I 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.
I 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.
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
I 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.
This 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.
I was aware of that, and it's exactly backwards. Google is punishing sites for having low-quality sites point to them (even if they have no control of them). What I'm suggesting is the opposite, that a site be punished for its outward links, if they point to low-quality sites.
(One could do this separately for various kinds of undesirable content and let the users choose whether they want to avoid spam, hate speech, plagiarized content, nsfw content, misinformation, Rick Astley videos, and so on.)
Punishing slow complicated sites and sites with annoying newsletter or cookie notifications would be nice too. Promote simple, fast readable sites with no dark patterns.
There's plenty of room for improvement in search. DDG is already edging ahead because it searches for what I want, not what it thinks I want.
I wonder if there'd be any value in a search engine that recognized popular third-party ad networks and simply did not add to its index any page which includes them. (Or, at least, provided users an option to filter those results out.)
How would a search engine that doesn't have pretty much any major publication and a lot of content-driven websites gain any traction at all? There is so much it couldn't find, and while you may be fine with that, I doubt many people would be.
> "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.
There is a difference in how you make that money: the end does not justify the means. You can become rich by righteous means (although harder). Apple is not perfect, but at least for now, they did not sell out yet. Microsoft is a close 2nd, after some redemption lol
Don't forget that Apple is a multinational megacorp, and is user centric only when it suits them. Consider Tim Cook speaking at the conference used by the Chinese government to promote internet regulation, saying that the vision of the conference is one that Apple shares, and also the handing over of user data to Chinese servers (encrypted, but still out of their control).
For me, this is the big reason to celebrate this. A duopoly in search is at least marginally better than a monopoly. If Maps is any indication, people will bitch about it for a year or so, but after 2 years, 80%+ of users will be using it.
Personally, I'd love if Apple put this out there ad-free. Getting clean, honest search results was why I switched to Google to start with. Google's current platform where almost all search results above the fold are paid for is what we switched to Google to get away from. DDG is piles better in this regard now.
Apple maps is probably a good example because outside the US it is still useless, 8 years later. I don't expect an Apple search engine to be any different.
In the UK it’s broadly as effective as a mapping tool, in my experience. Better in many ways, even; Google Maps is rammed full of adverts to the point it’s actually kind of distracting.
That’s not to mention the desktop app - it’s a step change in performance versus Google Maps being a sluggish browser experience.
In many parts of the world Apple maps is incapable to even give directions. I kid not. Go to e.g. Colombia and try to make directions between two places. It won't let you.
It just seems that Apple doesn't invest much in maps if they don't see a profit motive. They are very much capable of competing with Google Maps but they choose to build a more limited product that only works well in certain parts of the world where there are high concentrations of iPhone users. That's fine but it's not what I want in a maps app, I want consistency.
I switched to Apple Maps a few months ago and haven't run into any issues using it in various cities in Germany.
The main missing feature for me used to be public transit routing, but they added that a few updates ago and it generates pretty much identical itineraries to Google Maps.
Depends where you are, I guess? I'd've thought NZ's little backwater roads would be useless still, but Apple Maps has been fine for me for a long time now. I still occasionally use Google (Apple doesn't integrate cycling information where I live), but it's very very rare these days.
NZ coverage is pretty decent in Apple Maps. I went to the Far North a few weeks back. Was staying with family. They just moved into a new house in a new area--maybe say 6 months to a year ago. Apple Maps had their address, whereas their street was nowhere to be found in Google Maps (just an outline which I assume they derived from satellite images?). Overall I find both have gaps--so neither have perfect coverage. As a Android owner I use Google Maps, and my husband has an Apple and uses Apple Maps. We consult with each other's maps on a regular basis since we don't really trust either!
I don't necessarily expect this will be the case, I was just saying that I would very much prefer it. Apple doesn't charge for or have advertising on quite a few services so it's a crap shoot which way they will go. But if they want large-scale adoption, they need a big differentiation and zero adverts is a good start.
I do doubt Apple would launch a search page that is as buries organic results below the fold the way Google does now though.
For me, the clean look DDG sports is Apple's big competition at this point. If they don't deliver as-good-as-or-better results and interface as DDG, then I'll stick with DDG as my default (and Google as my "I can't find it on DDG" backup).
