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I don’t believe Apple can’t build a better search engine if it wanted to. They have the money to hire anyone they want. Quality doesn’t matter though. Google’s

I don’t believe Apple can’t build a better search engine if it wanted to. They have the money to hire anyone they want. Quality doesn’t matter though. Google’s deal is probably more profitable all things considered.

refulgentis 3y ago
Such an odd story on that angle. Apple negging Microsoft for not investing more in Bing and "monetizing" better (i.e. vacuuming more data), but from a business perspective, that means you should want to buy it _more_. And how does Google know?
high_derivative 3y ago
I don't think you are entirely wrong, but it's also not as simple that every tech company can do everything well. Apple has not been able to make Siri work well and has completely fallen behind on AI/LLMs. Apple has been trying to build a car for a decade and restarted/rebuilt teams many times with layoffs in between. Not every culture can support every product
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  Not just Siri. Apple has the worst recommendation system for music among competitors like Spotify(at least when they were good) and youtube music.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > Apple has not been able to make Siri work well It's been widely known that they are working on a LLM version of Siri which is predicted to launch at WWDC. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/04/new-version-of-siri-with-generative-ai/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/04/new-version-of-siri-wit...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
hiddencost 3y ago
Apple hired John Giannendrea, and he brought many of his key lieutenants along. Turns out money can't buy everything.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  I don't think it's so much on the professionals, but on the culture Apple would want to do their walled garden version of a search engine with more biases and more filtering and of course that's a compounding problem
buro9 3y ago
Apple have all the money to do anything that they want to do, as does Google, Amazon, etc. But.. 1. Not everything is within a company's culture to achieve, no matter how much money is thrown at it. 2. If you _really_ wanted to do something with urgency, then of course you'd consider acquiring people, tech, teams, and IP to accelerate that thing, but point #1 says you still might not succeed (and the ruins of so much M&A across the whole industry says you really need to consider that first point hard).
astrange 3y ago
Apple already did build a search engine; it's what gives you the top suggestion as you type in Safari/Spotlight. It mostly just sends you to Wikipedia, which means it's already better than Google.
solalf 3y ago
I don’t think this is about how technically complex that would be. That’s clearly not where the moat is. The moat is in the commercial operations powering the cash machine that Google has built across its numerous properties. You can build this engine but it won’t give you the richness of the data Google collects through Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Analytics etc… on its users. You could argue that Apple could try, through its own properties, but it would go against the privacy stance (essential to their image now). Not saying they aren’t capable of dancing around this problem either, but then you start eroding your brand (which sells lots of iPhones). That’s when you start seeing that it’s just simpler to externalize this cost to a third party that you can then openly criticize and use as scarecrow to reinforce your market position, all the while collecting tens of billions in profits from them. Yes profits, they don’t pay anything to operate Google Search. Given that Google gives them a third of revenue on Safari, that means Apple would need a product that does multiple times what they get for it today. That also requires a sales force they don’t fully have (although that’s been increasing for their own properties like AppStore and News). Anyway, looking at it from this angle, it’s kind of genius not to change the status quo.
arthur_sav 3y ago
> They have the money to hire anyone they want. Just throwing money at the problem doesn't actually work.
Terretta 3y ago
They could do worse than start with Kagi.
- jemmyw 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if Kagi has already received multiple offers from various companies. The person behind Kagi seems very driven and has a vision for it that doesn't include taking a boat load of cash at this time. See the way they did their first investment round, it was not pitched to VCs.
theGnuMe 3y ago
It is amazing that nobody can compete with google at search. Are the search engines in China and Russia as good respectively? I mean are they their countries version of Google search?

refulgentis 3y ago

Such an odd story on that angle. Apple negging Microsoft for not investing more in Bing and "monetizing" better (i.e. vacuuming more data), but from a business perspective, that means you should want to buy it _more_. And how does Google know?

high_derivative 3y ago

I don't think you are entirely wrong, but it's also not as simple that every tech company can do everything well. Apple has not been able to make Siri work well and has completely fallen behind on AI/LLMs. Apple has been trying to build a car for a decade and restarted/rebuilt teams many times with layoffs in between. Not every culture can support every product

YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Not just Siri. Apple has the worst recommendation system for music among competitors like Spotify(at least when they were good) and youtube music.
threeseed 3y ago
> Apple has not been able to make Siri work well It's been widely known that they are working on a LLM version of Siri which is predicted to launch at WWDC. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/04/new-version-of-siri-with-generative-ai/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/04/new-version-of-siri-wit...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

hiddencost 3y ago

Apple hired John Giannendrea, and he brought many of his key lieutenants along. Turns out money can't buy everything.

raverbashing 3y ago
I don't think it's so much on the professionals, but on the culture Apple would want to do their walled garden version of a search engine with more biases and more filtering and of course that's a compounding problem

buro9 3y ago

Apple have all the money to do anything that they want to do, as does Google, Amazon, etc. But.. 1. Not everything is within a company's culture to achieve, no matter how much money is thrown at it. 2. If you _really_ wanted to do something with urgency, then of course you'd consider acquiring people, tech, teams, and IP to accelerate that thing, but point #1 says you still might not succeed (and the ruins of so much M&A across the whole industry says you really need to consider that first point hard).

astrange 3y ago

Apple already did build a search engine; it's what gives you the top suggestion as you type in Safari/Spotlight. It mostly just sends you to Wikipedia, which means it's already better than Google.

solalf 3y ago

I don’t think this is about how technically complex that would be. That’s clearly not where the moat is. The moat is in the commercial operations powering the cash machine that Google has built across its numerous properties. You can build this engine but it won’t give you the richness of the data Google collects through Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Analytics etc… on its users. You could argue that Apple could try, through its own properties, but it would go against the privacy stance (essential to their image now). Not saying they aren’t capable of dancing around this problem either, but then you start eroding your brand (which sells lots of iPhones). That’s when you start seeing that it’s just simpler to externalize this cost to a third party that you can then openly criticize and use as scarecrow to reinforce your market position, all the while collecting tens of billions in profits from them. Yes profits, they don’t pay anything to operate Google Search. Given that Google gives them a third of revenue on Safari, that means Apple would need a product that does multiple times what they get for it today. That also requires a sales force they don’t fully have (although that’s been increasing for their own properties like AppStore and News). Anyway, looking at it from this angle, it’s kind of genius not to change the status quo.

arthur_sav 3y ago

> They have the money to hire anyone they want. Just throwing money at the problem doesn't actually work.

Terretta 3y ago

They could do worse than start with Kagi.

jemmyw 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Kagi has already received multiple offers from various companies. The person behind Kagi seems very driven and has a vision for it that doesn't include taking a boat load of cash at this time. See the way they did their first investment round, it was not pitched to VCs.

theGnuMe 3y ago

It is amazing that nobody can compete with google at search. Are the search engines in China and Russia as good respectively? I mean are they their countries version of Google search?