of these areas to create one. If you want to see how hyping products before they are fully mature can go wrong, look at Meta and Horizon Worlds.

onion2k 4y ago

The news for us is Apple sees no viability in search, at least not in how we've become accustomed to thinking about search. I don't think you can read much about Apple's strategy from this. Apple might well see search as an important priority, they just don't feel spending the sort of money necessary to keep these particular people around is the best way to get there.

dylan604 4y ago
Or they feel these are not the people worth keeping around, so letting them go on their own is just fine?

computomatic 4y ago

According to an interview I watched recently, Steve Jobs wasn’t even sure they’d launch the iPhone a year before they did. There’s a relatively well-known exchange where he flat-out tells an interviewer there’s no phone, and post-launch admits he was lying. The truth was in the middle - if they couldn’t control the product enough (due to then-standard carrier influence over design and experience), then they wouldn’t make a phone. Eventually they found a launch carrier that would let them do it. If apple can’t make “the best search in the world” (by someone’s subjective definition), then they’ll never launch it. Simple as that.

CyanLite2 4y ago
Sort of the anti-Google. Whereas Google will release something, get user traction and then try to make it 'best in the world'. If it doesn't get to world class status, then it cancels it and moves on, pissing off the early adopters in the process. The problem is that this becomes counter-productive just like serial dramas in the TV world. If people think you're going to cancel something, they're not going to get emotionally invested in your product. Then it almost certainly gets canceled because it doesn't get enough user traction. Rinse. Repeat.
- ytpete 4y ago
  Apple will pull the plug on things that aren't panning out too though. The MacBook Pro's Touch Bar came and went in a pretty short period of time, for example. Though I suppose in that specific example at least, the people whose trust was damaged are mainly developers who invested in building for it, and probably less so users who invested in learning it or relying on it. Maybe there are better, more Google-like examples where user/community trust bears the brunt of it.
  - barryvan 4y ago
    Mostly went. My 2022 13" MacBook Pro still includes it. Whether or not it should is a different question, of course.
- kccqzy 4y ago
  From the perspective of employees it's also terrible to see the product being worked on for years get cancelled. Sometimes there are no easy choices. My takeaway is that Apple wants its customers to be happy even at the expense of its employees, but Google wants its employees to be happy (product launch => promotions) more than it wants its customers to.
bombcar 4y ago
It doesn't have to be "best in the world", just good enough and justifiable to themselves - many of the Apple in-house products kinda sucked when first released (I'm thinking of Apple Maps).

CharlesW 4y ago

> They've probably decided it's not worth their effort. I think The Information's intel is probably true — that Apple is years away from launching web search product — but I don't think that means there's been any loss of momentum. Building a generalized search engine better than Google is hard. We know that Apple absolutely bristles at dependencies for core capabilities. For now they'll continue to begrudgingly take Google's $15 billion/year, but Google will not be the default search engine for iOS by 2030. I can understand core team members not wanting to wait that long.

bombcar 4y ago
You don't have to build a search engine that is better than Google's - you may only need to build one that is roughly in the running and keep it around until such time as you have to divest from Google. And working for years on a project that may never see the light of day can be hard.
- dewey 4y ago
  With them working so much on building up their ad business, having a search engine and switching the iOS default search to it might make up for the loss in Google money they get right now. Just like with Google Maps / Apple Maps it doesn't seem very Apple-like to depend on a partner this heavily for such a core feature.
- guyzero 4y ago
  The money doesn't come from search quality, it comes from selling ads and Apple is a long way away from building up ad inventory and an ad salesforce like Google's. They absolutely are making money on ads today, but they're a long way from swapping out Google.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, I suspect part of it is keeping an emergency option if Google were to not only stop paying them but actively blocking them (it's unlikely to happen, but if you have infinite money you're going to be paying to reduce unlikely risks). Apple will start using their own search tools in smaller places that they can monetize better, I suspect, things like "Siri find a good restaurant".

HDThoreaun 4y ago

Google is paying apple $14 billion a year to not build a search engine. Gotta be hard for them to say no to that, and even more cynically having a team building a google competitor probably helped them negotiate a bigger bribe from Google.

alphabetting 4y ago
Google is paying for default IOS search eyeballs. That's it. It would make zero sense to be paying Apple billions a year "to not build a search engine" when Apple is openly working on Search. Search is also ridiculously hard with the constant battle against SEO/Spam industry so I don't think Google is worried about a similar platform. Bing is 13 yrs old and has 3% market share. Where they are actually probably worried about losing search usage is social outlets like Tiktok and Reddit where people look for answers.
- saimiam 4y ago
  > constant battle against SEO/Spam industry I'm pretty sure this is a self inflicted injury. Google started relying on metadata as a signal for its search algo and the SEO war was on. 1. Nothing is forcing Apple or any other search engine maker to use the same signals 2. In any case, the era of general purpose web search seems to be ending - most things we care about is in walled gardens like Insta or WhatsApp. E.g., millions of people get their Ukraine war news from Telegram channels which Google is blind to. Any general purpose search engine is hoovering up less and less relevant content

johnthuss 4y ago

Apple is already doing search on a huge scale and will continue doing it -- that's what the "Siri Suggested website" is that shows up when you type in Safari's search bar, on both iOS and the Mac. It's under the radar a bit, but it is absolutely the same search.

thundergolfer 4y ago
Yep, Apple apparently runs the largest Solr search cluster in the world.
acomjean 4y ago
It’s caught me off guard as I assumed the search bar went to google, but it doesn’t do that till you hit enter.

rockinghigh 4y ago

You're extrapolating a lot from just a title. Apple has had various search engines and crawlers for almost a decade now. Their first major investment was the Topsy's acquisition, in 2013. They've continued to invest through acquisitions and organic growth to reduce their reliance on Google Search. There is no indication that Apple will stop.

mFixman 4y ago

Apple doing R&D doesn't mean Apple won't ever make a search engine, electric car, or VR headset. It means that Apple is waiting to get a mature enough product in any of these areas to create one. If you want to see how hyping products before they are fully mature can go wrong, look at Meta and Horizon Worlds.