Apple implements things which differentiates the iPhone and makes the experience better. If they see search as a way of doing that, they might well do it. There are a lot of services which are accessible to iPhone users which are completely free for years. The App Store, Find My iPhone, Find My Friends, the iCloud APIs (not the storage you buy for backup, but the API servers used by 3rd party developers). Maps is the obvious/ big one which is extremely expensive to offer.
They also offer content services like Music, TV+, and News+... services which they pay 3rd parties to use or develop content for. These are all quite distinct from Apple most other Apple services in that they are about the content someone else creates. Search definitely doesn’t fit into the same bucket as Apple Music and Apple TV+.
Apple News and the App Store itself are the only parts of Apple which get some revenue from advertising platforms.
If they see search the way they see maps, it could be free. It’s possible they will push an advertising platform with search. I don’t think it’s anywhere near a slam dunk though, and it’s possible it will have a small advertising load to support some costs like the App Store does.
Apple doesn’t need Search to be a profit center. They might put advertising on the platform (in fact I’d say it’s likely). But they don’t need it to look like Google’s pile of adverts with a few organic results at the bottom.
Apple's choice for Maps was to pay Google or some other service a per user fee to provide turn by turn directions, lose all their users to Android (which had that feature for free), or make their own maps. They didn't provide it for free to differentiate -- the experience was laughably bad at launch. They provided it for free because their cash cow was about to keel over.
I can’t source the 80% but it’s probably not far off that on iOS these days. Even so, Google Maps still has about 2/3 market share overall. It dominates on Android, and a significant number of iPhone users still use it. However for Apple Maps on iOS if it’s the default, it just has to be good enough and most people will stick with it.
Google is also really bad these days. Sure they have impressive trivia features but searching for solid, reliable information is really crappy. The first page is always blogspam that seems like it's generated by a AI or someone who's being paid $5/h to write filler that doesn't quite count as SEO.
The only way I can find (non-programming) information that is 50% reliable rather than 10% reliable is to append "reddit" to any queries.
I spent a lot of time digging through all the oft-mentioned search engines here, and the interfaces between G, B, DDG and the others (Runnaroo, Startpage, etc) are all surprisingly similar. And they're all pretty unappealing (to me).
Visualizations of results have improved so much in the last 10+ years, hopefully "visualization of search results" can also be advanced.
As the creator of the upstart search engine on that list (Runnaroo), I do try to differentiate it from the the search providers, but there is a risk of being too different from what people expect.
Take a look at the below search [0], it is distinctly different from the SERPs of the other search engines for the same query, but you are correct that we still focus on just listing information vs. visualizing it. Maybe something for us to explore.
From a search visualization perspective, check out Carrot2 [1] for something more innovative. Swisscows [2] also has some nice visualization elements.
Hey, I have some specific things that I'd love in runaroo to be able to move to it full time (things like !gsc => google scholar search, etc.). I would love to contribute these in some way, is the source available?
I don't think the index is the challenge. Anyone with enough machines and gigabits can index a big enough portion of "the web". The real difficult part is ranking and understanding web pages themselves.
Why would they? If Apple makes it the default search engine on iOS they immediately dwarf the ddg user base. And the front end is the easy part of a search engine.
What we really need is a spider/database that's publicly-funded like PBS, with an open API that anyone can write search engines on top of. That's the way forward for search innovation.
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.
I ask my google assistant random questions. "How long does Orange Juice last in the fridge?", "What is ____". I'm pretty sure it just uses Google Search's featured snippets, but it's usually correct and understands me. Like the other poster, I wouldn't bother asking Siri the same questions.
[Disclaimer: I work on Google Assistant. I just started though; I'm much more of a user than an engineer at this point.]
I use it a lot for media stuff. "Play <song> by <band>", "Watch <TV show> on Netflix", etc. My wife is very fond of the combined alarm + YouTube functionality: "Wake me up at 7:00 AM with deep meditation music". My toddler has learned to say "Hey Google watch videos of dump trucks". I use it a bunch for basic productivity stuff too: "What's my agenda for today?" "What's my agenda for tomorrow?" "Check my e-mail".
My toddler can’t turn Google Home on. He have probably tried over 300 times the last year. Seems like it is not trained on enough child voices in foreign languages. I had to record my voice for him on the iPad, so he can use it. Just with the short “Hey Google”, in Norwegian.
He pronounces it correct. The only difference is the high pitch/tone of a child.
I've had reliability problems with my toddler as well, and I suspect it's the treble voices. My primary device (for him) is an LG TV, though, which is push-to-talk. As long as he holds the mic up to his mouth properly it'll usually get what he's saying. (It probably also helps that he's speaking American English).
I don't think my Nest Hub Max or Google Home Mini has ever caught the "Hey Google" when he says it, but it doesn't really matter for our use-cases with him.
I wonder if it's by design? If I was building a home assistant product, one of the cases I'd build defensively against would be kids saying "hey google delete all emails"...
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but when Alexa/Google/Siri started coming out in home-accessible versions, I did think there was a beat missing in terms of recognising a voice-print (if such a thing is possible) or similarly requiring some form of authentication.
My 4 year old daughter can get Home to play her favorite rhymes and cartoon on our TV using chromecast. We are non-native English speakers(desi) and dont use English as our primary language at home
Google Assistant really wow'ed me when, to settle a dinner table debate, I asked "Ok Google, on the TV show 'Friends', what was the name of the game show Joey hosted?" Before that, I'd never engaged with this device, which we got for free as part of a promo, and which sat on our bookshelf doing nothing.
It truly amazes me that GA is able to give a relevant response here. First, Joey never hosts it, he just auditions for it. Second, GA reads a paragraph or so from IMDB's summary of the one episode where this happens.
Google is surprisingly good at answering questions like that. The rise of voice assistant really has pushed them into improving their knowledge graph and condensing search results into a single sentence. The conciseness has been getting even better too. I notice often it'll actually give a one word answer, followed by a 1-2 sentence context.
For example, I asked "what kind of soap can I use on my cats" and it gave a one word "castile soap" followed by the sentence. (I actually Googled it, and it's like that on Search too).
It's super useful when you quickly want an answer to something you were wondering. A nice touch is also how it sends the link to your phone to look deeper into it.
These are things that seem obscure, but thousands of people are probably asking already. Try asking it something that would easily be answered by a traditional keyword-based search engine, like how to install the alsa-firmware package in Ubuntu. The entire result set will be about alsa-firmware-loaders.
I mean, assistants are basically voice UI's for any service.
Google has a huge knowledge graph so naturally they'd be better at answering questions, but I think between Google Assistant and Alexa the race to win will come down to integrations/partnerships with third parties.
I seriously doubt it was doing nothing. I has been listening the entire time you had it connected. You might not have utilized it, but it has utilized you.
I have a lot of Google Nest Minis and Hubs throughout the house and love the experience. There isn't much it can't do and I'm constantly impressed by how well the GA can match intent to action.
On my Pixel 4 it's just "squeeze to talk", which is super convenient (and also doesn't interfere with the "Hey Google" on my smart speaker). It's marginally faster to open e-mail by voice than by tapping, although not hugely so.
Basic 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.
Well, maybe most people just don't find it that useful, as an idea, rather than as an implementation? I don't personally find myself wanting to talk to my phone, and I certainly don't want smart speakers listening to everything I say and giving it to intelligence agencies or whatever.
Personally I agree. But other people are happy with that interface, so IMO Siri could have been a game changer. It had the potential to eat a big part of the web and give Apple dominance over it.
Failing to take advantage of that early lead has been one of the biggest failures of the Cook era.
That'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.
I suspect the search engine effort is actually part of making Siri better. To do that they need the data to analyse, which means scraping and indexing, which is search. Might as well wraps that in a UI and nail two birds with one stone.
I asked Siri to turn on my lights today. I was told that I did not have any lights set up. Then I rephrased my request to turn on the lights. "Coming right up".
Of course, there's also the regular "I'm sorry, but some of your devices did not respond" response from my Watch, forcing me to issue the same command to my iPhone for it to work.
Depends on the phone. Bought a Pixel 3a to use after I lost my Pixel 2 in a car accident. The 3a picks up way less than the 2. But honestly, using my Google Home is super pleasant.
"Hey Google, turn on the lights"
"Hey Google, good night" -> reads me my agenda, asks me for an alarm time
Wake up, walk to the bathroom, "Hey Google, play the Economist podcast" while I brush my teeth. "Hey google, shuffle my thumbs up playlist" as I walk to the shower.
"Hey Google, set a timer for x seconds" while I'm cooking.
Yes, this annoys me so much still. THAT was my one killer use for it.
The effort of migrating an email address I've used for over a decade just to get this one feature back doesn't quite make sense, but I'm considering it...
This is interesting to me. As someone who works at Google, and is a huge Android fan (and Apple hater), I am constantly astounded at how bad Assistant seems to be for me, and how good Siri seems to be for my friends.
Maybe I just speak really unclearly? Unfortunately, basically all of my friends have iPhones (even at Google), so it's hard to know if it's just me.
Grass is always greener on the other side. If you used siri you would be confronted with the bad instead of only seeing the good (this goes for anything which you are not using)
As iPhone users, your friends probably have learned exactly what Siri is and is not capable of and only use it publicly for things they know Siri can handle. Privately, you’ve all seen how badly your phones’ assistants fail, but you’re only aware of the times Assistant has failed on you.
I've got a Pixel 4 for work and an iPhone 8 for personal. (I work at Google now, but had a long stretch where I was trying to de-Googlify.) It's no comparison - Assistant seems way better than Siri. About the only advantage Siri has is in the personality department...she seems a bit nicer, while Assistant literally has the personality of a robot.
Very interesting. I can confirm the parent comment. I've got a kind of mumbling voice and am not a native English speaker, so Siri would not understand 60% of what I'm saying. While GA got everything I was saying every time, even when using a wired headset mic while riding a very noisy underground train.
I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't bought DuckDuckGo. Their privacy goals seem to mostly overlap and DuckDuckGo has really gotten good. Lately I've found them to be as good or better than Google for most technical or informational searches. The results are accurate and they seem to have less of a problem with bogus results from content scraping sites.
Google really does shine at location based searches though. If I'm looking for a physical place in any location or region, Google can be scary good (even when I misspell something).
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.
Yeah, 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.
Scott 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.
There 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.
I don't get the antitrust against Google search. You can just click on Bing and start searching there as soon as Bing becomes even slightly better.
On the other hand, you can't "click" on Android and suddenly switch to Android (or from Android to iOS) if Android this year becomes slightly better. It's designed to be a real uphill battle to switch (re-purchase all the media: apps, movies, shows, etc.), unhook imessage, transfer photos out of iCloud photos, etc. etc.
>You can just click on Bing and start searching there as soon as Bing becomes even slightly better.
I think the central problem is that 'getting better' is mostly a function of having more users in the first place because that is the very data that helps Google improve the service, it's probably one of the most simple cases of network effects.
I'm no expert, but it's not just that they dominate the search market, it's that they use that position in less than ideal ways. For example, Google Snippets takes away valuable traffic from sites. Google has also been accused of prioritizing their own results over competitors.
You're conflating topics. I'm saying the cost of switching is trivially low for search engines. The moment Bing becomes better I can switch to it with a "single click". The moment I like something about Android or iOS I can't switch with a "single click".
Whether or not a search engine should be barred from showing snippets is a different topic IMO.
Right — 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.
There 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.
It'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.
My 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.
Unless they also build an ad network to go with the search engine this will be a money sink and nobody good will want to work on it. Internal incentives will line up such that it will be guaranteed to languish.
> Search really hasn't changed in any fundamental or even noticeable way for a long time.
Perhaps I’m cynical but I do think search has changed in fundamental and noticeable ways in the last five years but none of the change has been for the better. More ads, more “personalized” with more tracking, more results based on what the algorithm thinks I mean instead of what I’ve actually typed. I much preferred Google circa 2006 when it was much more intuitive and much less “innovative.”
Microsoft 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.
Apple is one of those companies that is seemingly “about to launch” a product in dozens of categories which aren’t their core competencies (Project Titan?). People fail to realize this is what these massive R&D budgets are for...not just the products you see, but the many many projects which don’t get approved. Apple shows impressive restraint in their endeavors. Search would be interesting, though perhaps unwise.
But 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.
Guess 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.
not 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
It's not just software -- it's services of a wide variety of types. I.e. Apple TV+ is not software. Having your own search engine allows you to integrate with services more tightly and enhance that business.
For 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.
Siri 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.
Yeah, 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.
That’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.
Apple'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.
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.
Apple 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?
Google 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.
Android 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.
Not 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.
Have 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.
I 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.
If 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?
~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/]
Could 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).
Or 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.
If 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...
This 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.
Will 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.
Uh, 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.
